00:00Thinking of myself as a role model, the one advice I try to give people is like, yes, it can sometimes feel like you're fighting an uphill battle being a woman.
00:09Discrimination does exist. I think that like you're going to have a lot more people that are hoping for your demise because they don't want to see a woman succeed.
00:17I just tell them like it sucks, but like just work harder, prove everyone wrong and use that as a driving force to win.
00:24A 2018 30 Under 30 alum, Lucy Guo was named Forbes' youngest self-made woman billionaire in April of 2025 at only 30 years old.
00:35Guo was one of just six self-made women billionaires on the planet under the age of 40.
00:39She's also the only one who's made the bulk of her fortune from a company she left years ago.
00:45I think that like we're about to see a lot more entrepreneurs be women and valuations grow at a tremendous rate.
00:51Like I wouldn't be surprised if someone else took the title next year, but it's really exciting to see.
00:57Guo, who co-founded Buzzy artificial intelligence startup Scale AI in 2016 with Alexander Wang, is now estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of $1.3 billion, largely due to her ownership of just under 5% of Scale AI.
01:13I still live a very frugal lifestyle.
01:16Like, for example, for lunch, I get like buy one, get one, freeze all the time, or like, you know, the 50% off deals.
01:23If like one day I decide I need a private jet, maybe I'll sell some shares, but like at the moment, I'm very happy buying commercial.
01:30Guo unseats pop star Taylor Swift, who has held the title since Forbes declared her a billionaire in late 2023.
01:38Taylor has always struck me as someone that's like very pro-woman and wants other people to win.
01:43I am like a huge fan of her. I think she's an icon. I think that like meeting her last year, like it was a handshake.
01:51She probably doesn't remember who I am, was like the highlight of my entire year.
01:56So, yeah, she's amazing and I hope she's okay with it.
02:00Guo's parents, both electrical engineers, had migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area.
02:05Growing up with Chinese immigrant parents really shaped who I am today.
02:09I think that like my Asian parents really valued discipline, they valued education, they valued money, right?
02:15They were extremely frugal and that was what allowed them to save up and invest and really help support like my education.
02:23Growing up, Guo made her own money mowing lawns and selling Pokemon cards in order to buy the toys and clothes her parents considered wasteful.
02:31I would hide my money inside like the middle of Harry Potter books or like other hiding spots, really.
02:36But they just kept on finding it and I was like, I need this to stop.
02:40On the internet, she discovered two things.
02:42A new way to hide her money electronically with PayPal and a new way to make money, creating virtual pets on a browser-based game called Neopets.
02:52I discovered like people were botting to essentially get these items and get these pets.
02:56So I started going on the internet to learn how to like make these bots, which is like very simple JavaScript code back then.
03:03And I just started making bots to be able to like auto-adopt rare pets, like auto-buy like morphine potions on the internet, etc.
03:11And I would just resell all these items and then make money and I could sell like 10 rare-ish pets and then get enough money to buy myself an extra rare pet.
03:20I think I was around like second, third grade when I was doing this.
03:22Guo leaned into her entrepreneurial spirit, continuing to code well into her later teen years, studying computer science and human-computer interactions at Carnegie Mellon University.
03:34I think like almost every single child in America, not just, you know, Asian children are told, hey, you need to go to college, you need to study, get a good degree, get a good job.
03:43I just like felt like I wasn't learning as much in college as I was going to these hackathons.
03:48So these hackathons were like 24, 48 hour coding competitions held at various universities where you would make apps essentially and then win prizes.
03:56And I was learning like new languages.
03:58Like literally I learned how to like make iOS apps within a weekend at these events.
04:02I felt like I was learning more at these hackathons than I was in school and I've always optimized my life for learning.
04:07So when the opportunity came to like drop out of college and be able to learn outside of school, I took it.
04:14In 2014, Guo became a Teal Fellow, a program sponsored by billionaire investor Peter Teal to pay entrepreneurial college aid students to drop out or skip college and instead create companies.
04:26I got to live in a house with like 20 Teal Fellows who are all brilliant and it really opened up opportunities for me.
04:36And even to this day, like every single one of the Teal Fellows I've met, they're all doing incredibly well.
04:40And I think a lot of it is like their own drive, but also the resources that we all received from the outside world.
04:47People just wanted to help you if you were a Teal Fellow, which is cool to see.
04:50In 2015, Guo got a job as a product designer at question and answer firm Quora.
04:57I felt like I would learn more working at a company and actually shipping products and seeing the impact that the products I shipped had versus like trying again on a new idea.
05:06Guo left Quora and worked briefly at Snapchat, continuing her career in product design under a different kind of leadership with CEO Evan Spiegel.
05:15When I first got to Snap, Evan was like, we don't do A-B tests here.
05:19And he was like very product oriented and it was like very much so gut feeling where you would design something, he would just play around with it.
