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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. That aside, I fail to se

• deleted 4y ago
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• 88913527 4y ago
  The more businesses do this, the more the hiring market becomes lemons for unicorn-type businesses. Prospective employees will wonder if they're an overhire and if question their expectations of job security.
  • autokad 4y ago
    yeah. lots of companies already froze hiring (firing through attrition). Bolt doesn't make a trend but it gets my attention. edit: I saw on blind indicating its 15% of workforce
  • tschellenbach 4y ago
    Always ask about valuation and revenue. If the multiple is very high run the other way. A high multiple makes it less likely that your stock will be worth something, it also makes it more likely that the company will have to do layoffs in the future.
    • RexM 4y ago
      What’s considered high?
  • mkozlows 4y ago
    That's always been true, and not just for unicorns. Big companies let people go in bad times, too; and small companies just fold.
  • throwaway5752 4y ago
    The more businesses do this, the more people will be out there who will just be happy for a paycheck and health insurance. Prospective employees will start to be less picky and have fewer options, sadly. It's not going to be a good time for a lot of people.
  • firebaze 4y ago
    It's just about the opposite. Know and play your cards.
• Rafert 4y ago
  Don't forget they're getting sued by a large customer of theirs too, claiming their solution doesn't deliver what was promised: https://www.pymnts.com/legal/2022/authentic-brands-sues-bolt-claiming-150m-in-lost-sales/ https://www.pymnts.com/legal/2022/authentic-brands-sues-bolt...
  • nrmitchi 4y ago
    Oh I didn't, but I (shockingly) didn't think it was relevant here in comparison to the $355M dollars that they recently raised. Even an expensive lawsuit would be unlikely to put a big enough dent in that to materially affect their runway, and it's not like "losing more sales" can make their existing revenue much lower (again, in comparison to a $355M war chest).
  • icelancer 4y ago
    Bolt pitched us a ton (we do eight figures of revenue online using a WP-style checkout), we heard them out, did a small demo-type, and I spoke to a bunch of their customers... and we came to similar conclusions. It's overhyped "technology" that has very questionable marketing claims.
    • datavirtue 4y ago
      So, a silicon valley startup?
    • moneywoes 4y ago
      Has your team run into any issues with WP checkout?
      • icelancer 4y ago
        Of course. Everything sucks. But people keep buying stuff and we incrementally improve the experience, so it is what it is. Our marketing team wanted to move everything to Shopify, and then I asked them to do a cost-benefit analysis compared to the 0% we pay with our current setup (plus Stripe fees). When the estimate came back in the hundreds of thousands of dollars more per year, I took the opportunity to lecture them on rent-seeking and middleman evaporation of profits that these software startups/businesses capture silently from organizations who just don't do the math.
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• trhway 4y ago
  >Bolt apparently raised $355 million 4 months ago. If they are having cash problems, or are concerned about not having enough runway well, may be there is a connection : "Earlier this month, Bolt announced it was purchasing crypto startup Wyre Payments in a deal worth reportedly worth roughly $1.5 billion."
  • nrmitchi 4y ago
    I was under the impression that that acquisition (along with their previous ones) was all stock, but apparently it was a mix. In hindsight, that seems like a poor decision.
• iepathos 4y ago
  Yes, this. Thank you for pointing out the scapegoating.
• lr4444lr 4y ago
  Even if this is true, we're looking at a tight money policy and a bear market in tech broadly with no end in sight. Pre-profit companies need to protect their hides, and I expect to see such reflected in layoffs and attrition.
  • nathanaldensr 4y ago
    "Pre-profit companies" LOL. So that's what they're calling them nowadays? Talk about euphemisms...
    • rvnx 4y ago
      Pre-business plan
    • ushakov 4y ago
      Twitter still has that status!
    • peripitea 4y ago
      Why is it a euphemism? Delaying profits as a primary objective has been a common startup strategy for decades.
      • myth2018 4y ago
        Delaying profits is a perfectly valid strategy, but that implies intent. I guess however most of these modern startups are having no profits because they aren't managing to make them, and not as part of a bigger strategy.
        • ethbr0 4y ago
          Exactly. Delaying profits means having a knob in your cash allocation (usually sales) that you can turn down and become profitable. If you turn it down and still can't fund the company... you weren't delaying profits.
• hintymad 4y ago
  For a small company, "over hiring" is always a sign of incompetency of the management. Think about the good companies in the early days. They can do so much with so few people, like one person evolving zookeeper into a beast to handle FB's scale, or two people having implemented LevelDB in a matter of months, or one person figuring out a way to increase the density of co-lo rack by 10 times.
  • vira28 4y ago
    > or one person figured out a way to increase the density of co-lo rack by 10 times. Curious, whom are you referring? Sorry for my ignorance.
    • hintymad 4y ago
      It's documented in the book Google Plex. Google hired a neurosurgeon as their first infrastructure engineer. His fast task was to increase the rack density to save company money. The dude figure out how to pack 10x more processing power into the same size, resulting in overheating of the colo space (or overloading the power line? I can't remember exactly). The colo company had to tear down an entire wall and used a 18-wheeler modified mobile air conditioner. I probably got some details wrong as it's been years since I read the book, but you get the spirit.
    • singron 4y ago
      Idk about this one, and 10x sounds past physical limits unless their original footprint was ridiculous, but I heard a story at Google that sounded kind of like this. I think there was some colo in the day that charged only by sqft and gave away the electricity assuming customers would have reasonable densities. Somehow Google crammed a completely unreasonable density of machines into the colo. I would guess this was corkboard days. When the contract was renewed, the colo was sure to change the terms.
