Venture capital firm NFX laid off four employees in September as the firm looks to “rebalance” its resources from its software and product teams to its investing team, general partner Pete Flint told TechCrunch.
The layoffs included one product leader and three engineers, Flint said. About a week ago, Amy Lin, chief product officer since 2017, announced that she had departed the firm on LinkedIn.
NFX built and runs its own internal software to find and evaluate companies, but, Flint said, the firm has recently found that it can use AI to do the same level of output with less people. Flint said the firm’s product and engineering teams remain large and that the firm’s investing team wasn’t affected.
In fact, the firm plans to use the freed up resources from the layoffs to double down on its investing team. Flint said NFX is looking to hire new folks for the investment team in both San Francisco and in Israel.
NFX also promoted multiple members of its current team. In July, the firm promoted Sarai Bronfeld from principal to partner. Bronfeld had been with NFX since 2021 and is based in Tel Aviv. The firm also promoted Daniel Museles to principal. Museles joined the firm as an associate in 2022 and is based in San Francisco.
Flint said that the firm may end up with more people on the overall NFX team than it had before the rebalance.
“That’s the focus for us, the investment team, which has worked really well,” Flint said. “We will still do software and product. We have had great success. The investment team is going to increase 20%, that’s really the focus for us.”
San Francisco-based NFX, founded in 2017, invests in pre-seed and seed-stage companies across categories like biotech, gaming, generative AI, and fintech, among others. It was one of the first VCs to approach venture investing with a software and data-driven strategy. NFX has raised nearly $1 billion across three early-stage funds in addition to one opportunity fund. It has backed numerous startups that became unicorns or went public including Lyft, Mammoth Biosciences, Doordash, and others.
NFX is not the only venture firm who has restructured resources and let go of staff. Just last week, Initialized Capital announced it was trimming multiple partners and investment support staff. TechCrunch estimated that Initialized reduced its staff by 36%. Greylock laid off five investors last fall. Sequoia Capital cut a third of its platform team in 2023.