Zirtual lays off 400 employees with a last-minute email
The online startup folded quickly, and employees were sent scrambling to find new jobs. However, Startups.co is taking over the company, and services resume on Monday.
Sure, startup companies will never go away as long as there are entrepreneurs with ideas and capital, but the virtual assistant company Zirtual represents what can go wrong.
At 1:34 a.m. on Monday, the company sent an announcement to its 400 employees that they had all lost their jobs.
It literally folded overnight.
The company’s Twitter account was deleted, and its website and Facebook page are no longer available.
Employees didn’t take the news well:
@TNWinsider @TheNextWoods @tracilyns: And 500 employees in the lurch too! We found out through email early this morning. #Zirtual
— traci hare (@tracilyns) August 10, 2015
What makes the whole matter so sadly ironic is that Zirtual’s CEO, Maren Kate Donovan, had stressed the importance of employee communication in a column for Fortune magazine last month:
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