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My First MillionPeople are doing $100M+ in sales on this app (ft. Whatnot founder)
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CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 1:00
Whatnot’s scale and staying focused despite a $20B valuation
Shaan opens by putting Whatnot’s valuation in perspective and asks Grant how he processes that kind of number. Grant says he avoids focusing on valuation because it can feel obscene and risks complacency, and instead keeps attention on the next problem and ongoing work.
- •Shaan compares Whatnot’s valuation to multiple well-known public companies combined
- •Grant calls the scale “nuts” but says he tries not to fixate on it
- •Grant frames the company as still early with plenty left to build
- •Mindset of staying grounded and focused on execution rather than milestones
- 1:00 – 1:56
The missed investment story and what happened from Grant’s side
Shaan recounts offering to invest and not following up, joking that it cost him dearly. Grant explains that once rounds close the team wants to get back to work, and he simply got busy and didn’t follow up despite intending to.
- •Shaan describes the call where he offered to invest and didn’t get in
- •Grant recalls being busy post-round and not circling back
- •Grant notes Whatnot has had both “hot” and “not hot” fundraising rounds
- •Theme: execution focus can crowd out investor follow-ups
- 1:56 – 3:43
Explaining Whatnot through ‘internet crab’ and live selling anything
Shaan explains Whatnot’s evolution from collectibles into a place where almost anything can be sold live, using his purchase of a crab as an example. Grant reinforces that the seafood category is real and that seeing the source can feel more trustworthy than a supermarket.
- •Shaan describes Whatnot’s range of goods and buys a crab live on the app
- •Grant says he regularly buys seafood on the platform
- •Shaan notes seller profiles show volume and claims a crab seller has earned over $100k
- •Discussion of trust and transparency from seeing the seller/source live
- 3:43 – 8:38
Why start a marketplace at all, and the first pivot away from ‘better Craigslist’
Sam challenges how anyone starts a marketplace and asks how they got early sellers. Grant explains he and Logan were comfortable with consumer marketplaces, started with a full-service Craigslist idea, then learned delivery economics made it unworkable and had to pivot quickly.
- •Sam calls marketplaces durable but extremely hard to start
- •Grant says their careers were in consumer marketplaces, making B2B feel worse to them
- •Origin included a ‘better full-service Craigslist’ concept
- •Grant’s delivery-cost research revealed the idea didn’t work economically
- •They kept building core marketplace components while searching for a better market
- 8:38 – 10:34
Early team, personal runway, and bias-to-action building while uncertain
Sam asks about finances, and Grant shares he had roughly $100k–$200k saved and funded the company check by check. Grant describes hiring cost-effectively (Brazil-based engineer, equity-heavy arrangements) and emphasizes learning by doing, switching directions quickly when evidence changes.
- •Grant self-funded with about $100k–$200k in the bank (excluding 401k)
- •Early hiring relied on cost arbitrage and equity compensation
- •Grant describes an explicit personal cap on how much he’d spend before raising
- •They continued building payments/order systems while exploring new marketplace ideas
- •Bias to action: do, learn, admit wrong, and change course fast
- 10:34 – 18:57
Choosing collectibles: eBay signals, Funko demand, and a ‘user-driven’ philosophy
Grant explains how they repeatedly came back to eBay and saw collectibles surging, then visited packed comic shops and focused on Funko Pops. He describes using category sales trend data, choosing Funko over other options, and framing Whatnot as customer-driven rather than locked to a single founder vision.
- •Grant used eBay category trend data to spot fast growth in collectibles
- •Funko volume on eBay exceeded comic books, influencing the initial niche choice
- •They believed the buying/selling experience hadn’t innovated in decades
- •Grant contrasts customer-driven iteration with rigid ‘vision-driven’ mythology
- •He argues most great consumer companies start niche and expand outward
- 18:57 – 25:37
Seeding the marketplace with ‘black hat’ tactics: being the seller, scraping, giveaways, and cross-listing
Grant details early marketplace hacks: Whatnot acted as the initial seller by authenticating items and sourcing them after purchase, supported by scraping and pricing systems. He also describes partnering with YouTube influencers, running viral high-value giveaways that dominated communities, and later cross-listing sellers’ inventory to other marketplaces to help them get early sales.
- •Whatnot initially supplied inventory themselves to solve the chicken-and-egg problem
- •They authenticated items and sourced them from many stores after purchase
- •They scraped sites and built a pricing approach tied to liquidity and past sales
- •They partnered with Funko influencers on YouTube
- •They ran weekly ‘grail’ giveaways with heavy sharing/referral mechanics that spread through subreddits and groups
- •They cross-listed sellers’ items via Whatnot to bring external demand and retain sellers
- 25:37 – 30:08
Early traction realities: flopped giveaway, mispricing losses, and live as the big inflection
Grant recalls the first giveaway underperformed and cost real money while his bank balance dwindled, but subsequent runs showed growth. He describes the earliest sales being tiny and sometimes unprofitable due to pricing errors, and says launching live in mid-2020 is when the business truly took off.
