Wauwatosa-based Zywave is eliminating positions as it sees signs of slower growth after several years of expansion.
The layoffs were announced Wednesday.
“Similar to many tech companies across the country, macroeconomic factors played a significant role in our decision to allocate our workforce and resources to more closely align with our highest priority programs,” Jason Liu, chief executive officer of Zywave, said in a statement.
Liu noted the company has experienced “hypergrowth” in recent years through its M&A activity and its employee base had expanded to support aggressive growth goals.
The insurance technology company has made 10 acquisitions in the past five years, including seven since the start of 2020. Those acquisitions scaled the company from around 300 in 2017 to more than 1,000 as of this summer.
“While Zywave’s business is still strong and steady (ending the year with double digit growth), we’ve begun to see a slowing pace of growth, which means we have a desire to regain operating efficiency with a headcount that matches current demand trends,” Liu said.
A LinkedIn post by one of the employees included in the layoffs indicated 20% of the company was included in the cuts. April Larsen, manager, marketing communications at Zywave, said in email that figure was inaccurate and did not share specifics on the size of the cuts, but she did say “it was significantly les than 200.”
“Zywave is a global company and today’s news impacted all of our geographies, including Milwaukee,” Liu’s statement said.
