Bolt CEO Calls Competitors Y Combinator And Stripe The 'Mob Bosses' Of Silicon Valley, But Some Are Questioning His Motives

Ryan Breslow, the CEO of Bolt, a payment startup, has caused friction on Twitter after posting a lengthy thread describing the company's main competitor, Stripe, and startup accelerator Y Combinator, who works with Stripe, as the "mob bosses of Silicon Valley."

Stripe and YCombinator, the Mob Bosses of Silicon Valley, a thread:

— Ryan Breslow 🕺 (@theryanking) January 25, 2022

The thread, posted on Monday, starts with Breslow describing how he built Bolt from the ground up over the course of seven hard years, turning it into a successful startup with an $11-billion valuation. He goes on to attribute those seven hard years of growth to Stripe and Y Combinator, who he claims have "tenfold" more power than anyone else in Silicon Valley. According to Breslow, Y Combinator promoted Stripe to all of its alumni companies, effectively shutting Bolt out of the competition in Breslow's eyes.

In one section of the thread, Breslow said Y Combinator and Stripe run Hacker News and suppressed threads supporting Bolt, offering two as an example: one praising Bolt's fraud detection and another praising Radar 2.0's, a fraud protection service run by Stripe posted the same day. The Radar 2.0 thread has over double the points. Towards the end of the thread, Breslow said he wrote it to "expose new founders to the truth of Silicon Valley" and that he plans to "build an epic company culture, and compete," urging Y Combinator and Stripe to "just do better."

WHO WANTS PROOF?

On April 18, 2018, we posted this:https://t.co/MM3zr1h0nv
How Bolt does fraud detection better
(linked to: https://t.co/USnNNa4Fa5)

An ~hour later, this showed up:https://t.co/euHRuNG3xC
Improved fraud prevention with Radar 2.0

Ours disappeared.

— Ryan Breslow 🕺 (@theryanking) January 25, 2022

The thread inspired a lot of backlash from readers in Silicon Valley, who questioned Breslow's intentions for writing the post. One response from Sequoia VC Shaun Maguire accuses Breslow of having ill intentions with his thread, claiming that Bolt's metrics simply "haven’t been good enough," which is why he struggled with the company.

Every round had metrics that were 2 rounds behind their competitors at the same time

For everyone reading this, remember that Ryan is biased himself and he’s feeding you a conspiracy that doesn’t exist

— Shaun Maguire (smc.eth) (@shaunmmaguire) January 25, 2022

Breslow also received support for his thread, much of it allegedly coming from anonymous sources, whose quotes he shared in an extension to the thread the next day. Numerous quote tweets also show some support for Breslow, praising him for speaking out against these so-called "mob bosses of Silicon Valley."

“I felt similar things… Have never written about it because I still want to raise from top vcs for my next venture…” – fintech CEO

“Much respect. You said the thing everyone was afraid to say” – fintech VC

— Ryan Breslow 🕺 (@theryanking) January 25, 2022

There will ALWAYS be people who don’t like you or what you’re doing. Doesn’t matter if you’re Oprah or Elon Musk. Accept that and keep charging.

— Ryan Breslow 🕺 (@theryanking) January 27, 2022