Assertion Not checkable as stated
Whatnot's revenue has never grown less than 90 percent year-over-year
“I don't think we've ever grown under, like, you know, top line sales. I mean, revenue's probably never grown under 90% a year. In the entire history of the business.”
Insight
TikTok struggles with commerce because users visit for video, not shopping
“Like, say, TikTok, amazing product, but people are going there to, like, watch videos, not necessarily shop, and I think that pattern's really hard. So we've always believed there's opportunity for a player who's purpose built to be world class at shopping and…”
Insight
LLMs cannot beat traditional machine learning for core ranking systems yet
“In core ranking systems I haven't seen anything yet that's, like, much better than the state-of-the-art machine learning models. So I'd say we're, at least in core ranking systems, probably not a lot of LLMs.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The average Whatnot user watches 80 minutes of video per day
“And the average person watches 80 minutes.”
Insight
Collectors buy items primarily to socialize around shared interests
“A lot of why you collect is not necessarily for the object, but to sort of hang out and talk to people about your interests.”
Disclosure
Food and drink is Whatnot's most exciting future expansion category
“So the one, the future category I'm most excited about, it's still early innings, is food and drink.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Labubu collectibles generate hundreds of millions in annualized sales on Whatnot
“I mean, it was pretty much came out of nowhere, and then was doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales on whatnot. It still is, I think.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The vast majority of daily Whatnot livestream viewers buy nothing
“So unlike any given day, the vast majority of people who are watching do not purchase anything.”
Assertion Supported
The Asian live shopping market nears one trillion dollars in sales
“The live shopping market in Asia is like monstrous, you know, like nearly a trillion dollars in sales.”
Disclosure
Whatnot founders were completely unaware of Asia's live shopping boom
“Although we had no idea. Yeah. We literally had no idea.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Whatnot pitched Y Combinator as a Funko Pop marketplace without video
“Our initial pitch was basically A social commerce like marketplace for Funko Pops, which are like little vinyl dolls. And that was it. You can, that's what's in the YC application. And we didn't have any idea we were going to do video.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Whatnot sold $5,000 in Funko Pops during its first livestream test
“And I did the first live stream because we, you know, we gotta like make sure it works. And I sold 5000 dollars worth of Funko Pops in two hours.”
Disclosure
Whatnot grew purely through word of mouth for its first four years
“Almost the first three or four years of the business, we basically just focused on collectibles and enthusiast categories which we sort of broaden out maybe like if you're into cars and things like that. And it was fundamentally because these categories, peopl…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Overstock and old-season inventory dominate Whatnot's fashion vertical sales
“I would say the dominant sort of theme in, in fashion is probably like old season inventory or overstock.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The top sellers on Whatnot now employ more than 100 staff
“And so the handful of people who are in the tippity top tier, You know, you're looking at operations with like a hundred plus employees at this point. So pretty big.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Trust and safety is likely Whatnot's largest internal team
“You know, our trust and safety and customer, Experience team's probably our biggest team at the whole company, so we do take this stuff, like, very seriously.”
