Bolt boss Ryan Breslow blames ‘irresponsible’ Stripe for Fast failure
Ryan Breslow, founder of online checkout technology startup, Bolt, has given his (erm, colourful) take on why rival firm Fast failed.
Last week, we reported that Fast was no more.
This followed on from reports indicating that its 2021 revenue growth was less than impressive, its cash burn high and its fundraising options limited.
In a series of Twitter posts, Breslow argued that Fast crashed and burned due to investor Stripe pushing it to scale before its team knew how.
“This forced major compromises. Yes there’s a lot of gossip about unhealthy internal culture,” Breslow commented.
“That’s unfortunately common at most early startups and is not what killed them. Their unnaturally forced business strategy was what did them in.”
He added: “In short, Bolt did the HARD long-term thing: Build CheckoutOS, the checkout operating system; Take over checkout end-to-end; Write all the integrations; Focus on merchants; Focus on enterprises and platforms.”
“Fast, driven by Stripe’s irresponsible funding, took the opposite approach. Build a button, not a full checkout; Sell to micro merchants; Focus on consumers; Support minimal integrations. This led to unsustainable growth and ultimately failure.”
He concluded: “Mob boss Stripe thought it could pour a pile of money into a company with zero revenue to try to kill Bolt. Hype + cash = engineers = success, right? It worked for Stripe.”
“The problem: checkout doesn’t work like that. It’s much more enterprise software than developer API. They made a HUGE mistake.”
Stripe did not respond to our request for comment.
“Sometimes trailblazers don’t make it all the way to the mountain top”
In an online statement, Fast co-founder Domm Holland said last week: “After making great strides on our mission of making buying and selling frictionless for everyone, we have made the difficult decision to close our doors. With that, we regret to share that we must discontinue Fast Checkout as a payment method for our sellers.”
He added: “I will be forever grateful to those who shared our vision for improving the system of buying online and who refused to settle for the status quo.”
Fast posted a six figure revenue total in 2021, despite raising a $102 million Series B led by Stripe.
The company’s burn rate was said to be as high as $10 million per month.
Holland was. however, defiant until the end.
“We created an incredible global community of sellers over the past 19 months – and we are deeply grateful that you took the leap of faith and joined Fast in this journey. We are grateful for the vision you shared with us about how we can improve and modernise commerce,” he commented.
“Sometimes trailblazers don’t make it all the way to the mountain top. But even in those situations, they pave a way that all others will follow.”
“Fast has done that with bringing one-click and headless checkout into the mainstream. Buying online has been forever changed by the incredible team at Fast. The dedication, brilliance and spirit of this remarkable team is unparalleled and will forever be the legacy of Fast.”