05:25And then like when it felt good, he was like, this is great.
05:28But he could also change his mind a lot.
05:31About a year into her time at Snap, Guo reconnected with an old colleague, Alexander Wang.
05:36I started getting the itch to build product again.
05:39So I hit up Alexander who I had met at Quora and I was like, hey, like we should apply to YC.
05:44So we started working on a bunch of side projects.
05:46The first one was ClassPass for clubbing.
05:48Like it was a total failure.
05:50But while at the startup accelerator, Y Combinator, the duo's next project was a success.
05:56In 2016, Guo and Wang started Scale AI, a company that labels the data required to power AI.
06:03I had essentially built up the entire operations team that labels data and that today is still the main like thing the company does.
06:10Right. Alexander was focused a lot on like sales to enterprise companies and like making revenue from them.
06:16And I was dealing with like thousands of scalers essentially complaining that they weren't getting payments on time, et cetera.
06:22And that just became like a little bit frustrating for me.
06:25We had like different priorities in terms of roadmap.
06:27Customers grew to include the U.S. government, which used Scale's tech to analyze satellite images in Ukraine, and OpenAI, which used it to help train ChatGPT.
06:39But in 2018, Guo left the company.
06:42I'm very proud of what the Scale team has done.
06:45I think that like clearly like the company is doing very well, which means that like maybe Alex was right.
06:49Like it made more sense to focus on getting contracts.
06:53After leaving Scale, I was like, what have I not done before?
06:56And I've been an engineer.
06:57I've been a product designer.
06:58I've been a founder.
06:59I've done operations.
07:01But I had never done venture really.
07:03After Guo left Scale, she started a small venture capital firm called Backend Capital to invest in early stage companies.
07:10One of its best investments, a six-figure bet in 2020 on financial software firm Ramp, a company now valued at $13 billion.
07:20Guo not only financed these startups, she also lived in a house with a bunch of the founders.
07:26Honestly, like I am at passes today because I was in that environment.
07:30Like when living with these founders, I felt that energy.
07:33I felt that ambition.
07:34I was like, wow, like I want to build a company again.
07:36In 2022, she shifted her focus away from the VC firm to start her own business called Passes, which is similar to Patreon and OnlyFans, a platform for creators and celebrities to connect with fans who pay for online chats and videos.
07:51I ended up raising $9 million over text message for our seed round, which is crazy with like no deck, no real idea, no name.
08:00It was genuinely one of the more incredible things I think I happened to pull off.
08:05I really do believe we are the first creator commerce platform.
08:08We're not just a subscription platform, but we really provide a toolbox for creators to monetize their brand and become an entrepreneur.
08:15So not only do they monetize off of subscription, but we have live streamings.
08:19We have like one-on-one video calling.
08:21We get to change people's lives every single day.
08:23We have creators tell us like, hey, like because of you, I'm able to support my family.
08:28I'm able to like buy a house.
08:29I'm able to pay off my loans.
08:30We literally see people's lives change overnight, where before they might have been making like $2,000 a month, and suddenly they're making like $100,000 a month.
08:39And that really is mind-blowing and life-changing for them.
08:42And it allows them the time to be able to pursue their passions, whether it is just creating content for their fans or it's an entirely new hobby.
08:49Pass has also signed deals with celebrities, including gymnast Olivia Dunn, basketball legend Sakiel O'Neal, and DJ Kygo.
08:58And it hosts big bashes like a recent event at the Coachella Music Festival.
09:03I think in our business, emotional attention is incredibly important.
09:07There's only so much that you get in terms of like connection with a human being when it's over text message, email, Zoom, et cetera.
09:14And by having events at passes, we're able to allow the community to get to know us better as a team, and then also be able to connect with other creators on our platform.
09:24I think our investors actually really want us to do more events because they realize the importance of emotional retention.
09:31And they believe that it is like a marketing tool.
09:35People, especially creators, care about being cool, and they want us to be a cool brand that does good events.
09:41I was actually told by one investor who was like, make sure none of your events are ever bad.
09:48And I'm like, okay, noted.
09:55One glance at Guo's social media accounts, and you'll see how she practices what she preaches.
10:01Especially in the creator economy, things are built off of trust, and I'm very authentic on my social media.
10:05And I think that actually makes me different than a lot of founders out there who are more rigid in what they are posting because they want a certain image.
10:13Passes is now valued at $150 million, adding to Guo's wealth.
10:18But her parents' passion for her education has never let up.
10:21Even after scale, you know, I was like worth nine figures, et cetera.
10:24They were like, so when are you going back to college?
10:26They were like, we don't even care what degree you get.
10:28You can study history just to go back to college.
10:31I was like, wow, you'll let me study history?
10:34As I've grown up, I've realized, like, my parents may have been strict, but they've always just really wanted the best for me.
10:40And it feels nice that, like, now they're proud.
10:42So, yay.
