Entellium today laid off its sales and marketing staff, a move that comes just a few days after the Seattle software company’s chief executive and head of finance unexpectedly stepped down.
The 8-year-old company is now evaluating options, with a board meeting set for Oct. 6.
“It has been a long hard day for people and a long hard week,” said Charles Miller, vice president of operational excellence at Entellium in an interview at the company’s headquarters today. On Wednesday, Entellium announced that CEO Paul Johnston and Senior Vice President Parrish Jones were no longer working at the company.
Miller, who has assumed many of the operational duties at the struggling company, declined to say how many people were let go. But he said the cuts were necessary in order to reduce expenses at the maker of customer relationship management software.
“It is not a wind down situation. It is not a fire sale,” said Miller. “We just needed to make some changes in the organization to reduce our burn.”
Miller said the company continues to support customers and offer product assistance.
Entellium has raised more than $30 million in venture funding from Ignition Partners, Sigma Partners and others. At one point earlier this year, it employed more than 190 people. But a series of layoffs — including today’s slashing of the sales and marketing workforce — has reduced that number.
At the company’s headquarters on Western Avenue in downtown Seattle, a few employees gathered near the reception desk where a hand truck and packing boxes resided. Heather Van Schoiack, the company’s public relations manager, declined to comment about the situation saying it was her last day at the company.
Beyond that, most of the office was quiet with empty cubicles on the 8th floor of the Watefront Place Building.
Asked about the general mood, Miller said “everyone is hit hard.”
He expects to have more details about the status of the company after next Monday’s board meeting.
– John Cook, johnharoldcook@gmail.com
10 responses so far ↓
1 Anonymous // Oct 4, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Perhaps it’s time for Avidian Technologies, the other local CRM Software maker to acquire Entellium.
2 Anonymous // Oct 5, 2008 at 11:49 am
I heard through the grape vine that Avidian Technologies (http://www.avidian.com) makers of Prophet CRM, the other CRM company in Seattle, is putting together a group of high tech entrepreneurs and investors and is considering making a bid for Entellium’s customer base and other assets. Avidian has not raised any VC money, has been profitable and has been growing significantly through the last few years. I’ve always been impressed with what James Wong (CEO) and Tim Nguyen (CIO), the two co-founders have done with Avidian and I believe they can pull it off.
3 Anonymous // Oct 5, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The abruptness of the changes, layoffs, and reevaluation so soon after major funding and enthusiasm about growth seems odd, even disturbing, given the presumption of regular board oversight and monitoring and experienced management. What happened to force immediaate and drastic actions? Out of funds, how did this get missed? Were the investors and management team aware of the runway? What are the lessons here?
4 Avidian considering Entellium purchase // Oct 5, 2008 at 6:51 pm
[...] and head of finance abruptly resigned. By Friday, a large chunk of the work force had been let go, including the entire sales and marketing [...]
5 Thug // Oct 5, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I think Avidian is just blowing smoke to get some PR that it does not have currently. Their solution is “trash” just ask the folks at Gartner and Forrester Research. No innovation, No Vision - just an outlook plug-in called CRM. They have 12,000 customers but ask them what the average deployment is. If they do get Entellium it will be a sad day for this space.
6 greenberg // Oct 7, 2008 at 9:22 am
i also heared that Salesboom.com is interested in purchasing thier customers (book of businerss), but not very sure. I am sure many companies would like the pr though!!
Unless some provider buys the customers out, these customers will be in huge troubles.
7 greenberg // Oct 7, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I know exactly what happened at Entellium!! Basically Paul Johnston has lied to the venture partners(ignition partners and others including Intel corp which has a 20% stake in the company) about Entellium’s sales. He actually increased the sales by three times to fool the investors.
Then Major amounts of money have been stolen from the company. Do you know where Paul Johnston is? He is not in Seattle!!!!!!! He is offshore now according to the latest insider news i heared…
Oh by the way the news about Avidian purchasing Entellium is totally untrue and they have issued the statement before even calling entellium or the actual investors, so Avidian did a pr scam , thats it.
8 Anon // Oct 7, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Um, if the last post is true to any degree, then it would take a concerted effort to pull off which also begs the questions how and why? Was this over a short or long period of time? Was there a revenue hockey stick in the actuals? Was there sufficient time spent dicussing financial condition of the company? Was there just too much rah, rah, rah things are great, no worries, send money or was there regular discussion of internals and metrics of the company.
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