The well-known Smart Link company is looking at a challenging start to 2024. As 2023 drew to an end, they were hit with $5.5M debt and both Linkfire’s co-founder/CEO and its chief financial officer left the company.
The Smart Link company Linkfire are going to struggle, at least at the start of the year. They met a difficult end to 2023 by revealing two of their most important team members were leaving the company, and therefore stepping down from their roles.
At the end of 2023, Linkfire announced their co-founder and CEO, Lars Ettrup would be moving away from the company completely. This threw them into hot water because he isn’t the only one to turn his back on the Smart Link brand.
Chief financial officer Tobias Demuth also decided to leave Linkfire. This came after the company revealed its shareholders had approved a recent application. The application was to delist its shares from trading on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market, Stockholm.
Therefore, as of January 1st 2024, Linkfire’s other co-founder, Jeppe Faurfelt, took charge and has now stepped in as CEO. Previously, his role was CCO (chief commercial officer). Demuth won’t step down as CFO until the end of February, however.
This is due to a transitional process. Linkfire don’t seem too panicked. They described this process as “a natural step in Linkfire’s journey towards becoming a financially self-sustainable company”. But, this doesn’t sit well when they have such large debt.
As of the end of Q3 Linkfire revealed they were down 9% year-on-year. They also took on DKK 37.3M (approx. $5.5M) worth of debt. This came from BandLab’s CEO, Meng Ru Kuok when Linkfire acquired the company.
Linkfire have suggested this is an investment that will benefit them in the long run. Therefore, they don’t seem concerned that they have such a large debt to pay off. But, with the recent changes, will this attitude change moving into 2024?
