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Report: 3Tier cuts staff
Just a few months after raising a $10 million venture round, Seattle-based 3Tier Group has laid off 19 employees, reports Xconomy.
We have emails into 3Tier representatives to ask why the 10-year-old company -- which helps utilities, government agencies and energy companies decide where to locate solar, hydroelectric and wind projects -- would cut staff less than a year after raising its venture round.
In an interview with TechFlash last December, CEO Kenneth Westrick expressed confidence in the 85-person company in part because of Barack Obama's focus on the clean tech sector. But Westrick also noted that the falling price of oil -- then trading at $38 a barrel -- and the ongoing global financial crisis was having an impact on some renewable energy projects.
[Post updated with comments from 3Tier]
"There is no doubt about it, it has taken a little bit of the wind out of the sails in the short term," Westrick said at the time.
3Tier spokesman Todd Stone told Xconomy that the layoff reflected "some temporary uncertainty in the renewable energy market."
But oil prices have nearly doubled since then, settling in at $70 per barrel on Wednesday. And Westrick seemed to think that the "long-term fundamentals" for renewable energy were still in place.
"A recession can last 6 months or a year or something like that, but these things are going to confront us for the next 80 to 100 years," he said.
3Tier is backed by Good Energies, a London-based venture capital firm.
UPDATE: Here's the statement from 3Tier's Todd Stone, director of marketing and communications.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss specific numbers, but I can confirm that we did have a reduction in force yesterday. While this does reflect some temporary uncertainty in the renewable energy market, the primary objective was to align our headcount with the strategic transition that we've been making over the last 12 months toward a more scalable and efficient information services business model."
About John Cook
John Cook is co-founder and executive editor of TechFlash. He has been covering the technology beat for nearly a decade, writing about startups, entrepreneurs and venture capital, most recently serving as a reporter/blogger at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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