Zero Strategy, Falling Sales, Incompetent Leadership
Pros
Some genuinely talented and well-meaning colleagues—too bad they're being taken advantage of.
Cons
Spruce is a textbook example of how not to run a company. There is no strategic direction, and under CEO Andrew White, the company has gone from bad to worse according to people who are still there. Andrew is a venture capitalist cosplaying as a CEO: lacking vision, leadership ability, and any demonstrated capability to build or scale a real business. It shows. When the company laid off people under the prior CEO Steven Pho, it offered just two weeks' severance, even to employees who had been there over four years, despite clearly having the cash to offer a fairer deal. It was a slap in the face to long-time team members and a clear signal of the company's lack of integrity and respect for its people. Spruce has asked (via Carta) former employees who exercised their options to agree to issue even more share and be even further diluted so Andrew can issue himself even more worthless shares, an insult given that existing options are already valued close to zero. It's a self-serving move at the expense of the people who actually built the company. Current employees likely have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes as Andrew is probably quietly enriching himself while the company slowly bleeds out both cash and talent.