My Conversation With The Guy Who Wants to Invest $250M of ‘Marketing Capital' in Bolt
My conversation with The London Fund's Ashesh Shah about his planned Bolt investment and what he thinks about Ryan Breslow
Hoping to feel more like a human this morning after a day of pacing around my Brooklyn apartment, talking on the phone with investors about Bolt’s private letter that unbelievably claimed that the struggling financial technology company was in the process of raising $450 million at a $14 billion valuation, I took some time for myself and went to the gym.
Walking home, I got an unexpected phone call from Ashesh Shah, a man I’d never heard of until yesterday who intends to co-lead a new funding round for Bolt that could potentially cram down investors like BlackRock, Untitled, and Hedosophia. The deal would give Breslow more control over the company and would diminish the stakes of investors who have been trying to hold Breslow accountable unless they fork over more money to maintain their positions in a “pay-to-play” round. Giving the deal some credibility, Latham & Watkins is representing Bolt, according to Bolt’s letter to investors.
Bolt has more than $100 million in the bank without raising a new round of funding, according to investors and a source close to the company. The company has burned through more than $700 million, according to an investor.
Besides Shah’s marketing credits, the round is meant to be filled out by a consortium of Abu Dhabi-based investors facilitated by a partner at Silverbear Capital, according to two sources close to Bolt. No one has told me yet who they are exactly and Bolt’s investors don’t seem to know.
Bolt shareholders would need to approve the deal for it to go forward. People close to Bolt remain optimistic that the deal will be approved. The first formal deadline to approve the deal is August 29, a person close to Bolt told me.
You should probably scan yesterday’s newsletter before reading on if you aren’t Bolt-pilled and closely following the ins-and-outs of this absurd company founded by Ryan Breslow — the man who once spun conspiracies about Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital and who seems eager to extract money from the company he founded. Breslow gave himself a $30 million loan from Bolt and has faced a lawsuit from his investors. He stepped down as CEO in 2022 only to announce his planned return in a letter Bolt’s interim CEO sent to investors this week. He would return to the job if investors approve the deal.
Here’s the rundown from my conversation with Shah. It was interesting to put it diplomatically.
Shah is, according to deal documents that I’ve looked through, supposed to be one of the two main investors in Bolt’s latest funding round. It’s hard to know what to make his backstory. He claims on his website to have “thrice managed billions of dollars.”
At the start of our conversation Shah, an investor who runs what he describes as a network of influencers called “INFLUENCE by The London Fund,” acted like he wasn’t going to talk about the Bolt deal. “Maybe I’m out there buying the Celtics today,” he said.
But he quickly dropped the air of mystery.
“At the end of the day this transaction is a kind of funny one because I know people leaked a lot of information (and it was expected). There’s so much more that people don’t see. People are centered on the valuation,” he said.
I asked how he could invest in Breslow, a guy that many (most? nearly all?) investors think has taken them for a ride. “I’m not going to defend Ryan one way or another — that’s not my job,” Shah told me over the phone.
As to angry and perplexed existing investors, Shah told me, “This is not a public company,” he said. And he explained that everyone who invested in Bolt is a sophisticated investor.
“Very caveat emptor,” he said.
He explained that “Blackstone” is a very serious investor that knows what they’re doing. “Now we are playing a small fiddle for them because for the first time the founder flips the narrative,” he said.
Later in the conversation, he said, “I just find it disgusting that the people we are talking about Blackstone — they are very, very grown adults.”
“BlackRock,” I corrected him gently.
“BlackRock, sorry,” he said.
I turned our conversation toward the particulars of the deal. His “$250 million” investment is supposed to come in “marketing capital and dollar credits on INFLUENCE by The London Fund.”
Shah explained to me that Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI had come in the form of cloud credits. What was so unusual here?
The marketing credits would come in the form of marketing from influencers on his network and other distribution tools helping to support Bolt. Shah’s company INFLUENCE has almost no web presence.
When I asked him for the top influencer on his platform, Shah declined to name anyone in particular. (In a follow-up conversation, he cited the dating app Hulah as one of its success stories.)
Shah said that the main reason that he was interested in investing in Bolt was because it allegedly has close to 82 million American shoppers on its platform. He claimed that number is about on par with Shopify’s wallets.
“You just got the pen drop,” he told me. “That’s bigger than Stripe.”
(An investor told me, “It’s just people who used one click once. They are not users. Can’t be monetized unless they go to another one click client and their info is prefilled. The conversion is higher because it’s easier but certainly not worth $2 a share.)”
I pushed Shah on whether this $14 billion valuation is in any sense a reflection on the actual deal that’s being proposed.