Whatnot is fundamentally empowering small businesses by giving them a brand, customers, and repeat business -- the opposite of e-commerce trends that obscured seller identity.
Grant explains that Whatnot empowers small businesses by letting them build brands, own customer relationships, and get repeat business -- the polar opposite of e-commerce trends that made sellers interchangeable and obscured who you're buying from. The platform generates billions for businesses ranging from 1-2 person operations to a couple hundred employees. ✦ AI generated
Grant LaFontaine · a16z Podcast · 2026-08-19 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 22:28
“By being a marketplace, you enable all this new business creation or business growth of existing businesses that otherwise would not exist. So I'd love to explore that a little bit.”
whatnot is sort of the polar opposite. if you're on whatnot, you're going to have your store, you're going to have your brand, you're going to have your customers, they're going to come back to you. And so, you know, I think that's one of the one of the best bits of the platform is, you know, we're generating billions and billions and billions of dollars for small businesses. And these are anywhere from, you know, one and two person operations all the way up to maybe a couple hundred folks at the high end.
verbatim transcript · starts at 22:28
22:09efficient and one of the ways to make it so efficient is to obscure who you're buying from and obscure the ability for people to like build brands and businesses around it. And whatnot is sort of the polar opposite. if you're on whatnot, you're going to have your store, you're going to have your brand, you're going to have your customers, they're going to come back to you. And
22:26so, you know, I think that's one of the one of the best bits of the platform is, you know, we're generating billions and billions and billions of dollars for small businesses. And these are anywhere from, you know, one and two person operations all the way up to maybe a couple hundred folks at the high end. >> That's amazing. Yeah. The uh I I think you've compared it in the past to like a
22:44local shop owner or like a local pub owner. And if you think about what whatnot allows that person to do compared to say Amazon which is like highly utilitarian um you know highly gamified and like competition among first party third party international sellers like it's just an entirely different experience on the sell side >> um that will allow someone who's creative and ambitious to thrive maybe in a way that they wouldn't otherwise on
23:11those platforms. Is that fair? Yeah, I think it just empowers small business in a way where maybe the the prior trend was to almost disempower small business and obscure them away. Yeah. Yeah. That's well said. That's well said. Um so you have really interesting insight into all of these different types of entrepreneurs, right? So, um I'd love to maybe start with just, you know, the original categories