- •First giveaway produced only ~104 entries and no purchases, creating stress
- •They decided to iterate using push notifications and repeated giveaways to compound sharing
- •Early sales volume was extremely low at first, then rose with influencer help
- •Pricing mistakes led to users exploiting mispricings
- •Grant identifies the launch of live (July 2020) as the major turning point
- 30:08 – 35:09
YC, fundraising skepticism, and rapid scale from thousands to billions in GMV
Grant explains Whatnot went through Y Combinator early, then struggled fundraising during COVID because investors disliked a ‘Funko Pop marketplace’ idea. He shares the company’s fundraising and headcount progression alongside GMV milestones, showing how live drove steep month-over-month growth and subsequent expansion.
- •Grant says they joined YC in January and later faced heavy investor skepticism
- •He says they built and launched a product quickly to have real traction to show
- •Seed funding began with small checks; early team grew to around single digits before seed
- •Grant outlines GMV progression from tens of thousands to millions, then to hundreds of millions and a billion
- •Headcount scaled from under 20 to around 100, then far beyond as the company grew
- 35:09 – 36:58
Why growth accelerated: fun live experience, COVID tailwinds, great early hires, and multi-category compounding
Grant attributes the major growth jump to the live experience being genuinely fun for buyers and transformative for many sellers’ businesses. He acknowledges COVID helped but says performance continued after, and emphasizes that launching multiple categories created cross-pollination and compounding effects, enabled by a very strong early team.
- •Grant says the core live product is “really fun” and powerful for sellers
- •Examples of sellers shifting from physical shops to more sales via the platform
- •COVID is acknowledged as helpful but not the only driver
- •He emphasizes the quality of the first ~30 hires
- •Key operational unlock: launching multiple categories quickly to create compounding effects
- 36:58 – 41:58
Becoming CEO at scale: staying yourself, avoiding ‘corporate’ myths, and building an operating system
Sam asks what Grant had to change as the company scaled, and Grant says people often overcorrect toward corporate behavior. He describes learning to build systems and accountability for a large organization while also softening blunt feedback styles that worked early but can backfire at scale.
- •Grant argues founders don’t need to become overly corporate to lead at scale
- •He warns against assuming big-company exec pedigrees guarantee competence
- •He describes building an operating rhythm and systems for execution
- •Accountability and focus can drift without strong operating processes
- •He adjusted communication style to maintain honesty while avoiding unnecessary harm
- 41:58 – 50:20
Going deep, rejecting fancy language, and a culture of ‘getting to the right answer’
Grant explains his approach to diagnosing issues by drilling into details until the truth is clear, using discovery and feed-ranking as an example where simple A/B test conclusions can mislead. He argues big words can obscure weak understanding, and he pushes teams to explain concepts simply to ensure real clarity and better decisions.
- •Grant describes repeatedly “going to the bottom” of complex problems to find truth
- •He critiques overreliance on A/B tests in networked systems
- •He reframes complex terms into simple questions (e.g., how seller outcomes change with traffic)
- •He pushes back against ‘sounding smart’ and demands clear explanations
- •He and Shaan discuss how this style improves decision-making even if it can be uncomfortable
- 50:20 – 53:46
Disagreeable but not rude: the Facebook experience that shaped his leadership style
Sam asks how Grant manages to challenge ideas without being rude. Grant cites a negative experience in a senior product review at Facebook where yelling and poor handling killed motivation, and says he tries to imagine what would help someone do their best work while still pushing for high standards.
- •Grant says he aims to put himself in others’ shoes to get the best work
- •He acknowledges he’s not perfect and can lose patience at times
- •He recounts a politicized project and a product review where a leader yelled at people
- •That experience contributed to his decision to leave Facebook
- •He concludes that being mean or combative rarely produces great organizational output
- 53:46 – 1:00:19
Moving faster than you think, surprising Whatnot trends, and the rise of nine-figure sellers
Grant shares his belief that if you have time to talk about moving fast, you’re probably moving slow, and that teams can always go faster. He then discusses surprising categories on Whatnot (squishy toys, seafood, gold and silver bars), predicts major growth for live commerce overall, and describes sellers scaling from small teams into large operations with multiple nine-figure sellers on the platform.
- •Grant’s maxim: if you think you’re moving fast, you’re probably not
- •Examples of unusual high-demand categories: NeeDohs/squishies, seafood, precious metals
- •Grant claims live commerce is currently single-digit percent of e-commerce and expects massive expansion
- •He says Whatnot has multiple nine-figure sellers and describes one operation growing from a few people to ~150–200
- •He highlights ecosystem opportunities like wholesale sourcing marketplaces and service networks supporting live sellers
