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AIPROPX ReportFortune · 3h ago
How Whatnot’s founders turned 100 investor rejections into an $20 billion live-shopping rocket ship
Like Amazon , Airbnb , and many other startup breakthrough stories, Whatnot traces its origins back to a small rental home. But unlike other founder success stories, one of its creators took a rather radical approach to productivity: total seclusion.
Co-founder Logan Head “locked himself in his room for about four or five weeks to build it,” Whatnot CEO Grant LaFontaine told Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle on a recent episode of the Term Sheet vodcast. “He was coding 16 hours a day, six days a week.”
Inspired by their own collectibles habits, LaFontaine and Logan Head launched their livestream shopping app in December 2019, and applied to join Paul Graham’s Y Combinator three months later for the program’s winter cohort. The app has become the largest livestream shopping platform outside of Asia, offering an interactive format where sellers display items for sale via livestream, allowing customers to bid for and ask questions about the products. Whatnot, which has grown into America’s largest livestream shopping app, had one major challenge: hosting its first livestream auction.
“He came out and he’s like, ‘All right, I’m done. We got to test this,’” LaFontaine recalled of the “mentally exhausting” daily grind. “He was just really nervous that it wasn’t going to work.”
The duo had amassed hundreds of Funko Pop figurines, organizing their personal collection within the rental home. Unsure about which format would be most successful, the pair listed half of the figurines under static buy-it-now listings, and livestreamed the other half, both features still existing on the site today. LaFontaine served as the livestream’s host, and within just two and a half hours, they had sold out, raking in $5,000 in a single evening.
“We sold every Funko Pop we had, everything that was in the office,” LaFontaine said. “We had more in the house, but were so tired because it was 11 o’clock at night by that point. But we were very excited: It would have been more Funko Pops than I’d have been able to sell on eBay in a year.”
The rapid rise of Whatnot
Taking place during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the stay-at-home order helped Whatnot flourish due to the nature of the livestream shopping model. Since then, the live-shopping app has enjoyed explosive growth, recently notching a $20 billion valuation, backed by Wonder Ventures, DST Global, and CapitalG. Since October 2025, Whatnot’s valuation has nearly doubled.
Whatnot requires sellers to appear on camera with their stock as a means of preventing fraud. While showing their face isn’t mandatory, sellers must physically show the stock on camera. Unlike e-commerce giants Amazon or Craigslist , Whatnot deliberately targeted a small but fervent base of collectors. Through this approach, the founders honed in on customer service and satisfaction, made much easier by starting small.
“The way you build something really great is by knowing your domain, knowing your customer,” LaFontaine said. “I’ve been a collector since I was in fourth grade. I spent almost all of my career in consumer tech, in two-sided businesses or marketplaces.”
LaFontaine grew up selling Pokémon cards with friends in his hometown in Maine. In fourth grade, he opened an eBay store, expanding his budding business nationwide. His first online sale—a holographic Chansey card—was enough to hook him as a collector and a seller.
Securing funding wasn’t easy
This year alone, 20 million new users have joined Whatnot, with one in eight relying on the platform as their full-time job. But behind that momentum was a string of setbacks.
The founders pitched hundreds of investors, and even kept a spreadsheet logging each meeting’s feedback. They stopped updating it when they hit 100 rows because they were too “demoralized” to continue tracking the failed attempts, LaFontaine said.
“Anything that’s worth doing, you’re going to have some series of ups and downs,” LaFontaine said. “People will say a lot of things, and most of what people say will not be correct. You always have to know at moments in time when you’re getting a bunch of negative news.”
Now, the founders have raised $1 billion through nine rounds of funding since 2020, and the app has grown from its original collectibles niche to over 250 product categories. The platform specializes in trending items, from rare clothing and accessory collections, to toys such as Labubus.
Bringing the Chinese live auction trend to America
Whatnot’s business model is inspired by the Chinese livestreamed auctions popularized on Douyin , a popular Chinese competitor to TikTok. These livestreams offer customers the chance to buy small trinkets hidden behind plastic boxes, capitalizing off the element of mystery and surprise.
In America, livestream culture is gaining steam through TikTok Live . In conjunction with TikTok Shop, creators can use livestreams to promote products they sell on their storefronts through product reviews and live demonstrations. Current bestsellers include Kourtney Kardashian’s Lemme vitamins , with more than 10,400 total orders, and a portable phone charger and speaker , with more than 251,000 total orders. In the U.S., there are an estimated 216,000 active TikTok Shops, according to a Resourcera report from March.
EBay has also implemented a livestream shopping option in 2022, but it’s been limited to certain approved sellers.
Whatnot’s position as a community-based live shopping app is what differentiates it from its competitors. With more than 20 items sold every second on the app, Whatnot hit 1 billion orders last month, most of which occurred only in the last six months, LaFontaine said. The platform has an immense range of products available for purchase, ranging from rare coins and sports memorabilia to appliances and furniture.
It’s also helping small business owners grow their brands. LaFontaine pointed to a San Diego sustainable se...
How Whatnot’sWhatnot’sLike AmazonAirbnbWhatnotLogan HeadWhatnot CEO Grant LaFontaineFortune’s Allie GarfinkleTerm SheetInspiredLaFontainePaul Graham’s Y Combinator
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