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It seems that Zirtual, the company that offers virtual assistant services to various professionals, is not dead after all, in spite of the notice that representatives of the company issued on August 10, that it would cease any activity until further notification.
As a consequence to its shutting down, the Las Vegas- based company also laid off about 400 employees without previous warning.
However, a startup launch platform, Startups.co is here to save the day and it was recently announced that it is going to buy Zirtual and have the services become available again next week, starting August 17.
Maren Kate Donovan, the chief executive of Zirtual said that the reason why the company was in collapse was that the company had grown way too fast:
“Zirtual was not flush with capital — for as many people as we had, we were extremely lean. In total we raised almost $5 million over the past three years, but when we moved from independent contractors (ICs) to employees, our costs skyrocketed. (Simple math is add 20–30% on to whatever you pay an IC to know what it will cost to have them as an employee),” she wrote in a post.
The employees were not the only ones who were taken aback by the sudden closure. Clients were also shocked to find out that Zirtual would no longer provide services.
One of the company’s clients, Wil Schroter, who is also the chief executive of Startups.co thought that Zirtual has huge potential and acquiring it was an opportunity that he simply could not let go by. It still remains to be seen how customers will react to this important change and whether they will trust the services of the company after the closure was announced.
Until now, no change in Zirtual’s current management has been announced and the company’s former employees have been encouraged to reapply for jobs.
Even so, not all of them will have the chance to get their jobs back, given what the company has recently been through. It was reported that Zirtual found it very difficult to pay so many workers after filling in more than 100 positions earlier this year.
Image Source: tech.co
