While the world’s leading ride-sharing business was blowing billions of dollars trying to buy global domination, Markus Villig was busy doing the opposite with Bolt. Working on a meager budget, he built a $8.4 billion operation – and an $700 million fortune — by focusing on overlooked markets in Africa and Europe.
A gun convinced Markus Villig that he was in the wrong business. It was 2015, and the then-21-year-old founder of Bolt was in Belgrade, Serbia, pitching a local taxicab capo on using his app as a digital dispatcher for drivers. The revolver casually left on the boss’s desk sent a clear message: These were rough customers in a brutal business. Villig, who had cofounded Bolt with his older brother Martin two years earlier, was suddenly sure he wanted nothing to do with them. “These were not very nice people to try to do business with,” he recalls.
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