You Flooz, you lose.
Whoopi knows it. Now half the staff does too.
Alley-based online currency company Flooz.com fired half of its staff yesterday. Thirty-five of the 70 staff were let go as part of the company’s bid to keep its head above water.
Yesterday, Flooz CEO Robert Levitan blamed “the current downturn in the economy” for Flooz.com being “forced to take the painful step of laying off 35 of our valued colleagues.”
Spokes-celeb Whoopi Goldberg’s stake in the private company is believed to be worthless.
Flooz officials would not reveal the “Hollywood Squares” linchpin’s compensation. But when she signed on with the company in October 1999, founder and CEO Robert Levitan said she was given “more than 100,000” shares, plus cash and Flooz dollars.
Putting a brave face on it he added “We continue to have confidence in the viability of our business model . . . [and] . . . we’re going to continue to run the business and provide value.”
Back in the Internet go-go days, Levitan said, “Whoopi said to me on the set when we were shooting, ‘Robert, you’ve got to make me rich.’ So I said, ‘But Whoopi you’re already rich,’ and she said ‘No, Robert – really rich.'”
Levitan was also a co-founder of Alley women’s site iVillage, which yesterday was given 30 days by the SEC to get its share price over $1 or face de-listing.