The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Bolt almost went bankrupt launching 10 countries at once
“And we almost bankrupted the company in six months. So, so we burned for most of that one million very rapidly with nothing to show for it.”
Villig: Bolt lost 3% of Paris scooter fleet weekly to vandalism
“At some point, we were losing three percent of the vehicles every week because people were just stealing them, throwing them in the river, trashing them.”
Villig: Bolt grew from zero to $100M ARR in under five years
“We went from zero to two million ARR in about 18 months, and then from there we went to about ten million ARR in the next 18 months, and then we went from that to a hundred million ARR in less than two years.”
Villig: Scooter contribution margins top out around 20%
“So in good markets, you are maybe able to get to 20% contribution margins, but in bad markets, it can be negative.”
Villig: Bolt could have grown faster by raising angel funding earlier
“I think I should have been more aggressive with initial fundraising. I think we could have sped ourselves up a couple of months if I had gotten out and raised a small angel check before I did, because we bootstrapped the company completely for about the first …”
Villig: Sequoia committed to Bolt's funding round within 48 hours
“From the moment I had the call with them to them getting back to me was 48 hours where we're joining the round.”
Markus Villig has never sacrificed sleep for Bolt in ten years
“Literally never. Over these last 10 years, I've never sacrificed sleep for the sake of the business.”
Bolt scaled to €10M ARR on a €1M seed round
“So we raised about one million of an annual of the first seed fund, and then we built the company to ten million ARR with that.”
Bolt lost 85% of its $200M revenue within four weeks during COVID
“So COVID hit, and in four weeks we went from just massive, like, about two hundred million of revenues to losing 85% of that.”
Villig: Early real estate investor achieved 100x+ return on Bolt
“They invested at the valuation of about fifteen million. So by now they made like easily more than a hundred X return on that investment.”
Kamal Ravikant broke his rule against uncapped notes to back Bolt
“My most recent investment was a company called Bolt. And normally, funny enough, it was a uncapped note. I never signed on do uncapped notes, just on principle alone.”
Taavet Hinrikus deployed significant liquidity into Bolt secondaries in 2017
“I spent a lot of my limited liquidity buying up secondaries in, in Bolt in like, 2017.”
Bolt managed early global expansion with only five people in Estonia
“So we were running all of this with a tiny team of About five people from Estonia.”
Bolt CEO Markus Villig does not have a driver's license
“I don't even have a driver's license, so the most expensive thing I've bought is probably in my apartment in Tallinn, which is probably still cheaper than anything you could get in London.”
Villig: 30 straight candidates rejected joining Bolt at launch
“I think we talked to, it must've been at least 30 people. And every single one of them turned me down because why would you join? It's a 19 year old kid. They have no experience, no money.”
Villig: 90% of taxi drivers initially rejected joining Bolt
“90% of them immediately said, get out of my car.”
Villig: Bolt raised $1M bridge round from non-tech local businesses
“So, so we cobbled together half a million from this real estate company. Similarly, a couple of 100,000 from a local railway operator couple of 100,000 from a local telecoms guy. So it was just this tiny, all together, maybe one million bucks.”
Markus Villig: Former Bolt interns now manage hundreds of people
“And seeing those people who started in the company as basically interns, and now they're running hundreds of people's organizations,”
Markus Villig: Early expansion mistakes delayed Bolt's evolution by years
“I think we could have actually been more deliberate about which markets we choose to expand into. So I think that as I mentioned, we had this first wave where we just expanded with the wrong model and looking back, if we hadn't done that and we would have done…”
Bolt fully recovered its lost COVID revenue within five or six months
“It actually happened very quickly. It was probably five or six months before we were fully back. And then we already started hitting new records after that.”
Villig: Bolt should have built a policy team two years earlier
“So I think we probably could have done that more of a year or two earlier of just engaging with the public and sort of trying to influence where this goes.”
Villig: Bolt spent roughly 10% of total funding on hardware
“In the grand scheme of how much money we've raised in, in general, it's maybe been about 10% of our total funding.”
Bolt operates in ~50 countries and leads in over 20
“Today we operate in about 50 countries around the world and Bolt is the number one most popular platform in more than 20 of them.”