Founders Letter: Inside Bolt’s 2022 Growth Story
Addendum: We have compiled our Year on Bolt 2022 Review here!
To our community members,
In Bolt’s 2018 letter to the community(our very first), we discussed our vision to create an information highway for the world — where community members are empowered to co-create a next-generation digital economy with us. We were passionate about unlocking the power of the blockchain to empower the world.
Bolt has come a long way since 2018. Our revenue has grown 400% from $3.4 million in 2019 to $11 million in 2022. Our gross profit has increased from $1.2 million in 2021 to $2.2 million in 2022. We established long-term relationships with many important strategic partners, including Binance, Hisense Group, OneFootball, VIDAA (the smart TV operating system), Euronews, Monstercat, KuCoin, AscendEx, and MoonPay. In 2022, we have recorded more than 4 million active installations across Smart TVs across Africa, the Middle East, Australia and Asia Pacific.
But this is still very early days for unlocking the power of the blockchain for the world and Bolt. Tomorrow, we will usher in a new generation of people empowered to take control of their social networking experience, transforming them into web3-first natives. We will do so through widespread education, adoption, and ease of use. With this in mind, let us review our business focus, progress in 2022, and outlook for the future.
A Focus on Offering Compelling Value
In 2018, we brought a global catalog of live channels to Bolt+, presenting it in an easy-to-search, easy-to-browse format available on mobile and the web. This was an experience that, to this day, does not exist on social platforms. For most of the world, where cable subscriptions–the only way to access quality live channels–are cost-prohibitive and restrictive, this offers people compelling value.
Over the years, we consistently focused on improving the Bolt+ experience and listened closely to our users. As a result, we substantially increased the number of features available to live stream easily on Bolt+, empowering people to share content and connect directly with the communities they were building.
Today, we offer a home feed to easily share content, direct wallet transfers on Bolt+, blockchain-based wallet support, donations, tips, and a live chat feature. Word of mouth and community referrals remain our most potent user acquisition tools. The evolution of Bolt+ to a full-feature social network, built to empower a new generation of content creators, would only have happened with the support and feedback from our community.
Commitment to Product Innovation and Adoption
In 2018 we had yet to invent the BoltX Wallet, start trading the Bolt Token or even enable direct content creation features on Bolt+. But we had poured sweat, creativity, and persistence into each idea. We grew every product in our ecosystem with resilience and creativity together with our users.
Today, we stream 4.5 million minutes of live streams on Bolt+ daily. Our users have made over 1.2 billion API calls to the blockchain protocols we support on the BoltX Wallet. We recorded $780 million in trades for the Bolt Token since 2019. The BoltX wallet now supports NFTs and other digital assets across multiple blockchain platforms. It enables you to easily connect and use your BoltX Wallet at popular marketplaces like OpenSea and UniSwap. You can also purchase crypto using your credit card via MoonPay on BoltX.
Strengthening our Business with a Strong Team, Strategic Investors, and Advisors
In 2022, we onboarded strategic investors as part of our growth journey. We are delighted to be a portfolio company of Trovio Group (Australia, Netherlands, Singapore), MBK Holdings (Qatar), Sansa Advisors (US and Singapore), Primal Capital (UK), and Plutus Investment (UK and US). In addition, several family offices and high-net-worth investors also back us. Each strategic investor represents a core part of our growth journey. They cover interests across M&A activities, digital asset fund management, consumer applications, and enterprise platforms. Presently, both founders of Bolt continue to be the company’s largest shareholders, reflecting our financial commitment to the business.
We have also strengthened our corporate compliance team by appointing external advisors to the business, including Locke Lord, Simmons Gainsford, SPARK Advisory Partners, and PKF International. This reflects our enduring commitment to building a company with a solid grounding in financial controls and corporate governance principles, ensuring our compliance with financial reporting and regulatory requirements.
Our global community of users represents a wide range of genders, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, and political views. Therefore, it is critical that the Bolt team is also diverse and that we foster a culture where inclusion is the norm. We have hired 40 team members, spanning 18 nationalities, of which 30% are female and non-binary hires. In addition, 40% of our executive leadership team are women.
As founders, we must always begin each day with the discipline to be better, do better, and end knowing that we can do even more tomorrow. In our enduring commitment to do right and good, we undertook a business-wide carbon footprint assessment to become the first climate-positive social network by 2040. We are determined to create more than we consume and to leave things better than how we found them. If we achieve that, we will be one decade ahead of the Paris Climate Agreement.
A Global Platform for our Global Community
Enabling everyone to build a community and earn from doing what they love is central to our mission at Bolt. We are working hard to create a global payments infrastructure with minimal hidden fees for people to spend and earn easily on Bolt+. No matter which country you are in or whether you are underbanked or from a developed market. The blockchain is critical for this.
You can use the self-custody BoltX wallet to accept donations easily. You can also directly link your Binance wallet to your Bolt+ account securely. In addition, Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported on Bolt+, for you to donate to your favourite communities and creators easily. You can also cash out instantly with the lowest transaction fees in the industry (10% vs. 60%) in multiple ways; through your Binance wallet, your blockchain-based wallet, or your bank account.
Slowly but surely, our community has grown globally, and we have recorded a strong presence across Africa, Europe, and the US. At any point in time, worldwide, the globe is lit up with people using the Bolt+ social network, the BoltX Wallet, or trading the Bolt Token.
Looking Forward
Since 2018, we have come a long way, working harder than ever to empower and delight our users and community members.
Our goal is to move quickly to extend market leadership across social networking and pursue substantial opportunities in the significant markets we are targeting. In addition, we will continue to focus relentlessly on building solid relationships with our users and offer them unparalleled value in co-creating their community and economic opportunities with us.
We will continue to spend wisely and reinforce a lean and cost-conscious culture. Our growth strategy is to extend a crisp focus on astute working capital management and long-term profitability.
We came so far with our hardworking and talented team. Our continued commitment to hiring a diverse and inclusive team has been the bedrock of what we have done since day one. We take great pride in setting the bar high. We hire good people who are not just brilliant but also have tremendous empathy for the mission we want to achieve. The people we have and the work that springs from that continues to be one of the pillars that define the success of Bolt.
We now know more about social networking than when we founded Bolt in 2018. But this does not mean we know everything. We will leave no stone unturned, and there is much more to learn. We must always remain vigilant, maintain a sense of urgency, and commit to our long-term vision to make the future of Bolt a strong one. We must stand tall and strong among the well-funded competition, pursue the risks of product and geographic expansion with focused execution, and maintain a balanced sense of practical optimism in the face of growing challenges and execution risk. The current global economic climate creates a unique opportunity for Bolt to gain further ground, and we aim to take advantage.
2022 was indeed a transformative year. At Bolt, we are enormously grateful to our users, creators, partners, and investors for their continued support and trust. In addition, we are thankful to our team for their tireless efforts at co-creating this platform with our executive leadership and community worldwide. We have come a long way since 2018 and are even more excited about what we intend to achieve in the year ahead.
Jamal Hassim (CEO) and Christel Quek (CTO)
Co-Founders
Bolt
