Outsmarting Uber: Why Bolt Wins in Europe
What does it take to build a global mobility company from a country of just 1.3 million people?
Markus Villig, founder and CEO of Bolt, joins the show to share how he scaled from Estonia to 50+ countries, navigating early scrappy days, a near-bankruptcy from expanding too fast, and the hard-won lessons behind Bolt’s capital-efficient growth.
They also discuss building in Europe vs. the U.S., competing against much better-funded rivals, and why culture and ambition matter more than regulation.
Finally, Markus lays out what’s next: autonomy, robotaxis, and why the future of mobility will be a hybrid of human drivers and self-driving fleets.
Resources:
Find Markus on X: https://x.com/villigm
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20VC: Bolt; The Most Insane Story in Startups | Turning a $5K Loan into an $8BN Company | Why Every VC Turned Down One of Europe's Biggest Winners | Competing with Uber & The Future of Micromobility and Self-Driving
Markus Villig is the Founder and CEO of Bolt, a global mobility platform with more than 200 million lifetime customers in more than 50 countries and 600 cities. Bolt has raised over €1 billion in funding from investors like Sequoia, D1 and G Squared, making Markus the youngest founder of a billion-dollar company in Europe.
In Today's Episode with Markus Villig:
1. Starting an $8BN Company:
How did Markus come up with the idea for Bolt before Uber existed?
How did Markus find his co-founder? Why did 30 people turn down the chance to co-found Bolt? What are Markus' biggest tips on finding a co-founder?
How did Markus use a $5K loan from his parents as the pre-seed round?
How did Markus get the first riders for Bolt? What worked? What did not work?
How did Markus get the first driver for Bolt? What worked? What did not work?
2. Expanding to be a Global Champion:
How did Markus expand Bolt to $10M in ARR on just $1M of funding?
What did the international expansion playbook look like? What worked? What did not work? How has it changed over time?
What one simple change led to their becoming the leader in Africa?
What was the best country to launch? What was the worst?
What is the most profitable country today? What is the least?
3. The $8BN Company that no VC Wanted to Fund:
Why did every large VC in Europe turn down Bolt early on?
How did a real estate company in the Baltics save Bolt with lifeline funding?
When did Sequoia come into the mix? Does Sequoia move the needle for your company when they invest?
How do New York financially driven investors differ to the traditional VC ecosystem?
What would Markus most like to change about the world of VC?
4. The Future: Micromobility, Self-Driving Cars, Uber:
Will the rise of self-driving cars harm or help companies like Bolt and Uber?
What is the future for micromobility? Does it cannibalise the core business for Bolt and Uber?
What is Uber better at Bolt doing? What are Uber worse at than Bolt? How will that change moving forward?
Waymo, buy or short? Why?
EP 10: Interview with Ryan Breslow, The Silicon Valley Mob, Twilio Insider Trading and Why OnlyFans Can’t Find Investors
(00:20) NFT LA and Nikita’s parties
(01:50) Onlyfans ideal for SPAC which surprisingly isn’t a sex thing
(15:40) Twilio programmers great at programming, terrible at insider trading
(25:20) Ryan Breslow exclusive interview
(30:57) How Ryan got good at Twitter
(33:34) Is the Silicon Mob real??
(38:40) Why one-click checkout is impossible to explain but very cool
(44:11) Is blocking competition conspiracy or just good strategy
(49:57) Surprising controversy over early exercise options loans
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Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
REFERENCE LINKS:
Onlyfans can't find investors: https://www.axios.com/onlyfans-investors-struggle-9cc92523-6607-40ad-9893-4175e7966b52.html
Twilio insider trading: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/28/sec-charges-twilio-engineers-with-insider-trading-.html
Stripe / YC Mob thread: https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1485784823641755648?s=20&t=IFRaBDRDtA8J2wTXruhPpQ
RB - Meditation tweet:
https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1501953781046689801?s=20&t=IFRaBDRDtA8J2wTXruhPpQ
NB response tweet: https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1501991588246917130?s=20&t=IFRaBDRDtA8J2wTXruhPpQ
RB – Stock options tweet:
https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390167461224451?s=20&t=bvE0FGOApel_hUwqVdwU7A
LB – Stock options tweet:
https://twitter.com/loganbartlett/status/1503893316710146053?s=20&t=6s6MaxQikG6l76htdBlEKQ
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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Did This Man Just Expose the Silicon Vally Tech Mafia? - Ryan Breslow, Founder of Bolt
Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) talk about how to learn any skill, whether Dan Price is legit or a fraud, Dave Friedberg and Cana, and what a chicken wing actually is. They are then joined by Ryan Breslow (@theryanking) of Bolt to talk about the latest controversy surrounding his Twitter thread, and why he's trying to take down what he considers to be silicon valley's tech mafia.
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Show Notes:
(00:30) - The Hustle's New Podcast
(03:45) - Podcasting and how to learn any skill
(07:10) - The Day You Became A Better Writer
(10:50) - Maven and Shaan's Power Writing Course
(14:30) - Is Dan Price a fraudster?
(20:00) - Dave Friedberg and Cana
(32:00) - Ryan Breslow joins the show and explains his background
(43:45) - The Y Combinator controversy
(01:27:45) - Sam and Shaan recap the Ryan interview
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Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
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