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Ryan Breslow

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Ryan Breslow
Born (1994-05-20) May 20, 1994 (age 30)
Miami, Florida, U.S.
Alma materStanford University
OccupationEntrepreneur
TitleCo-founder and chairman, Bolt Financial
Co-founder, Eco
Board member ofBolt
Eco
The Movement
Love

Ryan Breslow (born May 20, 1994)[1] is an American entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and chairman of Bolt, a one-click checkout technology company; a co-founder of Eco, a digital cryptocurrency platform; a co-founder of Love, a crypto pharmaceutical startup, and the founder of the dance non-profit, The Movement.

Early life and education

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Breslow was born and raised in North Miami Beach, Florida,[2] the son to Heather and Eric R. Breslow.[3] In middle school, he taught himself to code through online tutorials and YouTube videos.[2]

He attended Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School. Throughout high school he was a bag boy at the grocery chain Publix.[4] He also founded an online mattress company and designed and programmed websites for clients including a luxury shopping center and a LeBron James–backed streetwear brand.[2] Breslow founded two community service projects; the first helped underserved kids who wanted to golf but lacked financial resources and the second benefited homeless veterans in Miami-Dade. A National AP Scholar and National Merit Award semi-finalist, he graduated from high school first in his class [5][6][7] and received a financial aid scholarship to Stanford.[8]

Career

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Bolt

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As a computer science student at Stanford, Breslow was interested in digital currency. In his freshman year, he co-founded a research collective, the Stanford Bitcoin Group.[9] In 2013, he and a classmate began to develop a digital wallet that would allow Bitcoin to be used for routine transactions. Shortly after beginning the project, his classmate lost interest and the investor who had promised seed money backed out.[2]

Breslow dropped out of Stanford in 2014. He continued to live and work out of his dorm room. In addition to developing the wallet, Breslow and Eric Feldman, a former classmate, spent the following year researching financial regulations, compliance, and other cryptocurrency-related issues. In 2015, partly as a result of their research, their emphasis shifted to one-click checkout technology. In a 2022 interview with Forbes, Breslow said: “One day it hit me like a bolt of lightning. Amazon has offered one-click checkout since 1999 and the rest of the world doesn’t. The more I learned, the more I realized how big it could be.”[2] He subsequently focused on developing software that would provide one-click purchases for consumers and process transactions for retailers.[10]

The first version of Bolt's online checkout platform was developed in Breslow's dorm room with a team of 10. In 2016, after operating in stealth mode for more than a year, Bolt was officially launched. Breslow served as the company's CEO.[11][12] In 2019 it was named to the Forbes "Fintech 50" [13] and in 2021 Bolt was placed at #64 on the Inc. 5000. [14]

With input from the Bolt staff, Breslow developed the Conscious Culture Playbook, an alternative to a traditional employee handbook that brought mindfulness principles together with standards for performance and execution.[15] In May 2021, conscious.org was launched to make the playbook freely available to other companies and startups.[16] As part of the company's conscious business culture, Breslow instituted a four-day workweek in January 2022.[17][18]

In January 2022, Maju Kuruvilla was named CEO of Bolt and Breslow became the company's executive chairman and then chairman. The move followed a controversial series of tweets, in which Breslow described Y Combinator and Stripe as the "mob bosses of Silicon Valley." Breslow maintained that the shift was unrelated to his tweets and had been planned months in advance to allow him to focus on his “superpowers”: steering Bolt's culture and vision, and deal-making.[19]

As of May 2022, Bolt had 800 employees and was valued at $11 billion.[20] Based on his holdings, Breslow became one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires.[21]

According to an April 2023 letter from a lawyer representing Bolt investors, Breslow was subpoenaed by the SEC in connection with an investigation into whether federal securities laws were violated in connections with statements he made while fundraising for Bolt in 2021.[22]

As of February 2024, Bolt had under 700 employees, and was valued at approximately $300 million - a 97% decrease in price from 21 months prior - resulting in Breslow no longer being a billionaire.[23]

The Movement

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Breslow began taking dance classes in San Francisco to diminish the day-to-day stress of running Bolt. Discovering a community among dancers, and believing that dancing would be globally beneficial, he founded The Movement, a non-profit that provides free dance classes to make dance widely accessible. Initially offered in Miami, it later expanded to New York and Los Angeles.[24][2]

Recognition

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In 2020, Breslow appeared at #1 on the FinTech list of the Top 10 fintech innovators under 30.[25] He was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year, Northern California in 2021 [26] and a Forbes retail and e-commerce Allstar in 2022.[27]

