Can Whatnot Bring Live Shopping To The West?

More details: Found here

Headlines:

Grant LaFontaine was the first person to host a live-shopping stream on Whatnot. He sold $5,000 worth of products in the space of two hours. "And I'm not a particularly entertaining character," says LaFontaine, who is co-founder and CEO of the platform.

Whatnot, on the other hand, is designed to be entertaining. It operates like a live auction: sellers live stream while showing off products to be sold, which can be purchased in real-time. Initially launching with a focus on collectibles, the platform has expanded to over 140 categories in nine geographies.

The California startup was founded in 2019 by LaFontaine (who has a background in product management) and Logan Head (who is chief technology officer and has a background in software engineering). In January, Whatnot raised $265 million in a series E funding round, led by venture capital firm Greycroft along with DST Global and Avra. Its valuation now sits at $5 billion.

"We had been buyers and sellers online for so long and we felt there was something around social or more experiential commerce," says LaFontaine. "We didn't build from the place of wanting to jump on live shopping because it's great business — it was a product that was really fun for ourselves and something our community wants."

On average, Whatnot customers make tenfold more transactions and spend 4.5 times more when shopping via live stream compared with other peer-to-peer marketplaces, according to data analytics provider Bloomberg Second Measure. Whatnot says its gross merchandise value for live-stream sales surpassed $3 billion in 2024, and the number of new sellers and first-time buyers doubled compared with the prior year.

"Asia has been a leading indicator of where the consumer is going for a long time, but people have looked at Asia and said, 'Let's copy what they're doing.' And that's never the right way to do things," says LaFontaine. "A lot of early attempts were copycats rather than platforms that built unique user value." Now, the company's challenge will be to maintain the user experience while embarking on a fast growth trajectory and building out awareness and adoption.

#news