Namely: 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: HR and payroll software for mid-sized employers, exposed when its customers cut staff.
What Namely did for customers: sold payroll, benefits, talent-management and other HR tools by subscription to mid-sized U.S. businesses.
What changed in the pandemic: customers laid off workers, and Namely's revenue fell with them, because part of its fee was charged per employee.
Relief role: not a lender or government-benefits channel. In April 2020 it said its payroll software let clients defer tax remittances under the CARES Act and added reports to support clients' SBA loan applications. Its benefits advisers published guidance for employers deciding on furloughs.
Data/tool role: a software provider whose economics depended on customers having employees to manage.

Founders, Executives, and Investors

Matt Straz co-founded Namely, which TechCrunch described in May 2020 as eight and a half years old and based in New York. The board removed Straz as chief executive in 2018, telling employees his actions were "inconsistent with that which is expected of Namely leadership." Elisa Steele, the board member who led the investigation, became permanent CEO and helped raise $60 million led by GGV Capital. She had left the role by the summer of 2019. Larry Dunivan, previously interim CEO of the HR company ThinkHR, succeeded her and ran Namely through the pandemic.

TechCrunch reported that Namely had raised at least $217 million from investors including Matrix Partners, True Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Business Before the Pandemic

Namely sold its software to mid-sized companies on one- to three-year contracts. Customers also paid for a minimum number of employees, so revenue rose and fell with their headcount. An investor told TechCrunch the company had entered 2020 with "a modest growth plan."

What the Pandemic Changed

On March 26, 2020 Namely's benefits team published guidance for employers on how the four largest medical insurers, Aetna, Anthem, Cigna and UHC, would treat furloughed workers who stayed on their health plans.

On April 3 Namely's blog published "Paycheck Protection Program: Is Your Business Eligible for Employer Loans?" On April 8 the company announced a payroll feature that "allows clients to defer collection/remittance of tax payments in accordance with financial relief efforts (the CARES Act)." The same release listed deferrals of student-loan garnishments and Social Security, "increased reporting to support applications for loans being offered by the Small Business Administration (SBA)," and earning codes for sick leave and FMLA leave under the Families First Act and for the Employee Retention Credits. On June 1 Namely added an earning code for Section 139 payments, which its release described as qualified disaster-relief payments to employees "that are tax advantaged." The SBA's public PPP loan data (release of September 30, 2024) list no borrower with "Namely" in its name.

Namely's releases ended with the same line about its size. On April 8 it read "Serving more than 1,400 clients with 280,000 employees globally." On April 22 the line read 230,000 employees, and it still did on June 1. The client count stayed at more than 1,400. The employee count fell by 50,000, or 17.9 percent, between the two releases.

The April 8 release also said Namely was "offering their HR software and implementation services for free with the purchase of their robust Comply Solutions," its compliance package. The offer page promised "Go live with Namely's new package in two weeks or less." It printed no price and no end date.

Dunivan told TechCrunch on May 1, 2020 that Namely had cut executive pay five weeks earlier to try to avoid layoffs, but the shutdown made cuts unavoidable. TechCrunch reported that Namely had let go "upwards of 40%" of its roughly 400 employees, including its CFO, its chief security officer and the entire customer-success team. Dunivan later told Layoffs.fyi that 110 employees were laid off, not the 160 that TechCrunch's report had implied. Layoffs.fyi listed the cuts in New York City and Atlanta, across all departments. Measured against TechCrunch's roughly 400 employees, 110 is 27.5 percent. The New York State Department of Labor's list of 2020 WARN notices has no entry for Namely.

Dunivan described the squeeze on customers. One client with several yoga studios had employed 500 people earlier in 2020 and had laid off all but 15. He waived her minimum-employee charge for a period so she could conserve cash, which meant less revenue for Namely.

Namely was private, and its last SEC filing was a Form D in August 2018. Two of its lenders, Golub Capital BDC and Golub Capital BDC 3, file quarterly reports with the SEC that list each investment they hold. Their schedules for December 31, 2019 list $8.457 million of Namely loans due in June 2024, each valued at its principal amount. For March 31, 2020 they list $8.475 million of principal valued at $7.955 million, or 93.9 percent.

In each fund the larger Namely loan already paid part of its interest in kind before the pandemic. At December 31, 2019 it was listed at LIBOR plus 7.50 percent, 1.25 percent of it payment-in-kind, which Golub Capital BDC's filing describes as interest "capitalized and added to the principal balance of the respective loans." By March 31, 2020 the smaller loan, listed at LIBOR plus 6.25 percent in December, carried the same terms. Each fund also listed a third Namely commitment with the note "The entire commitment was unfunded as of March 31, 2020." By June 30 that line was gone, and each fund listed a new funded Namely loan at LIBOR plus 7.50 percent: $70,000 at Golub Capital BDC and $35,000 at Golub Capital BDC 3. At December 31, 2020 Golub Capital BDC listed a second block of Namely warrants at a cost of $314,000; its earlier Namely warrants had cost $28,000.

Business After the First Shock

Both Golub funds valued their Namely loans at principal again at March 31, 2021. At September 30, 2021 the two main Namely loans in each fund were listed at LIBOR plus 8.50 percent, with 2.25 percent paid in kind. Golub Capital BDC still valued its Namely loans at principal on June 30, 2022.

In February 2021 Namely said it had started to outsource critical functions "before deciding it wasn't suitable for the company's clients," and had set up a dedicated "Service Pod" of payroll, benefits and technology specialists. It reported a "50 percent drop in ticket volume per client." In August 2021 it published research on "more than 122,000 termination events from 2019-2021, to date." By Namely's count, employees left their jobs voluntarily 9.6 percent less in 2020 than in 2019, and 10.6 percent more in 2021 than in 2019.

On September 6, 2022 Namely said it had merged with the organization formed by combining Vensure Employer Solutions, a professional employer organization with more than 12,000 small and mid-sized clients, and PrismHR, which supplies HR software to nearly 85,000 businesses through HR service providers. The announcement said Namely's technology was in use by more than 1,100 mid-sized clients; its 2020 releases had said more than 1,400 clients. Dunivan said the move would "greatly benefit our employees, customers and prospects," and PrismHR's chief executive, Gary Noke, said the group planned to keep investing in Namely's technology. Vensure's CEO, Alex Campos, said the combined group had 3,600 employees.

Neither Golub fund lists Namely in its schedule of investments for September 30, 2022; the company appears only in the comparison schedule for September 30, 2021.

Where the Company Is Now

Namely has been part of the Vensure and PrismHR group since 2022 and still sells its HR, payroll and benefits platform under the Namely name.

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