Backstage Capital has downsized its staff from 12 to three people, managing partner and founder Arlan Hamilton said during her “Your First Million” podcast that was published Sunday.
The layoff comes nearly three months after Backstage Capital narrowed its investment strategy to only participate in follow-on rounds of existing portfolios. This workforce reduction further underscores that the venture capital firm is struggling to grow, both externally and internally.
“It’s not that I feel like there’s any sort of failure on the fund side, on the firm’s side, on Backstage’s side, it’s that this could have been avoided if systems were different if the system we work within were different,” Hamilton said during the podcast.
Hamilton did not respond to TechCrunch’s request via email for further comment.
Backstage announced in March it was pivoting to fund only existing portfolio companies and would no longer make new investments. At the time, Hamilton said that “there will be …