Episode 71 The Human State of Startup 2024 with Glenn Nishimura

2024 has been a hard year for startup companies. Access to investment has been lower compared to prior years and many companies have buckled down to try to preserve their cashflow in anticipation of further dry spells.

The year began with massive layoffs in the larger tech organizations and in Canada we’ve been left with a glut of highly skilled tech workers with little employment opportunities.

We are tackling the human state of the startup company – and the state of founders and employees in 2024.

Here are some facts that summarize the events of this past year:

The total net headcount across the startup ecosystem has remained flat, with only a few sectors, such as energy and medical devices, showing any significant employment growth.

January 2024 saw a significant decline in new hires, down 29% from January 2023. This trend continued into the following months, with February through to April all recording lower hiring numbers compared to previous years.

Inflation has compounded issues as business deal with higher business costs and reduced profit margins: The EDC came out with a report recently indicating that in Canada’s unemployment rate continues to rise, and with slumping global demand the global growth is expected to rise 3% in 2025. Canada’s anticipated growth is just 1.6%, which is constrained with one factor being weakened labour markets.

Glenn Nishimura is a Startup HR & Workplace Culture Expert, and Chief People Strategist at Nishimura Consulting. According to Glenn, “overhiring is now dead.”

First time or inexperienced founders have had a very difficult time navigating and communicating these headcount changes to their teams. Discussions about pay freezes, layoffs, the impact on equity, and the resulting cultural shifts have soured the experiences of many startup employees, grappling with a future startup.

Glenn works with startups and employees from the brightest startups and scaleups across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia. Glenn counsels cofounders, and helps them build the right teams, and cultivate a resilient and scalable culture, which he coins a startup’s “immune system”.

We will dive into the trials and tribulations this year for the startup employee, the implications on founder and their culture and discuss what is next on the horizon in the coming year.