311–320 of 564 posts
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~$20M in revenue from ~50 employees, equating to $400k in revenue/employee is extremely impressive for an early stage company. What company is that?
Does it matter if that revenue is unprofitable and there is not a real path to profitability?
> This is one of the hardest messages I’ve ever had to send. 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.
I'd say that depends on the audience. If you were still working at Bolt, for instance, and the CEO did not indeed feel anything, you'd probably be a little spooked that they seem like a sociopath. At the same time, it is such a copy-paste statement that it's unlikely to elicit much confidence in its veracity, but still, the absence of it would not be taken well I'd imagine.
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"Don't spend real money on fake money." Good advice I got from colleagues at a 2000 era company who took out loans to buy their options and cover the taxes when the stock was at $50/share and then watched it drop to <$1/share while they were in a lockout window. I worked with people who had 6 figure loans they owed on for worthless stock. Took years for the stock to recover.
Why would they have taken out a loan to buy their options? If the options are vested you can just sell them and pocket the difference between your strike price and the buy offer. If the options weren't vested you can't buy them anyway and you would still have the same strike price when they did vest.
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. I guess this is the beginning of the tech washout. clings to large tech company job EDIT: 33% layoff today
40M in revenue for the year?! Jesus, my startup is making about half that with a good sales pipeline for this year and we are 55 employees total. We might hire additional handful this year but that's it. How do you even onboard when you double your workforce every few months?
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1) "Multiple rounds" is basically the worst possible way to do layoffs. 2) Based on their recent fundraise (and assuming that they had 0 dollars at that point), that's basically a burn rate of 25-30M/m. I'm not sure I can event comprehend what that company could be spending that much money on.
Even a single round is bad because it will cause some of your most hire-able people to look and then likely leave. When a second round comes too close to the first then everybody starts looking hard and the people that stick around are the ones nobody else wants. It would be cheaper to just close the doors.
When a second round breaks that trust though, all bets are off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Don't spend real money on fake money." Good advice I got from colleagues at a 2000 era company who took out loans to buy their options and cover the taxes when the stock was at $50/share and then watched it drop to <$1/share while they were in a lockout window. I worked with people who had 6 figure loans they owed on for worthless stock. Took years for the stock to recover.
Why would they have taken out a loan to buy their options? If the options are vested you can just sell them and pocket the difference between your strike price and the buy offer. If the options weren't vested you can't buy them anyway and you would still have the same strike price when they did vest.
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Wow. After reading this I clicked on CEO Ryan Breslow's Twitter profile pic which is of him barefoot, wearing a psychedelic hoodie and sitting in a yoga position with his palms upturned. Between this loan idea, the self-reference to the 4 day work week and the yogi pose, it's like something straight out of HBO's "Silicon Valley."
lol but that's like most ppl in tech tbh
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I heard they had 900 employees. It's just a checkout page that plugs into your payment processor. I don't get why they need so many people. Most complicated thing they are probably doing is tokenizing the credit card themselves so the card info is portable across merchants with different processor.
I say the same about how Uber has thousands of engineers working on an app with 6 screens.
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 mar…
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From user throwaabolt 's profile page: "troll account. didn't actually get laid off from bold. curious to see how long it takes HN to realize this."
@dang can we see if this is true, unsure if we record history. Either anon_123g987 or throwaabolt is lying here. throwaabolt's profile account is now: "ex-employee of bolt. ready to tackle new challenges, in particular in the fintech or insurtech areas." I don't know what to believe. throwaabolt's futher messages: "thank you. can my wife's boyfriend contact you too? he is part of the layoff as well."