https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3aqnw8/patreon-ceo-posts-youtube-apology-for-firing-36-people-as-valuation-rises-to-dollar4-billion

On Monday, Patreon CEO Jake Conte released a YouTube video announcing he just laid off 36 employees from Patreon’s product, design, and engineering teams. In the video, Conte assures viewers that the move wasn’t because of financial troubles. In fact, the company just raised $155 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global, pumping its valuation from $1.2 billion to $4 billion.

“Anytime something like this happens at a company, it is ultimately the responsibility of the CEO. And not just the decision itself, but everything that led up to the decision, all of that points back to the CEO,” Conte said in the video. A keyboard, which he plays in the band Pomplamoose  with his wife Nataly Dawn, can be seen in the background. "So why did we do this? We're shifting the way we build products and operate internally and we needed different sets of experiences and different types of employees in order to make that shift."