Ryan Breslow has had a tumultuous 2022. It doesn’t slow him down.
A few people outside of Breslow’s world even knew his name a year ago. afterward Flasha “one-click” payment technology company that grew out of his earlier idea, announced $355 million in Series E funding at a press release. $11 billion valuation. Suddenly, the startup was on everyone’s radar, and so was Breslow. The 28-year-old now in Miami rode so high he couldn’t help but have a winning lap. At one point struggling to win over Silicon Valley investors, he began posting thoughts on Twitter that most probably would never dare share publicly, including calling rival Stripe and the famed accelerator Y Combinator as the “mob boss” that will pull “every power move imaginable” to strangle competitors.
While Breslow found support for his views online, he was also harshly criticized for his comments – including by powerful investors — and a week later, he stepped down as CEO of Bolt and became its Executive Chairman.
Breslow, who still owns a large stake in Bolt, told us the development has nothing to do with his antics. But it’s hard to believe Breslow’s attention-grabbing tweets – which keep going – did not confuse Bolt investors to some extent. Sure, it’s been a rocky road since then. Other sources of funding have been reported in activities that have not materialized. The company has been accused of hype by the press customer data and exaggerate its technological capabilities. At the end of May, citing changing market conditions, Bolt announced that they would lay off almost a third of its employeesor 250 people – some of them gave personal loan from the company to exercise their stock options.
Meanwhile, the partnership that Breslow public teasing has not yet been announced. Bolt employees are also said to be disappointed that Breslow sold 10 million dollars in stock to investors in that Series E round in January, when Bolt’s board did not allow them to sell their shares.
Some founders can fall apart after such setbacks. Breslow – who was both welcoming and reserved in conversation – went ahead with . instead some other startupsalong with several decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) infrastructure projects, including a programmable funding protocol called Juice box.
He is also currently focusing on a “human-assisted pharmaceutical” startup called Love and cherish that he co-founded and that was a lot of its era. Specifically, Love aims to launch a DAO where members purchasing “Love tokens” with Ethereum or another reserve currency can discuss homeopathy and other pharmaceutical alternatives, following then vote on whether they should be tested in clinical trials conducted by the DAO.
The idea – and it’s all just theory at this point – is to take over the big pharmaceutical companies by copying the way they work.
If you’re thinking that generating specific clinical data on homeopathic treatments can be challenging, Breslow says that’s exactly the point. Right now, he says, it’s “all stories, and some scientists say some are BS and some say it’s true. So we’re going to end up showing the data to people and letting the people who trust fund it and see if it really works.”
As for how Love is monetizing this whole process, Breslow said it will buy some Love tokens; it will also “selectively launch various health-related brands under the Love umbrella.”
If all is pretty struggling right now, then Human Capital and MaC Venture Capital don’t seem to mind. Love announced yesterday that it has raised $7.5 million in seed funding from the pair.
Notably, both companies also investors in Bolt, according to Breslow – although he does suggest that if there is a relationship with Bolt, it was running Bolt for eight years that led him to think differently about health. To wit, he said he had suffered from chronic back pain for years that he thought was “untreatable” because the “many good doctors and medical professionals” he met only make everything worse. Later shown to an alternative healer, who introduced Breslow to yoga, meditation and mental therapy, he said his back pain quickly disappeared.
Even social media, Breslow suggests, is still a more therapeutic medium. Indeed, asked if he could walk tweets earlier this year, he said he had “no regrets.”
“I will continue to be quite active on social media and I think that is a positive thing in terms of Bolt awareness,” Breslow said. A year ago, most people I knew didn’t know what Bolt was. Almost everyone does now.”
