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Friday, December 27, was supposed to be the beginning of a relaxing holiday.
But it was upheaval for the thousands of small business owners who use Bench, the accounting and tax service in Canada that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify.
That morning, they failed to log into their accounts as tax season began. The entire Bench website was offline except for the announcement that the Bench had closed after 13 years of operation.
Hundreds of Bench employees found themselves fired immediately without notice or notice, several former employees told TechCrunch. Emails TechCrunch sent to staff that day were bounced back.
The move was so sudden that a customer who had saved years on Bench’s website, and was featured on its front page before it went offline, only learned of the suspension. TechCrunch called him to do it.
“I didn’t know that,” said Justin Metros, co-founder of Radiator. “I have never seen a person so locked up.” That is madness.”
Dealing with bench automation
Bench has presented itself as a repository of technological advances and tax introduction with a well-known platform that a small or medium-sized business can use. It took on over 12,000 customers when it closed.
One reason for the company’s struggles is a push to embrace AI and other automation tools in recent years, according to some employees.
It turns out that it’s easier to create accounting tasks, such as budgeting, in theory than it is, former employees told TechCrunch. One former employee said the only way Bench could grow was with AI, but the execution was flawed and the tools they created didn’t work well. Over-reliance on these tools, sometimes due to public librarians, led to delays, as books passed through different groups rather than being confined to one staff member.
That delay caused some customers to give up. One employee previously told TechCrunch that some customers are waiting for their 2023 books in September 2024, after the tax deadline.
According to former employees, Bench has gone through a number of changes since the end of 2022. By the end of 2024, fewer than 400 people said they worked at Bench on LinkedIn, compared to about 700 in January 2023.
Noise above
The news of the killings was intensified by the commotion in the main office of the Bench. Bench’s first CEO, co-founder Ian Crosby, left in 2021 a few months after Bench raised a $60 million Series C round. Crosby accused unnamed board members of pressuring him to replace him with a “professional CEO” after they disagreed with strategic decisions.
“I hope the Bench case will continue to serve as a warning to VCs who think they can ‘upgrade’ a company by replacing the founder. It won’t work,” Crosby wrote in a LinkedIn post after sudden shutdown.
The second head of the Bench was Jean-Philippe Durrios, former CFO. He focused on making the company profitable, according to former employees. Automation can, in theory, make Bench rely on expensive human resources to serve many of its customers. But the gambit didn’t work amid the carnage, customer friction, and declining business interest in companies that didn’t embrace AI.
Bench also changed CEOs in November 2024, bringing in Adam Schlesinger, chief resident of VC firm Inovia Capital, one of Bench’s investors.
At this point, the decision was made to sell the company, according to Schlesinger, a former Microsoft executive who also recently became president of the tequila company. Tequila all the time.
“I was founded by Inovia Capital and then I took the company to be acquired,” Schlesinger told TechCrunch. “They need someone to steer the ship on a difficult course.”
An impossible revival
That process is not over. On December 27, Bench abruptly shut down without giving its employees notice or layoffs, several former employees told TechCrunch. The move was forced by the bank calling for a Bench loan, The Information report. Bench continued to sell until the termination date, according to a former employee.
The suspension has drawn media attention in the US and Canada. The irony is, it was that passion that saved Bench, Schlesinger told TechCrunch.
“It wasn’t until we closed that all the PR people, including you guys, let the world know we were selling, and we had a lot of interest after that,” Schlesinger said.
“I didn’t sleep for 72 hours,” Schlesinger admitted.
The findings were unusual. Jesse Tinsley, CEO of Employer.com, a San Francisco-based HR technology company, was on vacation in Florida when he saw the news about Bench a day after the public shutdown. Tinsley, who runs several HR and recruiting-related businesses, had previously purchased the domain name Employer.com for about $450,000 a month. has been sent and LinkedIn.
Tinsley and his team spent the next 36 hours working on the deal. As of Monday morning, Employer.com had officially announced the purchase of Bench for an undisclosed amount.
“I didn’t meet anyone on the bench until Saturday afternoon,” Tinsley later said tweetedsharing an infamous photo of Elon Musk holding a sink in Twitter, only with his face and a bench. Photographic images in the picture. “Even so, we saved hundreds of jobs and thousands of lost customers.”
Uncertainty remains
Employer.com is making big promises about restocking the Bench. To begin with, it will also add jobs to “a large number” of former Bench employees, Bench Chief People Officer Jennifer Bouyoukos told TechCrunch.
It also says it will honor customer contracts and fully service their accounts, Tinsley tweeted. The Bench’s initial notice of closure encouraged its clients to seek a six-month extension with the IRS to find a new accountant. Now, Bench isn’t promoting extensions as long as customers choose to stay.
But there are lingering doubts surrounding Bench’s stability, thanks to the last fire sale.
Buying usually takes months and requires a lot of attention, which cannot be done in a weekend. Employer.com also had no direct experience in accounting until acquiring Bench – instead, it focused on payroll, recruiting, and other HR-related areas. If Bench’s fall shows anything, it’s that the score is its own beast.
There are also concerns if customers will have access to the same services, due to the sudden firing of all Bench employees on December 27. Although many employees are being repatriated, at least some are being given contracts of only 30 days. three former employees told TechCrunch.
In response, Employer.com’s head of marketing, Matt Charney, told TechCrunch that “while the deal was done quickly,” it involved “several law firms” and Employer.com feels “very comfortable” with Bench’s reputation and reputation.
On Employer.com’s need for accounting records, Charney says Bench was acquired from its people, experience, and customers, who “will help us get the technology up and running very quickly.” Employer.com declined to comment directly on the 30-day contracts as of press time.
