Ning And Glam - Cost Cutting Time

Ning and Glam Media are two companies that have a lot of funding - over $100 Million each. 

Ning is also a lean company - they have a lean staff, and everyone works really hard (even by Silicon Valley standards).  I visited their office a couple of weeks back.  They have a normal office as startups go, except for the enormous monitors each person gets.  If you work at Ning, watch Hulu at your desk, no need for a big screen tv!

And Glam has all sorts of claims of success.  CEO Samir Arora is a consummate salesman and PR guy. 

But such are the times, both of these companies, awash in capital, are cutting down on costs.

Glam is reducing everyone's salaries - 3% - 15% for the employees, 25% - 60% for Samir and some top execs and sales people.  They're replacing this with a variable bonus element.  It is a good idea... but might still lead to some top people defecting.   Glam has also started delaying payments to partners and publishers even further.  Hopefully, this doesn't drive any partners out of business, or causes them to scale down their business - because that would come back to haunt Glam.

And Ning is rumored to be readying itself for layoffs, or other cost cuts as well.  This is completely unconfirmed, but several valley folks (none of whom work at Ning) are talking about it, as is FuckedStartups.com.  Hope its not true, but......

Scary times, my friends.