Health coaching platform Nome, which was valued at $3.7 billion last year, is laying off some employees for the second time in months, TechCrunch has learned from sources.
Nome has laid off 10% of its staff, or about 500 people, as well as cuts to its coaching staff. It’s the second layoff to affect Nome’s coaching staff in months and hundreds of employees.
“Nome has experienced extraordinary growth over the past several years, and it’s important that we structure it in a way that allows us to grow for the long term,” a Nome spokesperson said in an email. “We recently made the difficult decision to reduce the number of Noum employees. We sincerely thank Noum for their contributions, and we hope they continue. Noum declined to answer questions about the scale of layoffs, account packages and strategy beyond this statement.
In the year The startup, which has raised more than $650 million in funding since its launch in 2008, is known in part for its controversial approach to weight loss and nutrition. But now it is showing tension from the staff front. The modest scale of Noam’s coaching services suggests a departure from the platform’s original pitch, which is to combine intelligent nutrition with exercise coaching. In the year By 2020, Nome achieved $400 million in revenue using this strategy. A year later, Num expanded his coaching services by launching Mental Health Direct.
The current website shows how Num thinks, or at least thinks about training as a strategy.
“Welcome to Nomily,” reads Nome’s website. “Our coaches guide users through the ups and downs of their weight loss journey with compassion and empathy. They help users better understand themselves with personalized action plans based on their personal goals, preferences and lifestyle.”
The coaches’ landing page explains the daily life of a Noom coach, from helping clients develop a “healthy lifestyle” and “contributing to the growth of something amazing.” Trainers can enroll in health plans after 90 days of employment, the website said.
But now the ad has a different tone. The company is said to be moving more towards scheduled video calling than live chat.
According to a memo obtained by TechCrunch, Nom co-founders Artem Petakov and Saju Jeong spoke to employees about the layoffs, saying the company is still critical to “controlling costs, increasing efficiency and being effective in how we achieve our mission.” The company’s finances are “improving significantly”.
“Today’s decisions put us in a position to continue to make big bets for the coming year and innovate and grow in the coming years,” the co-founders wrote in an internal memo. Today’s strike comes as the company’s CFO Mike Noonan leaves to join TripAdvisor, the Wall Street Journal reports. A Nome spokeswoman said in an email that the layoffs and the CFO’s departure are two “separate, unrelated announcements.”
In an internal memo, the co-founders said the startup’s big bet was focused on creating an advanced personalized mind and body platform. The co-founders offered their company “another bet that has the potential to dramatically expand our customer base.”
“Finally, over the next few days, we’ll see unkind headlines, but ask you to focus on what’s most important right now: treating our departing colleagues like family, with humanity and respect,” the co-founders wrote.
The company was last known for its 2022 IPO, at a price of 10 billion dollars.
Current and former Nome employees can contact Natasha Mascarenhas by email at natasha.m@techcrunch.com or via Signal, a secure messaging app, at 925 271 0912.
