Payment Startup Bolt Sued by Its Most Prominent Customer

Bolt, the payments startup known for its founder's inflammatory Twitter threads claiming Silicon Valley is run by "mob bosses," is being sued by its most prominent customer. From a report: The complaint by Authentic Brands Group alleges that Bolt not only failed to deliver promised technology but that during Bolt's integration with Forever 21, the clothier lost out on more than $150 million in online sales. The complaint also states that Bolt raised funding at increasingly high valuations by "consistently overstating" the nature of its integration with ABG's brands to suggest it had more customers than it did and to convince investors to bankroll additional growth for the startup. Because Bolt's business relies on having a large network of consumers, the allegations create major new uncertainty for the controversial payments startup, which investors most recently valued at $11 billion. In a filing, Bolt responded to the complaint saying that ABG's claims are without merit, and are "a transparent attempt" to renegotiate the terms of the companies' agreements.

Is it just me . . .

[mmell]

. . . or do criminals seem to be the loudest voices screaming about what everyone else is doing wrong? It's not as good as having a patsy ready to take the fall, but it seems to be a pretty effective method for a criminal enterprise or political organization.

Re:Is it just me . . .

[notsouseful]

They have found that they risk much less prison time by beating people up with lawyers rather than $2 wrenches.

Re:

[taustin]

We tend to see in others what we see in ourselves.

Re:

[MightyMartian]

It's called projection. Pretty much all behavioral cognition works off internal modeling of others' behaviors, and of course, we construct those models based on our predilections and biases. Hence the old saying "No honor among thieves".

Re:

[mmell]

No, experience. I never claimed to be an angel.

Forever 21?

[fermion]

The 1990s called. And $150 million in lost sales? Is that significant to this has been? Gap has 16 billion in sales. I canâ(TM)t imagine them expended these resources on less than 1% of sales. Sounds like a dying retailer trying to get cash to pay rent any way it can.

ABG has a large brand portfolio

[nadass]

https://www.authenticbrands.co... [authenticbrands.com]

Most likely, it's simply the Forever 21 brand's finance group trying to reconcile the contract terms. I wouldn't side with BOLT on this one, either, cuz startups are notorious for being Ponzi Schemes unless they've proven themselves to not be (see Airbnb [not] and WeWork [def was]).

Startup Valuations are Garbage ~nt~

[OverlordQ]

~nt~