Stripe Deterred Bolt Investors

A story about how Stripe allegedly interfered with Bolt's fundraising efforts.

"When we would be pitching investors, they'd get interested and say they wanted to invest. Then they would talk to somebody at Stripe or someone related to Stripe, and either be told they can't invest or they shouldn't invest.

Multiple investors told me directly 'I got a call by Stripe and they told me I can't invest in you guys.' Stripe had intentionally put every single tier-1 firm on their cap table, even stuffing them with small checks. They had all the big names in Silicon Valley invested in them.

I've heard the same story from companies doing card issuing and subscription payments. It's almost as if Stripe has these feelers out - anything that's tangential, they make sure it doesn't get off the ground and then they go and build it themselves.

We probably should have failed 5 times over, with investors pulling out of term sheets when we were about to run out of money. Bolt almost didn't exist because of these powers that be. I think there are a lot of other companies that would have existed today if it wasn't for similar actions."