Ryan Breslow, Founder and Executive Chairman of Bolt, seems to have a problem with the closed club in Silicon Valley. This sentence may make your eyes roll as mine did, given who Ryan is; however, there is the age-old gripe that is disrupting the industry.
☑️Stripe has cornered the market in fast payments; Bolt offers another 'Amazon-like' option with its $11 billion valuation, making Breslow one of the youngest billionaires in history at 27.
☑️Y Combinator (accelerator programme) rejected Breslow, and he has been on Twitter calling out "mob bosses" about how closed the circle is.
Bolt's vision is to give merchants and shoppers a one-click digital check-out; this is a game-changer, especially with Bolt's competitive fees to merchants. A big problem for Shopify. Let's be clear, Breslow does not lack access and is not an outsider. He has raised $1 billion from VCs, matriculated from Stanford and now needs to drive traffic to Bolt.
Is Breslow being strategic? Of course, these companies are his competitors, but since raging against the machine is producing lower fees, it's interesting to see how the former breakdancer is applying Hip-Hop business strategies to Silicon Valley while cutting his competition at the knees. 50 cent anyone?