- Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow defended cutting the entire HR department, citing problem creation.
- Bolt's valuation dropped from $11 billion in 2022 to about $300 million in 2024.
- Breslow returned as CEO in 2025 and called the period "wartime" for the company.
Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow has defended his decision to eliminate the company's entire human resources department. Speaking at Fortune's Workforce Innovation Summit on Tuesday, the 31-year-old founder argued that HR was creating issues rather than solving them. He also claimed that his decision helped the struggling fintech company, which he co-founded in 2014. "We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn't exist," Breslow told Fortune editorial director Kristin Stoller. "Those problems disappeared when I let them go."
Bolt, which is a one-click checkout company, surged to an $11 billion valuation in 2022. After Breslow stepped down that year, the company's valuation slid to around $300 million by 2024, a drop of nearly 97%.
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Breslow returned as CEO in 2025, describing the current period as "wartime". Earlier this year, Bolt cut about 30% of staff and dismantled its HR function.
Breslow said traditional HR doesn't fit a company operating in startup mode. "We're back in startup mode again, and those HR professionals have really important insights when you're in a peacetime and when you're at a larger company," he explained.
In their place, Bolt brought in a smaller people operations team focused on training and employee support.
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Well, this is not the first time he has spoken about the issue. In a 2025 LinkedIn post, he wrote that "HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach. People ops empowers managers, streamlines decision making, and keeps the company moving at lightning speed."
"We need a group of people who are very oriented around getting things done, and there is just a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot," he added at the Fortune conference.
