Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bolt announces layoffs

bolt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 564 posts

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#411

Post by kadoban »

koreth1 wrote: post #398
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that a central 1-click checkout provider will store your payment information, shipping address, and other details after the first time you use a site with their checkout. The next time you checkout on any website that uses the same 1-click checkout provider, they already have your information for “1-click” checkout. The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winn…

> The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winner-take-all market where every shop wants to use the 1-click provider with the largest customer base. Not saying you're wrong about that being the thesis, but the thesis makes no sense to me. It assumes that consumers are selecting shopping sites based on which payment service the sites use rather than on, say, price or select…

I've definitely bailed on purchases before due to the purchase flow being too annoying, and either found another site or gave up.

Usually this is due to having to type in all my data just to figure out what shipping options are, but I'm quite sure every step you make people do to check out results in x% fewer sales.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#412

Post by jjeaff »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #349
abraxas wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I worked at a startup and the CEO was obsessed with hiring at all cost. We, engineers, were all wondering what the hell these new hires were supposed to do. We did not need them. Then they explained it to me. They needed to show growth through hiring in order to raise money. I mean, I couldn’t even blame them, if that’s a criteria for VC to hand you a check, well you gotta do what you gotta do. Needless to say this s…

My experience is that current investors want you to hire tons of people to shorten your runway so they can force you into another round where they can buy more shares and dilute the founders more.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#413

Post by rmk »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #364
version_five wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen companies with less revenue and a bigger workforce growing at that rate. They call it blitz-scaling, and I don't know if it's actually ever worked, where I saw it first hand it was basically just setting a pile of money on fire.

In a way it seems like SWE jobs in tech hubs are subsidized by VCs. We can see it as some huge redistribution of wealth.

With an important caveat. The SWEs in the Bay Area are just conduits for obscene sums of money flowing from VCs to real-estate agents, landlords and homeowners. Plus car dealerships, perhaps (every other car is a Tesla or a higher-end BMW/Mercedes model in the Bay Area).

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#415

Post by twblalock »

koreth1 wrote: post #398
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that a central 1-click checkout provider will store your payment information, shipping address, and other details after the first time you use a site with their checkout. The next time you checkout on any website that uses the same 1-click checkout provider, they already have your information for “1-click” checkout. The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winn…

> The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winner-take-all market where every shop wants to use the 1-click provider with the largest customer base. Not saying you're wrong about that being the thesis, but the thesis makes no sense to me. It assumes that consumers are selecting shopping sites based on which payment service the sites use rather than on, say, price or select…

> It assumes that consumers are selecting shopping sites based on which payment service the sites use rather than on, say, price or selection.

If I'm shopping for something and multiple sites offer it for the same price, which happens pretty often for many categories of products, I prefer the vendor with the easiest checkout experience and/or the fastest shipping.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#416

Post by deanCommie »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #392
sparrc wrote: post #368

I'm a bit naive on this space so forgive if this is an ignorant question; Can anyone explain how any of these companies (Bolt, Fast, 1o) are doing anything different than "checkout with paypal"? What exactly is wrong with paypal that would make a merchant want to use Bolt instead?

The idea is that a central 1-click checkout provider will store your payment information, shipping address, and other details after the first time you use a site with their checkout. The next time you checkout on any website that uses the same 1-click checkout provider, they already have your information for “1-click” checkout. The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winn…

> I kind of suspect few people actually want 1-click checkout to begin with.

This.

I trust Amazon almost implicitly. I know that they have all my information, and that I use the same shipping and payment method every single time. There should be no reason for 1-click checkout to not work perfectly every time.

And even there, I don't use it. I dunno. Is it really that much more effort to look at one more screen and get the feeling of security that the item is going to the right place and will get there on a day that makes sense?

If Amazon can't get me to use 1-click, No other merchant/retailer has any hope whatsoever.

It works for digital items (iTunes, Kindle) because the delivery is "to me, in the UX i'm using right now", not a physical item that has to come to an address.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#417

Post by rmk »

nrmitchi wrote: post #56
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #49

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

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.

In my experience, layoffs almost always happen in waves. The first layoff is usually when nonperformers and people who are already on managers' hit lists (people who are hard to fire only for legal reasons) are jettisoned. Later rounds start eating into actually valuable employees. In the interim, many experienced people read between the lines and make for the exits, further depleting the ranks and leaving behind folks who can not or will not look for opportunities elsewhere.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#418

Post by moneywoes »

icelancer wrote: post #232
Rafert wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

Has your team run into any issues with WP checkout?

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#419

Post by thelittleone »

Lapz wrote: post #2

The founder also encouraged employees to take on what was effectively personal debt at an ~11B valuation when they only did $5.2M in Q1…

I always found corporate credit cards to be similarly dodgy. Firms I worked at offered a "corporate" amex. The employee as card holder was personally liable for the debt, the employer had no liability. At the time these cards did not accrue any points either. And the corporate policy was typically "no personal expenses".

1) you must use corporate card for company expenses 2) you must not use corporate card for personal expenses 3) you cannot accrue points for use of corporate card 4) you are personally liable for corporate expenses on this card

I'm pretty sure amex was giving big perks to CFOs.

If you assume a limit of $10k per card and company (like the one I was at) had over 10k employees (though not all had cards) the amount is pretty astonishing and zero liability.

I once had an issue with Amex because I'd been travelling a lot and the boss was away and then slow to approve.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#420

Post by DantesKite »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #392
sparrc wrote: post #368

I'm a bit naive on this space so forgive if this is an ignorant question; Can anyone explain how any of these companies (Bolt, Fast, 1o) are doing anything different than "checkout with paypal"? What exactly is wrong with paypal that would make a merchant want to use Bolt instead?

The idea is that a central 1-click checkout provider will store your payment information, shipping address, and other details after the first time you use a site with their checkout. The next time you checkout on any website that uses the same 1-click checkout provider, they already have your information for “1-click” checkout. The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winn…

I really enjoyed this explanation.
Post reply on HN