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.

clear all ✕

why aren't all 13 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable

Assertion Supported
Villig: VCs refused to invest in Bolt at $25M ARR
“We probably got to the point of doing about twenty-five million ARR, growing multiple hundred percent a year, and still no VCs wanted to invest.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 0:09 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Bolt Outsourced Its AI Agent to Claude and Fell to Third
“So even Bolt, which was the early leader, they're now just at number three, They don't even have an AI agent anymore. They've outsourced it to Claude.”
Jason Lemkin Nov 13, 2025 ▶ 27:45 Michael Burry Shorts NVIDIA and Palantir & Has Defensibility Died in a World of AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Bolt Scaled From Zero to $20M Revenue in Two Months
“We're seeing examples like Bolt, you know, which went zero to 20 in two months”
Jake Saper Mar 10, 2025 ▶ 40:06 Jake Saper, GP @ Emergence Capital: "We Sold Salesforce Early and Lost Out on Billions" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Markus Villig: Bolt has reached $2 billion in annual recurring revenue
“And then we went from that to now we have two billion ARR in sort of the next few years.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 0:29 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Villig: Bolt raised $1.5B while competitors raised up to $30B
“There's about seven companies left. What they've been doing better than us is raising money. They've just all raised multitudes of how much we have raised. Many of them have raised five billion. Some of them have raised 15, even thirty billion. Well, we have r…”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 1:15:40 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Held up
Villig: Bolt plans to launch dining scan-to-pay payments next
“So the one I'm currently bullish about is dining payments. So in many parts of Europe and the world, it's actually not a common thing that you can scan the QR code, you see the menu, you can order and pay from that. And you can integrate it with everything els…”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 1:18:37 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Cursor, Bolt, and Windsurf struggled for years before exploding
“I mean, I know Cursor almost died, right? Bolt almost died, right? And then finally it hit for Cursor. I don't know the whole story of Windsurf. Even Windsurf was Codium before it, right? It wasn't even the same, like everyone talks about Windsurf. 90 days ago…”
Jason Lemkin Apr 24, 2025 ▶ 18:53 How LP Deployment to Venture Will Change in 2025 & Are Endowment Funds in Trouble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Daimler invested over 100 million dollars in Bolt at 1B valuation
“So then we managed to convince them that they invested more than a hundred million at the billion dollar valuation. So it went in a year from being an acquisition to being an investment.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 46:46 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Bolt defined ride-hailing category in Poland, Czechia, and Baltics
“In Poland or in Czech or in the Baltics, we were the ones who defined the category and the regulators were then coming to us and were asking us for input.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 39:00 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
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.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 18:28 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
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.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 52:44 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
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.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 56:10 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
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.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 36:46 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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