Greenhouse Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

Category: labor-market and HR software
Pandemic-layoff role: Additional sourced company
Last updated: 2026-09-25
Related article: The Pandemic Layoff Stress Test

Pandemic-role map

Reader shorthand: recruiting-software provider exposed to hiring freezes.
What Greenhouse did for customers: sold applicant-tracking, interviewing and hiring-workflow software to employers.
What changed in the pandemic: customers stopped hiring in spring 2020, and recruiting software became an easy budget line to cut.
Relief role: not a lender, referral agent or government-support contractor. Through a partner, it offered a free service for placing laid-off workers.
Data/tool role: labor-market software whose business shrinks when customers stop adding headcount.

Founders, Executives, and Investors

Daniel Chait and Jon Stross co-founded Greenhouse Software, based in New York. Chait was chief executive through the pandemic. Business Insider reported in April 2020 that the company had raised $110 million from venture investors including Benchmark Capital, most recently a $50 million Series D in July 2018.

In January 2021 Stross announced "a major investment from TPG Growth and The Rise Fund." He described The Rise Fund as a social-impact investing fund.

Business Before the Pandemic

Greenhouse sold hiring software to employers, and Business Insider noted that its customers included Airbnb, Slack, Venmo and Pinterest. Its revenue depended on those customers hiring. Chait wrote that before the virus hit, the company "was growing strongly and consistently for years."

What the Pandemic Changed

On April 17, 2020, in a post titled "Weathering the storm," Chait announced that Greenhouse would cut its team by 28%. Layoffs.fyi and Business Insider put the number at about 120 employees. "The virus, and resulting economic effects, are what made this necessary. And as CEO, I am ultimately responsible for this decision," he wrote. Business Insider reported that the cuts fell mostly on sales and marketing. Chait wrote that the company had prioritized the cuts "to focus more deeply on Sales & Marketing," preserving customer success, account management, support and R&D. Departing employees received eight weeks of severance and eight months of extended healthcare.

Greenhouse was not alone. Business Insider cited a Layoffs.fyi estimate that more than 2,000 startup employees in HR and recruiting had lost their jobs because of the pandemic, and its rival Lever had cut about 40% of its staff a week earlier. Chait said the 2020 product roadmap would focus on automating tasks for "lean recruiting teams."

On May 28, 2020 Greenhouse's blog carried a post from Drafted, an integration partner for almost three years, which made its Layoff Network free to the whole Greenhouse community, customers or not. Drafted wrote that outplacement agencies usually charged employers more than $1,000 per laid-off person.

Business After the First Shock

In the January 13, 2021 post announcing the TPG investment, Stross said Greenhouse worked with more than 4,000 organizations handling almost 60 million job applicants a year. He said the money would pay for product development and expansion into new markets.

Where the Company Is Now

Active private company. TPG Growth and The Rise Fund invested in January 2021, and the Greenhouse website was still selling the platform in 2026.