Veriff laying off 55 people in Estonia | Hacker News Reader

Veriff laying off 55 people in Estonia

estonianworld.com

20 pointsworkfromspace10 comments

> Veriff raised US$100 million from foreign venture capital funds, which boosted its valuation to US$1.5 billion and made it a unicorn. According to Startup Estonia, Veriff is the second largest startup in Estonia in terms of revenue. In the second quarter of this year, Veriff’s sales revenue amounted to more than €18 million, in which Veriff was second only to Bolt.

A 1 billion $ valuation for a company that made 18 mil in sales? This is madness.

> AI-powered identity verification

Ah yes the new “crypto”.

> A 1 billion $ valuation for a company that made 18 mil in sales?

That was 18M Euro (around $20M) and in a quarter. If that revenue was all recurring, that implies an $80M/yr run rate, or a 12.5x multiple on revenue to get to a billion dollar valuation. That's only 5x the current S&P500 price-to-sales ratio (and I'd surely expect startups with any sales traction to have a much higher ratio than US large caps, due to the much higher potential for growth).

It doesn't seem that crazy to me, which might mean that I'm the crazy one.

They raised in Jan 2022 before the AI boom so it's not due to that but rather to the pre-2022 VC culture driven by low interest rates.

The media ai boom started in 2023 but i know people have been obsessed with ai investments for a number years before 2022. All of them flopped afaik.

Pre-2022 everyone was getting tons of money for everything.

Absolutely, and now the losses are being cut, particularly around grift centric niches such as ai and crypto currencies.

Estonian identity verification company Veriff lays off 21% of its employees

In addition to:

- February 2023: Veriff lays off 66 employees (12%) - https://news.err.ee/1608757834/weekly-estonia-s-feted-startu...

- May 2020: Veriff lays off 63 employees - https://news.err.ee/1085714/estonian-id-verification-company...

How can 21 people make a difference in a 100M& funded company? Seems a rounding error

It’s 55 people, 21% of workforce, as I read it.

Still, with the Estonian salaries, 55 people is a rounding error.

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