Czech investor Tomáš Pačinda: why AI layoffs are often inevitable

Kaya VC partner Tomáš Pačinda explained in an interview why the mass layoffs that companies increasingly blame on the rollout of artificial intelligence are, in fact, a healthy and often unavoidable step for staying competitive.

Kaya VC is one of the oldest players on the Czech venture scene alongside Credo Ventures: the fund has been backing promising entrepreneurs and startups for more than fifteen years. Its list of successful exits includes Slevomat, Dáme jídlo and Twisto, and its current portfolio holds two billion-dollar “unicorns” — the Czech company Rohlík and the Polish company Docplanner. The fund is now investing out of its fifth vehicle, worth almost two billion crowns, and Pačinda himself has worked at Kaya VC since 2015, watching the tech industry evolve from the inside.

According to the 42-year-old investor, the best companies in the fund's portfolio reach 500,000 to a million dollars in revenue per employee. Not every company has to hit that bar, he notes, but it's important to show startup founders what's possible in principle, in order to shift their thinking away from the usual status quo.

The conversation was prompted by layoffs affecting a fifth of the team at the Polish startup Booksy, also part of Kaya VC's portfolio. Pačinda explains that if a company wants to stay competitive, it has to look for every opportunity to boost productivity using AI. This applies especially to customer support, product teams and developers.

The investor describes two approaches: either gradually raise the efficiency of an existing team by a certain percentage, or act radically and rebuild the team from scratch if the old structure is too slow and difficult to adapt. According to him, building complex products today requires far fewer people, while the cost of computing power keeps falling.

At the same time, Pačinda acknowledges the flip side: if employees become several times more productive thanks to AI, a team of the same size can create far more value — in which case layoffs make no sense. A lot depends on the type of product: in infrastructure projects tied to the growing number of AI agents, companies instead have to expand their headcount to keep up with new market demands.

The investor stresses that the world of tech professionals is now sharply splitting in two: some have been given “new wings” by artificial intelligence, while others find themselves locked in a constant struggle with the technology.