Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow explains why company laid off 30% of employees including entire HR team: ‘There’s a sense of…’

Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow has defended the decision to eliminate the fintech company's HR department and lay off a significant portion of its workforce. He argued that the moves were necessary to revive the business after years of declining fortunes. Speaking at Fortune's recently held Workforce Innovation Summit, Bolt’s chief executive noted that workforce reduction, including a recent round of layoffs affecting about 30% of employees, was part of a broader effort to rebuild the company following a sharp decline in valuation and multiple rounds of restructuring.

“There's a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company, and people who felt empowered, felt entitled— but weren’t actually working hard. And this is the number one thing that I had to battle. Ultimately, most of those people just had to be let go,” Breslo told Fortune.

Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow on why the company he laid off its entire HR team

During the discussion, Breslow said Bolt's HR department was not helping the company address its challenges. “We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist. Those problems disappeared when I let them go,” Breslow told Fortune.

Breslow said the company later replaced the HR function with a smaller people operations team focused on employee resources and required training.

“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 added.

Earlier, he had outlined similar views on LinkedIn, writing that “HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach. People ops empowers managers, streamlines decision making, and keeps the company moving at lightning speed.”

At the conference, he noted: “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.”

Bolt, which Breslow cofounded in 2014 while at Stanford University, reached a valuation of $11 billion in 2022. However, the company later faced a significant downturn. Breslow stepped down as CEO that year, and by 2024, the company's valuation had reportedly fallen to around $300 million. The company also underwent several rounds of layoffs.

Breslow, who returned as CEO in 2025, said Bolt is now operating in what he described as “wartime,” requiring a different approach to management and spending.

According to Breslow, employees hired under the previous leadership structure were given 60 days to adjust to a leaner operating model, but “99%” were unable to adapt. He said most of the leadership team was eventually replaced.

“They had gotten used to working at a company where they didn’t have to get their hands dirty, and could spend a lot of money, and we just didn’t have that money to spend anymore, and we didn’t have that luxury,” he said. The restructuring also involved rolling back policies such as four-day workweeks and unlimited paid time off.

“As someone who was a pioneer of conscious leadership. I had to bring a company back to a very gritty place,” Breslow highlighted.

Breslow also addressed recent reports that Bolt had withheld employee pay or failed to compensate contractors, denying those claims during the conference. Currently, Bolt employs roughly 100 people. Breslow said the smaller workforce has improved responsiveness to customers and helped the company focus on execution.

“We have a team a quarter of the size, who are much more junior, who work a lot harder, who have better energy. And our customers are telling us, ‘We haven’t had this type of attention in four years,’” he explained