Rumors going around on blind (posted by bolt employees) that over the course of a few rounds of layoffs it will be 30-50% of the total workforce. A lot of the initial layoff are software engineers. Apparently they only have 12-18 months of runway, and need to effectively double that. Current revenue is 40M.<p>I guess this is the beginning of the tech washout. <i>clings to large tech company job</i><p>EDIT: 33% layoff today
Bolt Financial, the finops company, not Bolt the car sharing service which seems to be doing fine:<p>> In January 2022, Bolt raised €628 million from investors led by Sequoia Capital and Fidelity Management and Research Co, taking the company's valuation to €7.4 billion
I called it ages ago -- this company is an utter train wreck. I am honestly ashamed of the entire industry for birthing and fostering this basically fraudulent company. Its mistakes and lies are compounding on themselves, creating awful outcomes for its employees:<p>- Company almost certainly juiced its usage numbers, potentially by buying users to inflate its customers revenues, so it could use those numbers to convince new customers<p>- Used a single deal with a large company (Forever 21) to sell VCs on the vision, while under the hood that deal was clearly failing<p>- ex CEO picked twitter fights constantly, to the point of calling into question whether he was even capable of focusing on execution<p>- Biggest competitor (Fast) exploded even before the market crash.<p>- Offered employees a four day work week while claiming rapid exponential growth<p>- Offered employees PERSONALLY guaranteed loans to help them exercise the options<p>- Raised at $11B valuation with 100x forward revenue multiples.<p>- Cash raised is currently 6-8x revenue multiple, meaning valuation over next 12m makes employee options worthless<p>- I've never seen the technology used on any website, and I am a frequent online shopper.<p>Real talk, is this fin-tech's latest Theranos?
I was in the middle of an interview loop with Bolt mid-Apr, they canceled my onsite so they could (supposedly) prioritize onboarding people they'd already hired. Dodged a bullet there. Also did calls with Coinbase, Uber, and Twitter, who all now have hiring freezes.<p>Boggles my mind how companies flip on a dime between "hire as fast as possible" and "the sky is falling, we're laying people off." In the case of Bolt and Twitter, there were material changes (lawsuit from major customer, Elon Musk) but the others are just scared about the economy.
With YC, Craft, and Sequoia all urging their portfolio companies to operate at a < 2x burn multiple, it would make sense to see these growth stage companies start to panic.<p>When you’re small, and have revenue, it might only take a handful of layoffs to get to “default alive” as a startup. But once you go beyond a series A and start dumping gasoline on every part of your business to scale faster, the risk starts to grow exponentially. These companies with hundreds of employees are insanely inefficient, but that’s the game. You run hot until you get above everyone else and then you start to figure out how to actually make money.<p>During a recession that type of growth probably doesn’t work. We might still see a few companies blitz scale, but if the capital is risk off there’s unlikely to an abundance of these types of companies.<p>In a way it’ll be an end of an era. Probably for the better, but the run was great while it lasted (depending on how you view great). I think any startup caught in the middle right now needs to effectively assume they’re dead unless they get to operational break even with their current runway.
> This is one of the hardest messages I’ve ever had to send.<p>Layoffs are something of a fact of life but, seriously, executives need to stop saying things like this when they announce them. Nobody gives a damn how company leaders feel in these situations, least of all the people receiving the message - nor should they.
One of the things that I would consider before joining any startups is just how good sane (or humane or whatever appropriate word) the founders are. Don't go behind all the PRs. Just try to find whether the people who founded are actually good people. What are their ethics. All these are subjective qualities so it's difficult to weigh but that's where the money is.<p>edited (I understand I might not have described what I mean clearly).
I tried to order a Solo Stove last fall. I placed the order, they accepted it, everything seemed like a normal e-commerce experience. <i>Two days</i> later, I received an email saying my order had been canceled for suspected fraud. I've never had that happen before, and it hasn't happened since. My experience is obviously anecdotal but their fraud detection routine clearly had major flaws.<p>With news of layoffs at Bolt, I wonder how many partners lost sales like mine.
After reading last week's leaked YC letter to founders, I was suspecting that this would be a shockwave staggering the startup scene.<p>I'm not working at Bolt, but this week our (not large) company has announced a 20% layoff and essentially made it clear that we shouldn't count on any investment funds in the foreseeable future.<p>Hard times with all these investment sources drying up, but so far this crisis is localized to the tech world, unlike the dotcom bubble was. I sincerely hope that it will stay this way.
Generous severance is the ethical test of a CEO during a layoff. It softens the blow of a layoff immeasurably to provide 4-6 months of severance.<p>If a CEO won't do it, the remaining employees should question the CEOs ethics, and ask themselves how they will be treated in the future. And if the business literally can't afford to do it (which is rare), then everyone should question the CEO's competence.<p>As customers, we should all do our best to avoid and boycott companies that do layoffs without providing generous severance. Because who wants to do business with an unethical or incompetent company.<p>If anyone knows what severance Bolt is paying, let us know.
First of all, there is no mention of what percentage of their workforce is being directly effected by this. I suspect it is not small.<p>That aside, I fail to see this as anything other than this "company" taking advantage of the current environment to execute layoffs in a way that lets them blame "the market" rather than their own short-comings. We saw this in March 2020 as well. They overhired for the hype, and now are taking advantage of any excuse that isn't "ya we hired way to many people so that we could say we are bigger than Fast".<p>Bolt apparently raised $355 million 4 months ago. If they are having cash problems, or are concerned about not having enough runway, I don't believe for a second that any magnitude of layoffs will help them.
