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San Francisco-based Bolt, founded in 2014, manages the back-end of digital checkouts to gives retailers and consumers more choice, control and flexibility over their transactions.

The platform combines lightning-fast checkout, payment processing and fraud protection with full chargeback coverage.

Levelling the e-commerce playing field, Bolt offers merchants a simple but powerful checkout solution that increases conversion rates while eliminating fraud.

Bolt has been defining checkout long before anyone saw it as a category. We have been proud to back the company across every round since the Series A in 2018.

Bolt had a very strong technical solution but future growth depended on developing the commercial skills required to win with enterprise and SMB customers alike. Activant was well positioned to help drive growth to the next level.

Activant

Tribe Capital

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General Atlantic

Westcap

 Tribe Capital

 H14

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BlackRock

H.I.G. Growth Partners

Moore Strategic Ventures

Digital Horizon

Building a shopping community by solving the biggest pain point in e-commerce.

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Can Bolt’s “culture playbook” become the 2021 equivalent of Netflix’s famous “no vacation policy” PowerPoint deck?

Solving the biggest pain point in ecommerce


As eCommerce picked up steam in the early 2010s, Amazon quickly became the defining force. Amazon won consumers with convenience: fast delivery, and even faster checkout.

Identifying the trend of commodification and the inevitable need for merchants to break free of Amazon's ecosystem, Ryan dropped out of Stanford in 2014 to found Bolt.

Checkout was the focal point of all commerce, and where potential customers always dropped off due to convoluted form-filling. Every merchant needs one-click checkout.

Bringing the Fight to Amazon

Consumers were getting used to paying online and Stripe was making it easy for developers to embed a payment gateway. An increase in card-not-present transactions was driving adoption of fraud tools. 

And from shopping cards, subscription tools, loyalty & reward trackers and more, the market was swimming with point solutions.

But was clear was conversion. Merchants were losing customers at the final step—the checkout button. So Ryan and his team set out to create Checkout category, back when few understood the vision.

With a ruthless focus on efficiency, the team at Bolt built a world-class checkout experience, marrying lightning-fast clickthrough with best-in-class fraud protection. 

The result was a 15%+ increase in conversion for merchants.

Bolt was so confident in their fraud engine that they offered 100% chargeback for merchants; Bolt increased sales and reducing cost simultaneously.

Technology

“By bringing together an expert team from companies like Braintree, Stripe, Square, and Uber, we've solved some of the toughest and most intricate challenges associated with checkout, any brand can trust us with what we consider to be the most crucial part of the shopper experience.”

Activant had spent years investing in commerce infrastructure platforms like 

. After talking to dozens of executives at major brands—namely Chief Digital Officers and Chief Experience Officers, it became clear to us that there was a need for a modern platform to handle checkout.

Activant's ecosystem to an introduction to Ryan during Bolt's Series A in the summer of 2018. The Company was too early for a growth investment from Activant, but our thesis aligned with Ryan's vision. After our retailer contacts validated the quality of Bolt's product, we invested a small follow-on check to establish a partnership.

We made several key introductions to brand partners while getting to know Ryan and his team in San Francisco as they mapped out their vision for one-click everywhere.

Bolt continued to accelerate and showed no signs of slowing.

Signing brand after brand, they were creating the Checkout category in front of our eyes. As customers grew, so did their need for engineering and go-to-market resources.

A year after the Series A, Activant stepped up to lead Bolt's $68 MM Series B round, joining the Board of Directors.

Series B: Defining the Checkout Category

As the Bolt moved to larger and larger merchants and built out their platform, enterprise retailers began to take note.

Bolt's ability to centralize fast checkout, payments, and fraud in a single place, operate across brands, and embed anywhere a customer interacts with a merchant made for a powerful enterprise offering.

In 2020, the Company secured a landmark partnership with Authentic Brands Group (ABG) to bring Bolt's checkout experience to ABG's portfolio of iconic brands. 

Bolt is live today with Forever 21 and is expanding across Brooks Brothers, Aéropostale, Nautica, and more.

Unlocking Enterprise

Hot off the heels of the ABG contract, Bolt closed their Series C round led by General Atlantic and WestCap in December 2020.

Activant was proud to continue to support Ryan and his team.

With $125 MM in fresh growth capital, the Bolt team set out to continue to execute their vision.

Series C

Bolt then shipped another piece of their vision: 

 Once a customer uses Bolt checkout once and creates a Bolt account, they unlock one-click checkout with that merchant 

After launching at the end of 2020, the Company already has over 7 million Bolt accounts. The ABG partnership will provide access to 50 million more.

Ultimately, this creates a better shopping experience for consumers and drives a powerful network effect for merchants, who see huge uplift in conversion and sales with Bolt.

The One-Click Network Effect

As the Bolt platform builds—and with it the opportunity set—Ryan has continued to lead Bolt's relentless focus on hiring the best.

Amazon veteran and VP Maju Kuruvilla joined the Bolt team in January 2020 as Bolt's first Chief Technology and Product officer to lead the product and engineering teams.

Hiring the Best

“I’ve always been attracted to complex problems and how to use technology to simplify and improve the world around me. When Ryan first shared with me his vision for democratizing commerce by leveling the playing field for merchants, it got me thinking...”

Maju Kuruvilla
Chief Product & Technology Officer, Bolt

In the 6 years since their founding, Ryan and the Bolt team were always deliberate in how they built and maintained their culture: prioritizing writing over talking, frequent and thorough feedback, and risk taking without judgement.

In 2021, they open-sourced their culture handbook, “

,” so other leaders across all industries could adopt their principles.

https://conscious.org/

Setting the Culture Bar

We've been proud to support Ryan and the Bolt team over the last three years.

After creating the Checkout category from scratch, processing billions in transaction volume for thousands of Bolt merchants and millions of Bolt shoppers, it's hard to believe that Bolt still has so much room to run. But they do, and Activant will be excited to back them every step of the way.

Leading the Series B and participating in the Series C round we helped Bolt raise the funds they needed to grow.

Fundraising

We helped to develop the sales team required to drive SMB and enterprise sales.

Operations

Activant’s network and ecosystem introduced the team to new opportunities.

Introductions

Bolt

Founders who aspire to build something bigger than themselves chose to partner with us at their most critical point.

Founded in 2015, Activant is a global investment firm with $1.5 B AUM that partners with high-growth founders and teams that are transforming commerce.

We’re always looking to learn about new perspectives, new research, and new ideas.

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Activant is a research-led global investment firm that partners with high-growth companies.

We partner with founders who have won their initial battles and are ready for the next challenge.

We typically invest when two things come together. First, the company has the potential to achieve escape velocity and transform an entire industry. Second, we believe the founders can lead the company through hyper growth, and our support can significantly increase the probability of this success. 

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