Fintech startup Bolt has reshaped its operations after eliminating its entire human resources department during a restructuring exercise earlier this year. The move came alongside layoffs affecting nearly 30% of the company’s workforce as CEO and co-founder Ryan Breslow pushed for what he describes as a leaner, “wartime” operating model.

Speaking at an event, Breslow defended the decision, arguing that the HR function had become a source of unnecessary friction inside the company.

“We had an HR team and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist,” Breslow said. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.”

Founded in 2014, Bolt quickly became one of the fastest-growing fintech startups in the US, riding the surge in online commerce and checkout technology. But the company later faced valuation pressure, restructuring and repeated layoffs after Breslow stepped down as CEO in 2022.

He returned to lead the company again in 2025 and has since framed Bolt’s turnaround effort as a survival-focused reset that requires startup-style discipline rather than traditional corporate structures.

Breslow said Bolt no longer operates with a conventional HR department. Instead, the company now relies on a smaller people operations team that handles employee support and compliance-related functions such as mandatory training.

According to Breslow, the goal is to reduce bureaucracy and allow managers to make faster decisions while keeping employees focused on execution.

The CEO also criticised the culture that emerged during Bolt’s rapid-growth years, saying the company had become too comfortable when capital was flowing freely across the tech industry.

“There’s a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company,” Breslow said, adding that many employees “weren’t actually working hard”.

As part of the overhaul, Bolt also rolled back several employee-friendly policies introduced during its growth phase, including four-day work weeks and unlimited paid time off.

Breslow said the company needed to return to a more “gritty” culture centred on efficiency, accountability and survival.