Bolt laid off around a third of their workforce accord to The New York Times, from just over 900 employees to around 660 as counted by active Slack users internally.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/business/bolt-layoffs.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/business/bolt-layoffs.htm...</a>
I'm a bit naive on this space so forgive if this is an ignorant question;<p>Can anyone explain how any of these companies (Bolt, Fast, 1o) are doing anything different than "checkout with paypal"? What exactly is wrong with paypal that would make a merchant want to use Bolt instead?
> I know this will be difficult for us all, so I want to provide clarity on what will happen next. For those directly impacted in the US and Canada, our goal is to inform you within the next 30 minutes when you will receive a calendar invite for an individual or small sub-team “Bolt Restructuring” meeting. For those of you who are staying on the Bolt team, later this morning you will receive an invite to a Town Hall at 1pm PST. If you work outside of the US and Canada, we will provide further clarity based on the local laws and regulations over the next few weeks.<p>I hate the use of things like "directly impacted" - feels like such corporate speak to try to lessen the blow. Just be straight about things. "Those who are being laid off" - don't hide behind words.
So is this the competitor to Fast, which also had a big round of layoffs recently?
(edit: ah yes I remember now it was a complete shutdown)<p>My current understanding is that both of these businesses were premised on the end of Amazon’s one-click checkout patent. Is this proving that to be a faulty premise?
The wording of these always makes my skin crawl. Just say what's happening and what led to this decision. Numbers, not handwaivey rhetoric like "we need to focus".
The funny thing about recessions, and macroeconomics as a whole; much of the time, we eat the food we cook. If there is an upcoming recession, the most likely root cause is that a bunch of people believed there will be an upcoming recession.
This kind of message feels more authentic to me if you put the big news in the first sentence, then cover logistics, then add any context you want. Seems better than making people wade through a lot of stuff about securing financial position, market conditions, etc etc to learn if they are losing their job.
Why do CEOs feel compelled to say “this is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.” Hoping a CEO can chime in here… is the decision really that hard? It seems like they are just trying to not seem like a dick, when we all know they’re just looking out for their own best interests (not saying this is wrong, but not saying this is right either). Just genuinely curious how much “fluff” that statement contains.
I'm really tired of this "this is one of the hardest messages" cold open.
You have thrown innocent people under the bus because you don't know how to balance a budget and mitigate risk. One thing none of these messages have ever done as far as I'm aware is take responsibility for their actions.
Another case of deliberate overhiring to deprive competition of talent and generate buzz, then shedding the excess when world/market events give you some cover. Combined with a healthy dash of actual failure, of course
Their careers page weirdly shows them still 'hiring' for lots of tech and non-tech roles <a href="https://www.bolt.com/careers" rel="nofollow">https://www.bolt.com/careers</a>
The best thing they could do at this point is give employees and investors their remaining cash. They won't, but I bet they'll wish they did.
There are stories across the industry like this. "My first day at facebook I was laid off." etc.<p>Perhaps the feds inducing a hiring freeze is _working as designed_
:<p><a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-corporate-america-to-have-a-hiring-freeze-morning-brief-100055174.html" rel="nofollow">https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-corporate-a...</a>
More interesting details at <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/25/bolt-lays-off-staff-as-payments-startup-fights-lawsuit-from-biggest-customer/" rel="nofollow">https://nypost.com/2022/05/25/bolt-lays-off-staff-as-payment...</a>
I love this justification:<p>> To laser focus on our core business and products, we will be prioritizing our roadmap and making several structural changes. Unfortunately, this includes reducing the size of our workforce and parting ways with some incredibly talented people on our team as of today.
“…as we continue on our journey to decentralize and democratize commerce. ”<p>There’s some special irony in this statement as they attempt to achieve the holy grail network effect of being “the sole” 1-click checkout option!
The problem is that even if they run break even, all the shareholders and employees other than the last round of funding is still below water. They need to 10x to be somewhat fundable again, not at all easy to do.
"Our mission is simple: Level the playing field and democratize the commerce experience."<p>I wish I could short all startups that use the term 'democratize' for any reason.
Anyone knows how is 1o doing (another competitor of fast and bolt)?<p><a href="https://www.1o.io/" rel="nofollow">https://www.1o.io/</a>
I am one of those let go today. It's especially bad, because they seem to have messed up the invite templates. I received one to the Town Hall meeting, even before Majus letter was published, only to get the invitation cancelled and receive and invitation to "Bolt Restructuring". What an emotional rollercoaster. Extremely anxious about the future, as this is my first time being laid off, especially in the current market.<p>EDIT: I am doubly screwed because I signed up for the employee stock option loan program... and I'm not sure what the bank will want from me now that the stock price has tanked.
Can you share more about the stock option loan program? If it is what it sounds like, that program is unconscionable insanity and whoever is encouraging employees to engage with it is setting employees up for a world of hurt.
Is it really due to market?<p>A the same time in the same market we have several Transportation players investing in creating Hydrogen generation infrastructure for hydrogen based fuel cell EV cars and trucks.<p>Even Indiana gets a hydrogen gen plant for Trucking.
it should not be a surprise that hypergrowth companies face difficulties in current conditions.<p>the layoffs will continue and hopefully contribute to a normalization of dev salaries.<p>i find the crazy salaries that devs received in the last years obscene.<p>edit: kids, stop down voting without comments. i have met too many arrogant software engineers, data scientists in the last few companies I've worked at. many entitled juniors, too many arrogant seniors. it changed my view of this field