Live shopping: Whatnot's founder explains why live commerce will take over the West
Grant LaFontaine · Co-fundador e CEO do Whatnot
▶ Listen / WatchGrant LaFontaine, co-founder and CEO of Whatnot ($20B), explains how a collectibles marketplace became the West's largest live shopping platform — and why live commerce, already 30% of retail in China, is still single digits in the US.
Who they are
Grant LaFontaine é co-fundador e CEO do Whatnot, a maior plataforma de live shopping do Ocidente, avaliada em US$ 20 bilhões. Começou vendendo cartas de Pokémon no eBay e construiu um marketplace que une colecionáveis, entretenimento e comércio ao vivo.
Highlights
- Live commerce is already over a third of all commerce in Asia — and still single digits in the West.
- Whatnot was born from a teenager selling Pokémon cards on eBay — and realizing he could make money at it.
- Live shopping is entertainment and discovery, not just purchase intent: the buyer doesn't know what they want until they see it.
- Trust was the founding obstacle: without infrastructure and without trust, live commerce seemed impossible — until it wasn't.
- A marketplace is business creation: every seller on the platform is a new entrepreneur who wouldn't exist before.
In conversation with a16z General Partner David George, Whatnot co-founder and CEO Grant LaFontaine tells how a collectibles marketplace became one of the world's leading live shopping platforms — valued at $20 billion — and why live commerce, which already dominates Asia, is still crawling in the West.
From Pokémon cards to live commerce
Whatnot's origin is a childhood story: LaFontaine sold Pokémon cards on eBay as a teenager.
eBay was getting started and I was like, 'Wait, you can make money from Pokémon cards? I love Pokémon cards and I can make money from doing it.' The first one sold for 10 bucks. That's probably the true origin story.
Decades later, that collector's intuition became a thesis: a generation that grew up on mobile phones, with disposable income, is rediscovering the joy of buying things they love — live.
Live commerce already won in Asia
The data behind Whatnot's bet is the gap between East and West.
Live commerce is over a third of all commerce in Asia. 30% live commerce in China. What is it in the US today? Single digits really. The experience is really broken.
For LaFontaine, the West hasn't adopted live shopping because the experience is still broken: poorly integrated transactions, payments and discovery separated. Whatnot was built to fix exactly that.
Entertainment, not just intent
A central idea of the conversation is that live shopping inverts the logic of traditional e-commerce.
Shopping often starts with intent. How much of the idea is entertainment versus intent? — The live commerce buyer doesn't arrive knowing what they want: they discover, get entertained, and buy on emotional impulse.
It's the difference between searching for a product and watching a live auction of a rare card — the thrill of discovery is the product.
Trust: the founding obstacle
When Whatnot launched in 2019, live commerce was seen as unviable in the West. Everything was missing — including trust.
There was no trust to do it. The infrastructure didn't exist but there was no trust either obviously. It's also pretty wild that there was enough trust that it worked.
The answer was building the infrastructure from scratch: integrated payments, seller verification, return policies — making live safe enough to scale.
Marketplace as an entrepreneur factory
LaFontaine highlights the most underrated effect of a marketplace: every seller is a business that wouldn't exist without the platform.
By being a marketplace, you enable all this new business creation or business growth of existing businesses that otherwise would not exist.
With zero-cost supply and network-driven demand, Whatnot became a machine for new entrepreneurs — explaining the $20 billion valuation and a16z's bet.
Why it matters
Live shopping is the next big vector of Western e-commerce — and Whatnot is the laboratory where it's being tested. Understanding how LaFontaine thinks about the product is understanding where digital commerce is heading.