The founder of CyclingTips.com has expressed his disappointment over recent developments at the site, after many staff had been let go or had resigned over several weeks. Wade Wallace said while many talented people worked at the sites owned by the CyclingTips parent company, Outside Inc, and he wished them well, he was concerned at what he was seeing.
"Like everyone else, I watched in awe from afar seeing person after person resign from CT (CyclingTips) after the lay-offs. To my knowledge, there are only a couple of employees left in the business now," he said.
Writing in a SubStack message to his followers, he added: "It pains me to see what has become of CyclingTips. The team we so carefully and thoughtfully put together is just a shadow of itself now and the new owners have never understood (nor have they asked) what CT's mission was, what made us different, and why we all get out of bed each morning.
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"On one hand I’m proud of how I deeply embedded those values are into CT’s culture, but when so many key people are taken out at once I have very little reason to believe it will continue."
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However, there were "still hundreds of good and talented people working at Pinkbike, Velonews, Outside Online" - all owned by Outside Inc - and he wanted to see them succeed.
Wallace founded CyclingTips, now in its fifteenth year, before entering into a "partnership" with BikeExchange in 2015. Four years later, in 2019, BikeExchange sold the site to PinkBike, though Wallace remained on as general manager. However, in June 2021 Pinkbike and Cycling Tips were bought by Outside Inc. Wallace then left the organisation in August of this year.
News of the job losses at CyclingTips, and its sister publication VeloNews, emerged last month after Boulder-based Outside Inc said the advertising market in particular was proving challenging. It added initial efforts to cut costs, which did not involve job losses, had not worked and so staffing across its operations had to be reduced.
Some of those who confirmed last month they had been let go by CyclingTips included managing editor Matt de Neef, editor in chief and podcast host Caley Fretz, tech editor Dave Rome and news editor Dane Cash. Fretz, Cash and Rome have since teamed up to launch a new podcast, The Redundant Placeholders. In recent days other CyclingTips journalists - including Iain Treloar, José Been, Jonny Long and Kit Nicholson - either resigned or were let go.
