Plex, the free streaming app, laid off approximately 20% of its staff, TechCrunch has learned, which will affect all departments, including the Personal Media teams.
“This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make at Plex,” CEO Keith Valory said in a statement. “These are all wonderful people, great colleagues, and good friends. But we believe it is the right thing for the long-term health and stability of Plex.”
The streaming app gives users a single destination to upload and organize content (video, audio and photos) from their own server while also allowing them to stream it via mobile app, smart TV or desktop.
In recent years, however, Plex has invested in free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) and live TV offerings. The FAST market has become saturated as many companies have entered the space. Plus, the overall advertising industry has taken a hit, making it harder for companies to earn enough revenue.
Valory noted in his statement that the company was significantly impacted by the slowdown. “While we adjusted our business plan last year after the shift in equity markets to get us back on a path to profitability without having to cut personnel expenses, the downturn in the ad market in Q2 put significantly more pressure on our business and ultimately it became clear that we would need to take additional measures in order to maintain a confident path to profitability within the next 18 months,” he said.
He added that the company is still expected to see 30% growth this year.
According to a Slack message from Valory, obtained by The Verge, which first reported the layoffs, Valory noted that 37 employees would be impacted.
Additionally, it seems that Plex may have had another round of layoffs earlier this year. Five months ago, a former account executive posted on LinkedIn that they were “affected by company layoffs.”
As of January, the company had 175 employees, and its revenue was in the double-digit millions.
Updated 6/29/23 at 12:10 p.m. ET with a statement from CEO.
I tried jellyfin for a short while but was so freaking annoyed by jellyfin users. Yes, I know you love your app but there are some large issues with it too, and I was shouted down repeatedly like I havent seen since Android v apple.
I experienced some of that gatekeeping too. "Oh I'm sorry, did you want a corporate streamer that let's you change your subtitles get lost corpo"
Exactly. It's not even for me but like, I have older family members who use it. I need it to be as easy for them to use as Plex is. Yes I know I can open the terminal and do x y and z, but they are going to just know "if I hit play it should play".
I'll give it another shot with this news, but yeah, was put off by them.
I mean yeah I would very happily move to Jellyfin. It just needs some time to cook. As of now it's got quite a bit of work to do.
You can't always wait for something to be great to join. Most FOSS products would die w/ that mentality. The larger the userbase, the more motivation to develop. Join, comment, engage, & help to build the best product. Or don't, up to you, but the community would love if you did.
I get that, but with a product I use in a near production environment I just can't swap over. I have users who use my server right now, it would be a process to swap them over to something that has feature parity. I keep jellyfin in a side environment right now, but until things are more baked in I can't swap over.