Project44 cuts 5% of global workforce, plans for ‘engineering-first’ focus

Project44, a supply chain real-time visibility provider, confirmed Friday it has cut 63 global employees, just about 5% of its global workforce.

According to founder and CEO Jett McCandless, the cuts impacted “no load-bearing positions” and were directed toward eliminating an overscaled recruiting department and repositioning the organization’s global operations to focus on engineering as the company doubles down on its solutions for customers.

“We know it was a difficult day for all team members, particularly those who are leaving us,” McCandless said. “I am grateful for the important roles they played in our success up to this point. Our priority is to support them through this time, and we will be providing severance packages and career placement services.

“While this was not an easy decision to make, restructuring our organization keeps us on a path of success, provides the opportunity to improve efficiency and collaboration and allows us to better address the evolving needs of our customers. It further strengthens the financial health of the business and helps us to continue growing through economic uncertainties.”

Health of project44

According to project44, it is continuing to see exponential growth within its business with a number of large retail and consumer-packaged goods companies looking to improve the visibility of their global supply chain networks.

“We’re in great shape to hit our Q2 goals, which are massive,” McCandless said. “It will be significantly larger than Q1 numbers, about a 35% increase quarter over quarter. Our sales pipeline is the largest we have ever seen, which conflicts with what others are seeing in the market.”

McCandless went on to explain that with the improved pipeline, an increasing conversion rate and a 142% net retention rate, the company is still planning on hiring 223 employees between now and the end of the year.

With these high conversion rates and increased interest from enterprise customers, such as Office Depot, Nike, Starbucks, Mondelez and Lineage Logistics, project44 now looks to focus on the products improving their supply chain decision-making.

“We are now focused on creating an engineering-first company,” COO Vivek Kundra said. “We are going to be investing in technology and software because that is what is going to allow us to continue to deliver for our customers. We want to make sure that these customers are getting the value from the innovative products we are putting out into the market.”

With its past acquisitions and growing customer base, project44 is now receiving over 10 billion supply chain data points a month.

“You can already see in the data that we are the best in the world at onboarding and getting our customers value from our products fast,” McCandless said. “But we want to get better, much better. That will improve the robust value of our products.”

With plenty of room to grow — and over $260 million available to do so — there is no stopping the Chicago-based visibility firm from finding those engineers to leverage its powerful database.

“We have openings and are hiring and investing more on the engineering front, looking for the best and the brightest engineers around the world,” Kundra said. “Interest rates are up, inflation is up and still the best companies in history are built during difficult economic turns.”

McCandless agreed with this sentiment.

“The future of our company remains bright, and we remain in a strong position to continue delivering new solutions to the market and fulfilling our promises to our customers and partners,” he said. “We remain focused on our mission to make the world’s supply chains work.”