How Whatnot Built a Global Marketplace

**Grant LaFontaine** (0:00)
If you look at eCommerce today, you have to know exactly what you're looking for.

**David George** (0:05)
Live commerce is over a third of all commerce in Asia. Is that right?

**Grant LaFontaine** (0:10)
30 to 40 percent of all commerce is live commerce in China.

**David George** (0:13)
What is it in the US today?

**Grant LaFontaine** (0:14)
Single digits, really. Experience is really broken. Transactions weren't integrated well, shipping wasn't, payments, discovery, CX, and we just thought we could build a better one of those.

**David George** (0:24)
I want to start all the way back when you were a kid. Your first online sale was a holographic Pokémon card.

**Grant LaFontaine** (0:32)
At that point in time was when eBay was getting started. I was like, wait, you can make money from Pokémon cards? I love Pokémon cards, I can make money from doing it. The first one sold for 10 bucks. That's probably the true origin stories of Whatnot.

**David George** (0:44)
Users spend 95 minutes a day on the platform, is that right?

**Grant LaFontaine** (0:48)
Yeah, about 95 minutes.

**David George** (0:49)
It's incredible.

**Grant LaFontaine** (0:50)
Users don't give a shit about the market. They care about whether they're going to enjoy the thing, it provides value, and that's the experience that makes it fun and keeps you coming back.

**David George** (0:59)
What are the most exciting things that you're building towards that you want to grow into over the coming 12 months?

**Grant LaFontaine** (1:06)
I mean...

**SPEAKER_3** (1:07)
Online shopping has become incredibly efficient. Whatnot is betting it can also be fun. In this episode, a16z general partner David George sits down with Whatnot co-founder Grant LaFontaine to unpack how live shopping combines commerce, entertainment, discovery and community in a way traditional e-commerce doesn't. Grant shares how selling a Pokémon card online in elementary school eventually came full circle with Whatnot, why the company stumbled into live commerce by watching what its users were already doing, and how the platform has expanded from collectibles into more than 100 categories.
They also discuss the small businesses being built on the platform, why trust and safety accounts for a significant part of a company's investment, and how Whatnot is using AI to help sellers scale without taking the humans out of the experience.

**David George** (1:59)
Okay, I want to start all the way back when you were a kid. So, I understand that your first online sale was a holographic Pokémon card, and the buyer mailed you a money order, and you cashed it at the post office, and then you shipped the card.
So, what age was this? This is like a formative young age.

**Grant LaFontaine** (2:21)
I must have been third or fourth grade. I want to say, so I don't know, how old are you there, like seven, eight, nine, something like that?

**David George** (2:26)
Yeah, okay. So, there's all these stories of a founder kind of finding their market this early. Tell me about you kind of having that experience and making it a formative piece of starting Whatnot eventually.

**Grant LaFontaine** (2:36)
Well, I think all kids back then, there was just a Pokémon craze.
Pokémon cards became big, get my dad to go bring me to the shop, open my Pokémon cards, I had my binder, had all my Charizard's in it, had everything, and I had down sort of the street from where I was living, I was like a little lake and hangout area, and me and my friend used to go there and we'd trade Pokémon cards, and I'd try and hustle people on getting the better cards. And then at that point in time was when eBay was getting started, and their biggest competitor was Yahoo Auctions, and I don't know how I found out about it, but I found out about it and was like, wait, you can make money from Pokémon cards? I love Pokémon cards, I can make money from doing it. And so I got my dad to help me set up an account, and I posted my bunch of my holographic cards online, the first one sold for 10 bucks. And it was the holographic Chansey card.

**David George** (3:24)
Chansey was the Chansey card, yeah.

**Grant LaFontaine** (3:25)
And the thing that always feels funny about that is that at that point in time, internet was so nascent, you weren't doing payments online, which is just crazy. Yeah.

**David George** (3:34)
Yeah, this is clunky. I mean, yeah, early days, there was no trust to do it. The infrastructure didn't exist, but there was no trust either, obviously.

**Grant LaFontaine** (3:41)
Yes, but it's also pretty wild that there was enough trust that someone would send you the money order in the mail and sort of hope you would then send the card back. So I remember I got the money order, okay, I can send the card now, dad, can you bring me to the post office? I'm going to wrap it up and send it off. And that's probably the true origin stories of Whatnot. Whatnot's pretty funny in that almost all of my experience in life, like the big bits, all of my core jobs have come full circle and whatnot. Yeah. It was like Pokémon cards. And I worked at YouTube for a long time. And so I did video and then I was working at Facebook and was working on marketplace stuff. And so I did some of that and then Whatnot, sort of the amalgamation of all those things. Yeah.