Whatnot founder: This is the future of e-commerce

Whatnot scaled from 30 monthly sales to $1B in sales within three years by betting live commerce will reach 30%+ of US e-commerce, mirroring China's ~40% penetration.

• From $200K to $20B: Grant Lafontaine and co-founder Logan started Whatnot in late 2019 with ~$100-200K personal savings, hit 30 sales in month one, $2.3M by end of 2020, $163M in year two, and $1B in year three.
• Live selling was the unlock: Whatnot launched live auctions in July 2020, after starting as a Funko Pop marketplace where Lafontaine himself was the initial seller, sourcing and pricing pops via a scraped-data algorithm.

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