Real question: were any of you aware of BetterUp before Prince Harry joined the company as Chief Impact Officer in 2021? I was not, but I’m sure other people were, especially people in the corporate world (BetterUp has a lot of corporate clients) and people who like life-coaching stuff. Personally, I think Harry’s main work as CIO was to give the company a global platform and global hype – soon after his position was announced, BetterUp;s valuation skyrocketed and the company massively expanded in North America and Europe. Their client roster includes multiple Fortune 500 companies and they went on a hiring spree. What happened next was predictable: they grew and expanded too fast and demand for the “product” stabilized rather than increased. As such, the company has laid off 16% of staff, and the Daily Beast made sure to talk to disgruntled former employees who blame Prince Harry.

Last valued at $4.7 billion, BetterUp is perhaps best known for its chief impact officer: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, who joined the corporate team in 2021. But even with a former royal among its ranks, the startup has struggled to maintain its footing. Last year, its vast roster of contractor coaches staged a revolt after the company modified their pay; the relationship remains fraught, several coaches told The Daily Beast. And this week, BetterUp laid off 16 percent of its staff, the culmination of what multiple workers described as months of turbulence, filled with outbursts from executives, mysterious staff departures, and declining morale.

“We’re all there because of the same bullsh-t story they keep telling us: ‘We’re mission driven, and the mission is going to change the world,’” a recent employee said. But inside the business, he added, “they treat us like sh-t.”

Under Robichaux’s leadership, BetterUp steadily expanded, and the pandemic accelerated its ascent. “I think you’ve got a company that was kind of at the right place at the right time with the rise of employee health and mental wellness coming out of COVID,” a former staffer said. “BetterUp just saw a tremendous amount of growth.” That trajectory has seemingly flattened, however. Two people familiar with BetterUp’s finances said that, during the last fiscal year, the company fell more than 20 percent short of its initial revenue targets. “They were counting on really big expansion numbers,” one of them said. In reality, “they were nowhere close.”

As BetterUp struggles to regain momentum, recently departed staffers are eager to assign blame. Three employees described Robichaux as capricious and prone to flying “off the handle,” and alleged that he insulates himself with loyalists known as FOAs, or “Friends of Alexi.”

Amid the tumult, Prince Harry has become an easy target for aggrieved staffers as well. One former employee, mirroring statements by several peers, assessed the Duke’s day-to-day responsibilities: “I’m going to go with zero things.” Other staffers were more charitable, suggesting that he has helped the company increase its reach in Europe and has lended his celebrity to help close major deals.

Indisputably, though, Prince Harry has become a fixture of tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic, creating the risk that BetterUp’s reputation will be linked with the drama. “At first I was like, ‘This is cool,’” a recent staffer said of the Duke’s corporate position, but increasingly “it’s been more of a distraction.”

“Every article mentions his role at BetterUp, then goes on to roast [him and Meghan Markle].” At some point, the employee argued, “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.”

[From The Daily Beast]

I’m not aware of Prince Harry taking the CIO position to work there 9-5, with the kind of daily responsibilities of a manager? It was always pretty clear that he took the position to help raise BetterUp’s profile and build the BetterUp brand because he legitimately believed in the company and wanted people to have access to the kind of coaching BetterUp provides. Of course, it also sounds like the business itself is being poorly run, and that the business model is somewhat flawed. Are you trying to actually support workers by giving them life-coaching and mental-health coaching, or are you just doing corporations’ bidding to squeeze as much as possible out of stressed, overworked and strung-out workers? What is the actual business model here, and is it aggressively staking out the “mental health coaching to Fortune 500 companies” franchise?

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, BetterUp’s Instagram and screencaps from BetterUp videos.