WeTransfer has made an unorthodox call to action to recently laid-off employees of SoundCloud. In the range of reactions to the news that the latter company would cut 40% of its staff, the cloud-based file transfer platform’s proposal leans towards the positive end.
Rather than offering former SoundCloud developers employment opportunities, WeTransfer offered them $10,000 to “start something new.” A portion of the letter by WeTransfer President Damian Bradfield posted to the company’s Medium page read:
[W]e’d like to prevent you from just simply ‘getting a job.’ Why? What’s wrong with a job? Nothing. It’s just that you might stray from your original mission to change the way we consume or create music – an endeavor that made SoundCloud unique in the world of tech. So we’d like to make you an offer. $10,000 to start something. This is not a loan or equity exchange. What we would like to see is a proposal for something you could design, build or manage that could be the new mail-order record club, SoundCloud or iTunes. This is not an investment. I hear you – 10k is a modest amount – but we started small too, and it could act as a runway. Or it could pay for the lights on a runway. Somehow, it could help you get off the ground.
Amid speculation that SoundCloud’s budget would only last until the fourth quarter of 2017, the streaming service’s co-founder, Alex Ljung, issued a statement to dispel the rumors. As the company has not revealed any additional investors, however, its future remains dubious as far as most of the music industry is concerned.
No SoundCloud employees have publicly disclosed a proposal for WeTransfer’s $10,000 startup budget at this time.
Source: Dancing Astronaut
