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Fab, the struggling e-commerce startup that laid off a bunch of employees earlier this month, is denying a report from ValleyWag's Sam Biddle that the company is shutting down.
Biddle's sources said that the remaining employees will be gradually let go over the course of six months, with January 2015 as the final end date. A Fab spokesperson denied these were end dates but did say that employee contracts had "minimum guarantees of employment."
Biddle's sources say that the team who will stay on board until the end of the year is there simply to help the company sell off the remainder of its inventory. Fab's spokesperson denied this to Business Insider today. CEO Jason Goldberg will soon be splitting his time between Fab's New York City headquarters and its office in Berlin, a spokesperson told Valleywag.
Once seen as e-commerce's golden child with investors practically throwing money at it, Fab is burning through what remains of its about $350 million in total funding after a rough year of firings and product pivots. Biddle's sources cite a burn rate as high as $9 million per month, saying it has as little as $30 million left in the bank.
However, a Fab spokesperson told Business Insider that Fab's current burn rate has left it with enough money in the bank for several years of business, and that the team's recent restructuring is part of its focus to prepare the company for a lasting future. She said that Fab had no intention of shutting down its operations in the U.S. market.
Here's how Goldberg responded on Twitter:
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Jillian was most recently an enterprise technology editor based in San Francisco. She started at Insider as an intern on the technology desk in 2013 and rose to a senior reporter position, covering Alphabet, Facebook, and ecommerce. After three years at the site, she left to spend time freelance writing abroad, before taking reporting positions at CNBC and then at Forbes, where she covered Alphabet, Silicon Valley culture, and artificial intelligence. She returned to Insider in March 2020 and worked on the enterprise technology desk until August 2021. Jillian graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a degree in magazine journalism and information management and technology.
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