Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
"We Cut 40% of Costs and Grew" by Bryn Jones (August 2026) at TechTO.
In January 2023, PartnerStack lost 10% of its revenue in a single month. Then Silicon Valley Bank failed, and PartnerStack sold to SVB's customers. Bryn Jones had weeks of cash in the bank, close to 200 people, and no way to raise. He cut 40% of costs and grew that year anyway.
He's specific about how. Not fat-trimming, a rebuild. "You get, when you have weeks of cash on the bank, you can very quickly prioritize. It sucks. But it's a forcing function, because the alternative is you drive it off a cliff."
The honest part is what he blames. "We told ourselves stories that weren't actually true. And we even sometimes had data that supported the stories. It's amazing how you can lie to yourself." One example: they had metrics proving customer success was working. What they found later was that their team reaching customers at the wrong moment was increasing churn.
The company nearly tripled its growth rate the year after the cuts, then grew more than 50% again. AppDirect acquired PartnerStack in April 2026, for upwards of $150 million USD according to BetaKit.
Bryn swam for Canada's national team before any of this. His takeaway from it: "I learned how to suffer." He also spent three or four YC applications getting rejected before Kevin Hale called after midnight, and got told by a VC in 2017 that partnerships were the dumbest idea he'd ever heard.
Watch this if your revenue just moved the wrong way, or if you've been telling yourself a story the data almost supports.
What do you think of what Bryn had to say? Tell us by leaving a comment.
Watch more talks: youtube.com/c/TechTorontoOrg
Events calendar: luma.com/TechTO-Events
Newsletter — The read on Canadian tech: blog.techto.org
Membership: techto.org/memberships
#TechTO #TorontoTech #CanadianTech #Startups
"We Cut 40% of Costs and Grew" by Bryn Jones (August 2026) at TechTO.
In January 2023, PartnerStack lost 10% of its revenue in a single month. Then Silicon Valley Bank failed, and PartnerStack sold to SVB's customers. Bryn Jones had weeks of cash in the bank, close to 200 people, and no way to raise. He cut 40% of costs and grew that year anyway.
He's specific about how. Not fat-trimming, a rebuild. "You get, when you have weeks of cash on the bank, you can very quickly prioritize. It sucks. But it's a forcing function, because the alternative is you drive it off a cliff."
The honest part is what he blames. "We told ourselves stories that weren't actually true. And we even sometimes had data that supported the stories. It's amazing how you can lie to yourself." One example: they had metrics proving customer success was working. What they found later was that their team reaching customers at the wrong moment was increasing churn.
The company nearly tripled its growth rate the year after the cuts, then grew more than 50% again. AppDirect acquired PartnerStack in April 2026, for upwards of $150 million USD according to BetaKit.
Bryn swam for Canada's national team before any of this. His takeaway from it: "I learned how to suffer." He also spent three or four YC applications getting rejected before Kevin Hale called after midnight, and got told by a VC in 2017 that partnerships were the dumbest idea he'd ever heard.
Watch this if your revenue just moved the wrong way, or if you've been telling yourself a story the data almost supports.
What do you think of what Bryn had to say? Tell us by leaving a comment.
Watch more talks: youtube.com/c/TechTorontoOrg
Events calendar: luma.com/TechTO-Events
Newsletter — The read on Canadian tech: blog.techto.org
Membership: techto.org/memberships
#TechTO #TorontoTech #CanadianTech #Startups
