Close to 370,000 employees in the tech industry have lost their jobs between 2022 and 2023. But a good number of them are now trying their hands at building startups and taking on the titles of founders.
A new study by Bizreport said for every 100 people who lost their jobs, 13 started their own companies. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has the most startups from recent layoffs. The company has so far laid off 21,000 people from November 2022 to March 2023. The study finds that one out of every three former workers in Meta has started their own business. That would mean about 7,000 new founders created from Meta’s layoff activities.
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Other companies with more than 15 percent of their former employees becoming entrepreneurs after being laid off include DoorDash (30%); Amazon (25%); Flexport (24%); Twitter (16%); and Shopify (15%).
The report also found that nine out of one hundred startups were established by former software engineers. Similarly, management-level personnel are more likely to launch a business following a layoff. 44.4 percent of companies examined in the report were founded by former managers and directors.
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