Seesmic fires a third of staff as recession bites

Loic LeMeur, CEO of Seesmic has announced the company is reducing its headcount by seven people. That may not sound like a huge number but as LeMeur says in the video announcement:

...the longevity of the company is obviously of significant importance - and thus we must reduce costs now in order to establish Seesmic as a solid business and pursue success of the company for years to come.

As recently as June, Seesmic raised $6 million in a Series B funding round bringing the total funding to $12 million. Earlier this evening I called LeMeur:

"We've cut anything that's not core to innovation - marketing, international and design. We are getting back to concentrating on developing a video conversation tool. What changed is that revenue will be much tougher to get, especially advertising. We needed to adjust to ensure we don't need to raise additional funding. We've been extremely careful and it is entirely wrong to say we're running out of money. People will ask why we fired staff. Seesmic need lots of time to develop and in this economic climate that means conserving resources. There was no pressure from investors, in fact I was pro-active and went to them to explain the situation. It was a decision I took based on what I believe is happening in the market. People should expect this to happen but we are now very well positioned to move forward over years to come."