Unacademy CEO’s comment on post about startup failure a day before laying off 250 employees

Gaurav Munjal-led edtech startup, Unacademy, has laid off 250 staffers in its latest round of restructuring. Unacademy said the layoffs were part of the company’s “ongoing efforts to streamline operations and enhance business efficiency,” according to a Moneycontrol report. They come on the back of the startup’s massive cost-cutting efforts in order to achieve profitability.

A day before the layoffs announcement hit the news, Unacademy founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal had commented on a post about startup failure.

Bhavin Turakhia, founder of Zeta, shared the post in question on the social media platform X. Turakhia said that “premature founder boredom” is a recipe for startup failure.

The goal of every startup is to become a “boring” business, he opined - but until that happens, a founder cannot afford to get bored with his company.

Turakhia also listed eight metrics to qualify a business as boring. The non-exhaustive list of deliverables include sustainable profitability, sizable and growing market share, playbooks for every process across every function, the right leadership and more.

“Founders fall in love with chaos, ambiguity and uncertainty (because variable rewards release dopamine) and can begin to detach themselves from their core business prematurely before it becomes Boring, resulting in distraction, lack of focus, inefficient use of capital, and inefficient use of the best people,” wrote the founder of Zeta on X.

Unacademy founder Gaurav Munjal commented on his post - “Hits the right chords,” he wrote.

Take a look at the post below:

Unacademy had laid off 350 employees in March 2023 and around 1,000 employees in April 2022.

Addressing the latest round of layoffs, an Unacademy spokesperson told Moneycontrol: "As part of our ongoing efforts to streamline operations and enhance business efficiency, we have recently undergone a restructuring exercise. This was necessary keeping in mind the company's goals and vision for the year, as we focus all our efforts on sustainable growth and profitability.”

Several edtech startups are experiencing a slowdown in growth and revenue after the pandemic, when online learning saw a massive boom thanks to the lockdown.