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CEO of $300 million company says ‘problems disappeared’ after firing HR team
Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow defends decision to eliminate HR team, claiming it created unnecessary problems and hindered company progress.
The CEO of Bolt has explained why he got rid of his company’s entire HR team. Ryan Breslow defended his decision to enforce sweeping workforce cuts at his San Francisco-based company, which impacted around 30% of staff earlier this year.
‘We got rid of HR’
“We got rid of our HR team,” the 31-year-old said while speaking at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit on Tuesday.
Breslow’s rationale for letting go of the entire human resources team was simple — “We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist,” he said. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.”
He claimed that letting go of HR was essential to resurrect Bolt — a company that was once valued at $11 billion but has since witnessed a reversal of fortune, with its valuation falling to roughly $300 million.
‘Back 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 said.
The 31-year-old CEO said that a smaller people operations team has been hired to oversee training and serve as a resource for employees. “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 said at the Fortune conference.
In a LinkedIn post last year, he had written: “I’ve concluded that HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach. People ops empowers managers, streamlines decision making, and keeps the company moving at lightning speed.”
What is Bolt?
Founded in 2014 by Ryan Breslow and Eric Feldman, Bolt is a San Francisco-based company that provides single-click checkout solutions for e-commerce businesses. Breslow launched the company from his dorm room at Stanford University.
Layoffs at Bolt
Bolt has undergone several rounds of layoffs. The company carried out another major round of layoffs in April 2026, cutting roughly 30% of its workforce as it company shifted towards an AI-focused operating model.
The layoffs were announced internally by founder and CEO Ryan Breslow, who told employees the company would become “leaner and more AI-centric.” He said the way products are developed in 2026 had changed significantly, making the restructuring “unavoidable,” according to Banking Dive.
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