Tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo, 30, just lately dethroned Taylor Swift because the youngest self-made feminine billionaire on the planet. However don’t count on her to be popping Champagne bottles.
“I feel like the title changes every year,” Guo instructed The Submit in regards to the Forbes journal rating. “It means almost nothing to me personally.”
Guo’s billion-dollar bounty comes from Scale AI, the synthetic intelligence data-labeling startup she launched in 2016 with Alexandr Wang, when she was simply 21. She left two years later however held onto an estimated 5% stake — a small slice that changed into a large windfall this April when insider shares valued Scale AI at $25 billion, making Guo’s lower price an estimated $1.2 billion.
So, yeah. She’s formally a billionaire, however doesn’t really feel like one.
Guo’s motto? “Act broke, stay rich.”
The coder-turned-founder nonetheless clocks 90-hour workweeks with a schedule that begins at 5:30 a.m. and ends at midnight — together with as much as 4 Barry’s Bootcamp lessons a day. Guo credit her “no sleep” DNA to her dad and mom, Chinese language immigrants who labored as engineers within the San Francisco Bay space.
The fast-talking tech trailblazer doesn’t imagine in losing time.
“I don’t watch TV or scroll TikTok,” Guo admitted. “So that gives me many extra hours in a day. I’m constantly on the go, whereas a lot of people build in relaxation time. I do fill in my schedule with fun stuff, like at 10 p.m. maybe I’ll go get dinner with friends.”
Whereas she might not splurge on Bentleys or Birkins, Guo has no scarcity of pursuits — together with Barry’s, EDM music festivals, skateboarding, skydiving, accumulating Pokémon plushies and constructing startups from scratch.
Her newest skilled ardour venture is Passes, the creator-driven platform she based in 2022 that’s already producing six-figure incomes for influencers, YouTubers, podcasters, astrologers and even golfers.
“Passes is a full-stack business platform for creators,” Guo defined. “They can sell merch, subscriptions, unreleased YouTube videos, live streams and group chats to their superfans all in one place.”
The concept for Passes got here to her throughout the pandemic whereas working a start-up incubator. Guo noticed creators like Logan Paul and Kylie Jenner constructing nine-figure manufacturers and realized the actual energy lay in possession.
“Creators are very unique. They can sell anything, and they don’t have the typical customer acquisition costs that normal people have,” she mentioned. “They are these small businesses that can become larger businesses, but they’ve been mismanaged. No one was helping them get equity or build generational wealth.”
With Passes, Guo goals to repair that. She’s launched a collection of instruments to assist creators monetize their manufacturers, from in-house design to AI. Most importantly, creators preserve 90% of their income.
“We’ve become 80% to 100% of the creator’s income,” Guo mentioned with apparent pleasure. “Even creators who have millions of followers on other platforms tell us that we are the most consistent income they have, and the majority of their income as well.”
Not like Instagram or TikTok, Passes is concentrated on the connection between creators and their superfans, with monetization baked in. “Instagram builds for breadth,” Guo mentioned. “Passes builds for depth. We’re more like Patreon.”
Nonetheless, comparisons to a different platform, OnlyFans, persist. She insist’s that not correct.
“Our feature set is vastly different from OF. And even if you’re not doing nudes on OF, the type of creator we attract would never go on OF because they don’t want that as part of their brand.”
The digital disruptor additionally factors out that Passes has a no-nudity coverage and stricter tips than OF. However, there’s been some controversy at Passes. A category-action lawsuit this yr alleged underage content material slipped via the cracks — claims Guo calls “a shakedown.”
“We filed a motion to dismiss,” she mentioned, denying the allegations. “Their claims don’t match the investigation that we found. Bad actors are always going to be bad actors, and we just do our best to try to prevent this.”
Passes at present has round 50 workers, hundreds of creators and hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The most important moneymakers embody golfer Charley Hull, YouTuber Sssniper Wolf and a shocking area of interest: astrologers who promote every day horoscopes.
“Our creators are doing amazing things,” Guo mentioned. “And we’re just getting started.”
Her profession has all the time been forward of the curve. She started coding in second grade, studied laptop science and HCI at Carnegie Mellon — after which dropped out after incomes a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship. The California native interned at Fb, turned the primary feminine designer at Snapchat and met her Scale AI cofounder, Wang, at Quora. The remaining is billion-dollar historical past.
However regardless of her self-made standing, Guo remains to be typically underestimated.
“People don’t understand how much work it takes to get here,” she mentioned. “They see the headlines, but they don’t see the 18-hour days.”
And the billionaire has had her justifiable share of headlines, together with the time she hosted a wild rager at her $6.1 million luxurious house in Miami, replete with a lemur and snake. The celebration didn’t win over her neighbors like David Beckham, and he or she was reprimanded by the constructing’s HOA.
Quickly after, Guo moved again to the West Coast, and purchased a $4.2 million, five-bedroom mansion in Los Angeles that boasts a dipping pool and screening room.
Being in LA additionally permits her to personally work together with creators in Passes’ 25,000-square-foot state-of-the-art workplace.
“They come to our office to shoot content and record podcasts,” she mentioned. “It’s a relationship-driven business. We’re even building a music studio.”
Guo’s love of music, particularly EDM, runs deep. Her obsession started at age 20, when she noticed Main Lazer at Exterior Lands Music & Arts Pageant at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
“When I was living in San Francisco, I was not as happy as a person,” she admitted. “But I was blown away by my first EDM experience. I think it’s been proven that EDM makes you happier based off the BPM. It’s all very positive, happy energy.”
Guo’s now studying to DJ and sometimes hops behind the decks when buddies carry out: “I played for 30 minutes at a club in LA recently and people were like, ‘That set was so good!’”
She all the time retains a music-filled USB in her bag, and can fly to a music pageant on a minute’s discover, particularly for her favourite DJs like Layton Giordani, Kygo, Gryffin, Mau P. and Zedd.
Already this summer season, she hit Europe for a month of VIP entry at numerous music festivals. Guo additionally attended the A-list launch of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Assortment in Barcelona, alongside Tom Brady, Sofía Vergara and Naomi Campbell. She’s subsequent planning to go to Kenya and witness firsthand the good migration of wildlife throughout the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem.
“I pick destinations based on views or mountains,” she mentioned. “If it has a Barry’s Bootcamp, even better.”
Guo can also be a low-key Swiftie — although she jokes that beating Taylor Swift on the billionaire checklist hasn’t modified issues a lot for her.
“The only difference is my DMs are popping,” she mentioned. “Lots of celebrities trying to hang out. But now I’m more cautious. Do they think I’m hot? Do they want advice? Or are they just hoping for a PJ ride? It’s made me put up my guard more.”
Guo was even mistakenly linked to Orlando Bloom in a tabloid as a result of they had been noticed subsequent to one another at a celebration.
“I turned around and glanced at a wall, and the paparazzi snapped a photo,” she mentioned, laughing. “I’m definitely not dating Orlando Bloom.”
The 30-year-old insists she doesn’t have time up to now, in reality.
“I’ve been on all sides — engineer, VC, founder — but what excites me the most is product,” she mentioned. “Figuring out the next feature, building tools people actually use, helping creators go big. That’s what I love.”
Simply don’t count on Guo to decelerate anytime quickly.
“I have too much energy to burn.”