  • bko 4y ago
    Reminded me of this: > Coinbase ended Q1 with 4,948 full-time employees, up 33% versus the fourth quarter of 2021. Over the past twelve months, Coinbase also said in its first-quarter report that the company added over 3,200 net new employees. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/19/coinbase-outlines-cost-cutting-measures-employee-grants-amid-weak-results-and-crypto-rout-report/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/19/coinbase-outlin...
• bko 4y ago
  Why do you need an excuse to perform layoffs? Sometimes companies over-hire or hire the wrong people. Other times they scale back certain efforts and are left with people that don't fit into the organization anymore. I feel sorry for the people, but layoffs are part of a normal process and with economic downturn we're facing, that will almost certainly impact their lines of credit and fundraising. So the prudent action would be to lay people off.
  • stanleydrew 4y ago
    You don't need an excuse, but if you have one then management can save face. The theory would be it's a lot harder to hire people in the future if everyone thinks you're bad at management, and much easier if everyone just thinks you got unlucky with market timing.
    • kodah 4y ago
      Came here to say this, it's one of the first things I investigate about a company. If the company does habitual layoffs or has done rather large ones in the past five years, I'll move on 90% of the time.
      • bko 4y ago
        I disagree. I think it's healthy and more humane than firing people for cause. Hiring is hard and you mess up, or people grow out of their role. Everyone knows people at work that are incompetent. It's tough to get rid of them because they may not be grossly incompetent or malicious, but just not up to standard. The layoffs I've seen usually let people go that are not effective and frankly not very happy. They get a severance, can collect unemployment and usually land on their feet. It's healthier than an organization that essentially hires for life
        • vkou 4y ago
          You can't fire someone for cause just because your money losing business ran out of money. Firing for cause is when the employee screwed up, not when the CEO did.
• IMTDb 4y ago
  Both "we overhired" and "it's because of the market" can be true at the same time. You get a $335 million in Feb with a common understanding with current investors that you are going to raise $ XXX in roughly 24 month, depending on results compared to an agreed upon business plan. You thus plan for a roughly 24 month runway. 4 month later (now) you get a call from your investors that your planned next series is going to be significantly lower/harder. You now need to stretch your 24 month runway to at least 36 month. SO you have to adjust plans. They didn't overhire compared to the initial plan, but overhired compared to the current situation, where basically all rounds are 50% lower and many are just not happening at all. The ycombinator downturn letter (https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/yc-advises-founders-to-plan-for-the-worst/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/yc-advises-founders-to-pla...) just says something like this: > The safe move is to plan for the worst. If the current situation is as bad as the last two economic downturns, the best way to prepare is to cut costs and extend your runway within the next 30 days. Your goal should be to get to Default Alive. That sounds exactly like what Bolt is doing.
  • nrmitchi 4y ago
    > They didn't overhire compared to the initial plan... Frankly I don't care what their plan was if they "planned" to spend ~350M in 2 years while making 10-40M in annual revenue while getting sued by their largest customer. That is an absolutely insane level of spending. Just because you had a plan to do some unsustainable and irresponsible crap doesn't absolve you of responsibility when it turns out to be unsustainable and irresponsible. > The ycombinator downturn letter ... You really think that Bolt, and Bolt's ex-CEO, saw a letter from YC, and thought "Oh ya, let's definitely doing what YC said. YC definitely knows what they're talking about. I personally trust all of their decisions and statements."?
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • IMTDb 4y ago
      > You really think that Bolt, and Bolt's ex-CEO, saw a letter from YC No, but I strongly suspect that both YC and Bolt CEO reached the same conclusion: "what was true few month ago isn't anymore, so we need to buckle, focus a bit less on growth-at-all-cost and a bit more on extend-the-runway"
• idealmedtech 4y ago
  Do we know the terms of this raise? I wouldn't be surprised if it's released in tranches based on KPIs.
• tempsy 4y ago
  they probably aren’t burning cash quite as quickly as Fast but product simply doesn’t seem that interesting or differentiated to me at all. and similarly to Fast can’t recall a single merchant I’ve shopped from that actually uses it. and with such a public brawl with their largest merchant/customer I don’t see how that really inspires much confidence in any other medium or large merchant that were even remotely considering using them. the risk of it not working very well seems far too high to switch to it if whatever a merchant is currently using is far from broken.
  • ethbr0 4y ago
    Underappreciated as to second order effects. If I'm the buyer of a B2B product, am I going to start looking at startup competitors and asking "Will they be around in X months? Or should I just buy from MAMAA, who I know will survive?"
• jimmytucson 4y ago
  This says it’s about 240 employees: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2022/05/25/checkout-startup-bolt-lays-off-more-than-200-people-or-at-least-25-of-its-staff/?sh=3b0185672201 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2022/05/25/checkout-...
• whoisjuan 4y ago
  I hope this doesn’t sound pedantic but it’s “affected”, not “effected”. It’s an error I see a lot and it’s easy to fix if you just remember that “affect” means “to impact”. So if what you’re trying to say someone or something was impacted by something else, you say “affected”. Also as a general rule of thumb “effected” while grammatically correct is rarely ever used in colloquial talk in the context of what it means which is executed or produced. So people almost always mean “affected” when they make this mistake.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
    They're actually pretty close and confusing: Affect is the influence or impact on something. Effect is the result of the influence or impact on something. The simplest way to think about it is that 'affect' is a verb and 'effect' is a noun, but they refer to essentially the same thing (you could define 'affect' as 'to have an effect on' something). But even that is confused by things like the verb phrase 'effect change'. Which word you use might actually just come down to which way you're talking about something, but broadly affect is the action and effect is the result.