Bibliography

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  • Fundraising, August 2021. Independently published. ISBN 979-8456959645
  • Recruiting, December 2021. Independently published. ISBN 979-8781807697

References

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  1. ^ Bouma, Hilda (May 23, 2022). "Zelfverklaarde techgoeroe van Silicon Valley ligt onder vuur" [Self-proclaimed Silicon Valley tech guru is under fire]. Het Financieele Dagblad (in Dutch).
  2. ^ a b c d e f Bertoni, Steve (April 4, 2022). "Millennial Billionaire Ryan Breslow Created Buzz, And Enemies, Attacking Stripe And Shopify. He's Just Getting Started". Forbes. p. Cover. Retrieved May 11, 2022.
  3. ^ "Barbara E. Breslow (nee Mitchell), Oct. 18, 2011". Philadelphia Inquirer. October 9, 2011 – via Legacy.com.
  4. ^ "Balancing Act: Teens bringing their needs, skills to the workplace". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2022-05-11.
  5. ^ Staff (May 17, 2012). "Miami-Dade Silver Knight winners". Miami Herald.
  6. ^ Dahlberg, Nancy (May 15, 2011). "Teens Serve Up a Plan to Energize Workers". Miami Herald.
  7. ^ Dahlberg, Nancy (February 5, 2012). "For Challenge's teen winners, the world is their oyster". Miami Herald.
  8. ^ Dahlberg, Nancy (2021-01-06). "Brain drain to brain gain? Bolt founder and hometown boy Ryan Breslow is checking out Miami - Refresh Miami". Retrieved 2022-03-18.
  9. ^ Valenti, Maggie (2022-02-02). "Bolt CEO Steps Down After Fiery Twitter Thread And $11B Valuation". International Business Times. Retrieved 2022-05-04.
  10. ^ "Bolt: The $6B '1-Click' checkout startup taking on Amazon". The Hustle. 2021-10-18. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  11. ^ Pimentel, Benjamin. "This CEO dropped out of Stanford, but secretly started his company in his old dorm. Now, he's raised $90 million to help companies challenge Amazon with better payments technology". Business Insider. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  12. ^ "Checkout Startup Raises $65 Million to Help Smaller Retailers Take On Amazon". Fortune. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  13. ^ Kauflin, Jeff. "Fintech 50 2019: The Newcomers". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-05-11.
  14. ^ "Bolt". Inc.com. Retrieved 2022-05-11.
  15. ^ Lagorio-Chafkin, Christine (2021-11-08). "This Company Has a Public Playbook for Developing Great Company Culture". Inc.com. Retrieved 2022-03-25.
  16. ^ Mehta, Stephanie (2021-05-25). "This fintech startup thinks it can help companies build conscious business cultures". Fast Company. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  17. ^ "Bolt Becomes First Tech Unicorn to Shift to Four-Day Workweek". Cheddar. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
  18. ^ "Is Now the Moment for the Four-Day Workweek? WSJ Podcasts". WSJ. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
  19. ^ Chapman, Lizette. "Bolt's 27-Year-Old Co-Founder Is Worth Billions and Going After the Valley Elite". BloombergQuint. Retrieved 2022-03-18.
  20. ^ Woo, Erin; Farrell, Maureen (2022-05-10). "Bolt Built $11 Billion Payment Business on Inflated Metrics and Eager Investors". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-05-11.
  21. ^ Descalsota, Marielle. "There are 7 self-made billionaires under 30 on Forbes' billionaires list this year, and more than half of them are Stanford dropouts". Business Insider. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
  22. ^ Woo, Erin (2023-07-21). "Bolt Probed by SEC, Investors Over Statements Made During Fundraising". The Information. Retrieved 2024-07-02.
  23. ^ Weinberg, Cory; Woo, Erin; Mascarenhas, Natasha (2024-02-12). "Bolt, Once Worth $11 Billion, Slashes Share Price 97% in Buyback". The Information. Retrieved 2024-07-02.
  24. ^ Donohue, Meg (2021-10-06). "Meet the Tech Wiz Who Wants New Yorkers to Dance". Town & Country. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  25. ^ "Top 10 Fintech innovators under 30". FinTech Magazine. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  26. ^ "Entrepreneur Of The Year Northern California winners". www.ey.com. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  27. ^ "Forbes 30 Under 30 2022: Retail & Ecommerce". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
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