He said the move was his own choice.
1/31/2022
Ryan Breslow is stepping down as CEO of Bolt, TechCrunch reported Monday. Maju Kuruvilla, formerly the company’s COO, will take his place. Though it’s unclear when the personnel change occurred, Breslow said it was his own choice.
Breslow has published a series of feisty tweets in the last week, going after industry power-players Y Combinator and Stripe. In one thread, he called the payments company and the startup accelerator that backed it “mob bosses” for allegedly boxing Stripe rivals out of investment deals, business partnerships and even coverage on Hacker News. Breslow picked up the torch again on Saturday, saying that Y Combinator was “not worth it.” Stripe is a competitor to Bolt — both are payment processing startups — while Breslow applied to and was rejected from Y Combinator.
People associated with the startup accelerator had been quick to dunk on Breslow, pointing out multiple factual inaccuracies in his “mob bosses” thread. Breslow had said that Lyft was a Y Combinator startup (it was not) and that Y Combinator had not invested in any Stripe competitors (Y Combinator has funded several other payments startups). Breslow was also incorrect about the publishing timeline and upvoting of articles he referenced that were published on Hacker News.
But regardless, Breslow appeared to have won the court of public opinion: The initial thread has nearly 9,000 likes and over 2,400 retweets.
Breslow told TechCrunch that despite stepping down, he would still have a say in major decisions, because he holds super-voting shares. “Without going to specifics … I have a lot of votes in the company,” he said. A recent SEC filing showed a relatively small board, with Breslow, Tribe Capital's Arjun Sethi, former Airbnb CFO Laurence Tosi and Activant Capital's Steve Sarracino as directors.
Protocol Link: https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/bolt-ryan-breslow-ceo
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