Bolt fintech founder Ryan Breslow is at the center of a scandal again. Speaking at the Workforce Innovation Summit, he said that completely laying off the HR team helped the company get rid of «unnecessary problems,» and that most Bolt employees «just weren’t working hard enough.»
Bolt fintech founder Ryan Breslow is at the center of a scandal again. Speaking at the Workforce Innovation Summit, he said that completely laying off the HR team helped the company get rid of «unnecessary problems,» and that most Bolt employees «just weren’t working hard enough.»
According to Breslow, quoted by peoplematters.in, the company had an HR department that «created problems that didn’t exist.» After it was eliminated, these problems supposedly disappeared.
Instead of classic HR, Bolt has retained a compact people operations team that supports employees and trains them. Breslow himself believes that traditional HR is a structure for large, stable corporations, not for a startup trying to survive after a downturn.
At the same time, the CEO harshly criticized the culture within the company. He said that years of rapid growth at Bolt had created a «sense of entitlement,» and many employees «weren’t working hard enough.»
After returning as CEO in 2025, Breslow gave employees 60 days to adapt to the new «startup mode.» According to him, «99%» failed. As a result, the company effectively rebuilt almost the entire leadership team.
Bolt was founded in 2014 as a fintech service for online payments. During the boom in the venture capital market, the company grew rapidly, hiring thousands of people and reaching a valuation of $ 11 billion in 2022. But after Breslow left the CEO position, things took a sharp turn for the worse. The company went through waves of layoffs, funding problems and a valuation drop of almost 97%.
Bolt now employs around 100 people. In comparison, in its peak years, it had thousands of people.
Breslow calls the current phase «wartime mode.» The company has already abandoned the four-day workweek and unlimited PTO. Instead, it’s focusing on speed, execution, and a «gritty culture,» a tougher work environment.
Bolt’s story seems radical even for the American tech market. After a wave of mass layoffs in Big Tech, many companies have begun to reconsider the role of middle management, HR functions, and corporate benefits. Some founders openly talk about returning to a «hardcore startup culture» after years of «too comfortable» work.
