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Bolt Financial's loans come due

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Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#61

Post by actusual »

8ytecoder wrote: post #30
hotpotamus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did an office sub-leasing company (Wework) become a tech company that was supposed to change they way we live and work and create the first trillionaire, or whatever craziness they cooked up? From what I've seen, you find a charismatic dude with a good story that they probably even believe themselves, and another dude with a lot of money who wants to make that into even more money and you get them together. Then…

How did a home rental company or a media rental company become a tech company?

I'm confused about what you are trying to imply with your question.

Either you are making an argument for "Netflix/AirBnB are considered tech companies, so why not WeWork?". Or you are saying that Netflix/AirBnB aren't actually tech companies? Or are you implying that given enough time, WeWork would have become a tech company, despite its non-technical beginnings?

To compare AirBnB/Netflix to WeWork from a technology standpoint doesn't make any sense IMO.

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#62

Post by LatteLazy »

bastawhiz wrote: post #27

Maybe someone can clarify this for me, because I'm not sure I understand how this is possible: when the loans were announced, it was said that ~half of employees took the loan. But here, when 200 people were laid off, only a "single digit" number of employees that were let go had these loans. Even if that number is 9, that's like 4.5% of the laid off employees. How is that possible, except by Bolt explicitly not layi…

(Not) Owing the company money isn't a protected class. Also, presumably they laid off newer employees who were there for the loans?

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#63

Post by tempsy »

gkoberger wrote: post #49
tempsy wrote: post #46

This is why you should early exercise and file an 83B election whenever possible. Personally would avoid working at any startup that is in the awkward middle stage and would require you to shell out six figures just to exercise some questionable options especially now. Either join a very small company in the early stages where the valuation is still low or join a late stage or public company where you vest RSUs and d…

Sure, but this isn't realistic. Like you said, most people can't afford to exercise early. Even at a small company, most people don't have an extra $10k to gamble on a startup that may go nowhere. This is what Bolt was trying to solve. They did it the wrong way and hurt a lot of people, but they were trying to give people the opportunity to exercise early. The correct answer is a 10-year extended window. It's not per…

Define “most people”. $10k maybe a lot for a new grad but isn’t if you’ve worked even just a few years, especially in a high paying role in tech elsewhere.

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#64

Post by slcjordan »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7
bombcar wrote: post #3

> A Bolt spokesperson says that only a "single digit" number of laid-off employees took out the loans, despite more than 200 people losing their jobs, and that the aggregate amount was below $200,000. Moreover, she says the company plans to "work with" those individuals. If the amount was less than $200k, which is about the salary for a single employee these days, Bolt should just have annulled them entirely. The PR…

> Bolt should just have annulled them entirely These loans were made cashlessly as part of an early option exercise. That is steeped deeply in the internal revenue code. The forgiven principal would be at the very least income. Then the tax benefits from the early exercise would retroactively apply with penalties and interest. All of this assuming the IRS doesn't view the move as a heads I win (if the company does we…

Perhaps they plan to lay off a lot more of those employees in the next round and they want to get the process figured out early?

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#65

Post by berberous »

in_cahoots wrote: post #58
kaesar14 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand though, the layoffs affected a third of the company and eng was involved, how could 33% of the workforce be laid off with over half taking loans lead to single digit people in this situation? Numbers don’t add up imo.

If the company was growing rapidly, then maybe 33% of the workforce hadn’t vested yet?

Yeah, if they laid off new folks who started less than a year ago, none of those people would have vested. And in a rapidly growing company, the new hires can be a big portion of the company.

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#66

Post by xwdv »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #40
xwdv wrote: post #34

Imagine if getting fired and immediately owing a vast sum of money to your employer became a common practice at most companies. Might lead the way to higher levels of employee retention and may be seen as some kind of solution to people not doing their jobs or doing the bare minimum just for a paycheck, especially in undesirable but necessary jobs.

What you are describing is indentured servitude. And might I add that it is scary you even think this is close to a good idea.

I’m merely analyzing ideas. You’d probably turn blanch if you attended some of the product development meetings that happen behind closed doors at my employer.

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#67

Post by berberous »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #32
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where you take out loans get your salary - and you only actually make money if your company grows 10x in one year - and even in that case your benefit is slim - while the VCs and founders walk off with 85% of the gains Better: the VCs own stock with liquidation preference over the common stock they loaned you money to buy. If there's venture debt, they are also part of the estate that will be paid by those loans if…

Can the SEC pursue Bolt for this?

For what? This thread is full of misunderstandings. What is it you think Bolt did that the SEC should pursue them for? If it’s alleged they fraudulently hid risks, etc., it’s one thing, but so far all that seems to have occurred is they offered something that has pros/cons, disclosed risks, half wanted to take the risk for the pros, and in hindsight, perhaps it was a bad deal since valuations are tanking industry wide.

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#68

Post by bogomipz »

nr2x wrote: post #5
smol_pkg wrote: post #2

I remember interviewing with them about 2-3 years ago. Everyone seemed very enthused, but no one was able to clearly articulate for me what it was that made their product/offerings different. Glad I dodged that bullet

ceo gives off Jim Jones vibes.

Indeed. Someone linked this Forbes profile of him in a post yesterday:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2022/04/04/meet-t...

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#69

Post by csours »

My understanding is that stock grants to employees are no longer tax advantaged and that's one reason they went away. I don't have a deep understanding here, so if someone has a link to when this changed, I'd appreciate it.

Was this mechanism intended to get around this tax problem and at the same time help out the company?

Re: Bolt Financial's loans come due

#70

Post by dghlsakjg »

automatic6131 wrote: post #12
sydthrowaway wrote: post #10

I don't get the value of this company. How can fellow SWEs who learnt about kernels, networks and hardware (among other incredibly complicated works) get excited about ONE CLICK CHECKOUT? Maybe this is the JS boot camp effect.

I was just about to make this point. How does "one click checkout" become worth $11B? (massive) Capital misallocation, i'd imagine

Also isn’t this in somewhat direct competition with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and Stripe?

I would not want to bet against any one of those companies, let alone ALL of them.

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