Williston-based insurance startup Polly laid off 47 employees nationwide this week, the company told VTDigger on Friday.
Those employees constitute about 15% of the company’s workforce. Ben Jastatt, senior director of communications at Polly, said 17 of the people who lost jobs were based in Vermont.
Polly, which changed its name from DealerPolicy earlier this year, sells auto insurance plans through car dealerships, allowing customers to purchase insurance while buying a car.
The announcement comes about 16 months after the company, which was founded in 2015, received a $110 million investment from Goldman Sachs, Jastatt said. The Burlington Free Press reported at the time that the company planned to triple the size of its workforce.
Jastatt said Polly decided to lay off the 47 employees because of “inflationary pressures” in the auto industry, and that the company has faced “a much more demanding economic climate” in 2022 than in previous years.
“We’re taking this as an opportunity to become more capital- and resource-efficient in 2023, so we can continue to set the company up for success down the road,” he said.
But two former employees interviewed by VTDigger expressed skepticism about the company’s reasoning.
One former sales agent, who asked not to be named because they plan to continue working in the insurance industry, said the company hired “way too many people too fast” after the Goldman Sachs investment.
“I think the problem is they anticipated growing faster,” the employee said.
Jastatt said the company would provide severance to laid-off employees based on tenure. It also planned to pay out unused paid time off, pay bonuses for some employees, provide outplacement support and allow employees to keep their laptop to help them find new work.
“We did our best to do everything in our power to over-communicate, treat everyone impacted with dignity, respect, support, everything we could (do) in order to help them transition,” he said.