Users don't care about 'the market' as an abstract concept—they care about whether a product provides value and enjoyment, and obsessing over building a market distracts from building a great user experience.
Grant articulates a core product philosophy: consumers don't think in terms of 'live shopping markets'—they ask 'what value do you provide me?' This counterintuitive insight drove Whatnot's approach of building great UX rather than trying to replicate Asian live commerce models. ✦ AI generated
Grant LaFrentz · a16z Podcast · 2026-08-19 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 10:57
“And by the way I would just say I think it's probably an asset not a liability that you guys didn't know much about the market because if you knew a lot about the market, you'd probably try to build what existed in the market but like iterate on it as opposed to a new an entirely new thing.”
The punchline... users don't give a about the market. They don't care about the market at all. They care about whether they're going to enjoy the thing. It provides value. And so there there's this counterintuitive thing which is if you built try and build a market it oftentimes distracts from like are you building a really great user experience. Because again like no one's the consumer is not making a going like oh this is a live shopping market and you know I can transact all these things in this market and they're going like well no what are what are you going to provide for me? What's the value?
verbatim transcript · starts at 10:57
10:40in a while so that was that was sort of like the state of the market >> and and by the way I would just say I think it's probably an asset not a liability that you guys didn't know much about the market because if you knew a lot about the market, you'd probably try to build what existed in the market but like iterate on it as opposed to a new
10:57an entirely new thing. >> Yeah. The I was 1,000% an advantage. Yes. >> Um because look, I I think the the punchline and I can get into it is um users don't give a about the market. >> Yeah. >> Um they don't care about the market at all. They care about whether they're going to enjoy the thing. It provides value. >> Yeah. And so there there's this um
11:19counterintuitive thing which is if you built try and build a market it oftentimes distracts from like are you building a really great user experience. Yeah. Because again like no one's the consumer is not making a going like oh this is a live shopping market and you know I can transact all these things in this market and they're going like well no what are what are you going to
11:35provide for me? What's the value? And so um there were a bunch of players who were trying to do that because they sort of saw what was happening in Asian. It's a it's a monster market. It's like a trillion dollar plus market today. Um, and we were like, we don't know. Uh, we were building our Funko Pop marketplace and we were talking to our customers every single day and then we saw our
11:52customers hacking social media in interesting ways and the way they was were trying to hack it by was selling like um the selling items and live video but the experience was really broken. >> Yeah. >> Uh, transactions weren't integrated well. Shipping wasn't payments discovery CX. Um, and we just thought we could build a better one of those and it would solve uh the problems of the customers
12:15we had in the platform. Um, Logan locked himself in his room for a few weeks, came out with the first version of the product and um, I went live, sold out, sold a lot of items and the rest is sort of, you know, history from there. >> That's incredible. Yeah. Awesome. The So, it's interesting to think about what you all provide. So, I think it's a super insightful way to say like
- ·Users don't care about the market at all
- ·They care whether they'll enjoy the product
- ·Market obsession distracts from great UX
- ·Consumers ask: what value do you provide me?
- ·Building 'a market' ≠ building user value
- ·Asian live commerce models aren't the template
- ·Whatnot focused on UX over market abstraction