Salesforce’s Marc Benioff took French Polynesia vacation amid layoffs; Stripe burned $500 mln last year – report

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took a vacation to French Polynesia to “detox” himself from gadgets and other digital distractions, the entrepreneur told The New York Times, Business Insider reports – the original piece is behind a paywall. Benioff took a vacation after firing 10 percent of the cloud-based CRM provider’s staff. Meanwhile, fintech darling Stripe burned through half a billion dollars in 2022, The Information reports exclusively, as its revenue rose much more slowly than the previous year’s pandemic-driven frenzy that saw every business shifting more work online. Notes: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took a vacation to French Polynesia to “detox” himself from gadgets and other digital distractions, the entrepreneur told The New York Times, Business Insider reports – the original piece is behind a paywall. Benioff took a vacation after firing 10 percent of the cloud-based CRM provider’s staff. “We are so addicted to our devices (at least I am) it's very freeing to leave them all behind for a while!” he texted The Times in a series of interviews. Salesforce workers knew at the beginning of the new year to expect cuts to thousands of jobs, according to Business Insider. On January 4, Benioff announced that Salesforce was planning to cut around 10 percent of its 84,000 staff over the following weeks. Stripe, a global fintech darling, burned through more than $500 million of cash last year as its revenue growth rate fell sharply, The Information reports exclusively, citing people familiar with the matter. The previously undisclosed figures paint a clearer picture of how quickly the payments giant lost steam after a pandemic-fuelled growth frenzy, according to The Information. Stripe’s net revenue growth slowed to about 18 percent in 2022 to just over $2.8 billion from roughly 85 percent in 2021, according to the tech news and analysis site. The rest of the story is behind a paywall on The Information’s website. A Wall Street Journal report from Jan. 26, offers some perspective and context. The Journal reported at the time that Stripe had approached investors about raising at least $2 billion in fresh cash at a valuation of $55 billion to $60 billion, a sharp decline from its last private fundraising nearly two years ago when it was valued at $95 billion. In some startup funding news in India, Venwiz, a SaaS-enabled marketplace in the Capex and MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) services domain, has raised $8.3 million in Series A funding, led by Sorin Investments with participation from previous investors, Accel and Nexus Venture Partners, the Bengaluru company said in a press release. JAFCO Asia, Riverwalk Holdings and Force Ventures also participated in this round, as did several angel investors. The company had earlier raised $3 million in seed funding, bringing the total capital raised to $11.3 million. The funds will be used for product enhancement and team expansion. Venwiz is digitalising capex and industrial services procurement, focusing on the manufacturing industry. Buyers on the demand side are large enterprise clients with manufacturing plants, having industrial services requirements. On the supply side, the companies that offer these industrial services are MSMEs, with a specialised scope of projects such as mechanical, civil, automation, and turnkey jobs. Venwiz has so far onboarded more than 10,000 vendors on its platform across 40+ service categories.