CEO insists on returning to ‘start-up’ mode so he fires his HR team, happily reports all his problems ‘disappeared’

Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow just went radically techbro in a way that made me facepalm so hard, I gave myself a headache. After all, the boss of the checkout-focused company decided to fire his entire Human Resources team. According to The Sun, he claims that this drastic step was necessary because the department was creating problems that simply did not exist. 

At an event hosted by Fortune, he noted that while HR professionals might provide important insights for larger, stable companies, they were the wrong fit for his current situation. Breslow stated, “We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist.” He followed that up by saying, “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.” I would like you to note that Breslow wanted to strip down from thousands of employees to “start-up mode.”

Bolt, which was founded in 2014 to democratise commerce, was valued at $11 billion back in 2022, However, People Matters noted that number has collapsed significantly, dropping to around $300 million by 2024, forcing Bolt to undergo several rounds of restructuring. Breslow, who stepped down as CEO in 2022, returned to the company last year to try and turn things around. He now describes the current state of the business as operating in “wartime.”

The problem is that, like all start-ups, he is only looking at the symptom

The HR department has now been replaced by a smaller, more streamlined “people operation team.” The goal of this new group is to support employees and handle training, but with a much sharper focus on execution. 

Breslow has been vocal about his desire to change the workplace culture, which he felt had become bogged down by unnecessary friction. He added, “We need a group of people who are very oriented around getting things done, and there is just a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot.”

The changes did not stop at the HR department. Breslow has been actively dismantling policies that were staples of the company during its growth phase. This included removing things like four-day workweeks and unlimited paid time off. He believes these perks contributed to a culture of entitlement. 

He said, “There’s a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company, and people who felt empowered, felt entitled — but weren’t actually working hard.” He continued, “And this is the number one thing that I had to battle.”

For Breslow, the solution was straightforward, even if it was harsh. He explained, “Ultimately, most of those people just had to be let go.” 

He believes that these employees were accustomed to a luxury that the company could no longer afford. “They had gotten used to working at a company where they didn’t have to get their hands dirty, and could spend a lot of money, and we just didn’t have that money to spend anymore, and we didn’t have that luxury.”

The company has also been leaning into automation, noting that their latest round of cuts, which affected fewer than 40 people, was largely driven by AI. Bolt now operates with a significantly smaller workforce of roughly 100 employees. 

Breslow claims that this leaner team is much more responsive to customer needs. He even mentioned that customers have told the company they are receiving the best attention they have seen in years. 

Here is where it’s interesting: Breslow stated that this smaller workforce is mostly junior employees who he believes are working harder. Which means, yes, he laid off the majority of the leadership.

While the company continues to push its SuperApp, which handles everything from cryptocurrency trading to rewards, the focus remains on surviving this transition period. Until then, I would love to hear an employee’s perspective. That is how we would get the tea, like how a Starbucks employee spilled secrets, or a Washington Post journalist showed how Bezos was changing the paper for Trump.