How Lucy Guo Is Building A Creator Empire with Shaq, Kygo & Olivia Dunne | Passes

I was supposed to be at that dinner. You should have. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I got the invite, but I didn't see it on WhatsApp, and I was like, oh, oops, but he, yeah. well you should have came and we'll pick up the conversation from that here so ted livingston the former founder of kick actually led the conversation and he was talking about what the next evolution of consumer social would be we all went around the table it was full of creators it was full of founders investors some crypto people so we got a diverse set of opinions and i'm curious from your perspective, being boots on the ground in the creator space, what do you think consumer social is going to end up like? Are we going to be VR? Are we going to be in real life? Where do we go? I mean, I'm very biased, but I think the future of consumer social is what we're building right now because right now creators are finding that they don't like the algorithm because it's so unpredictable and that brand deals are just really disappearing. So creators are really trying to figure out a way to like make money full time um i think we saw this during the pandemic where um creators realized that their income was more unstable than they had initially thought

um and they had started seeking um their fans to like essentially support them um which is when like patreon really blew up right they raised a four billion dollar valuation um only fans blew up etc uh and i just saw an opening in the market um for i was like direct fan to creator interactions so creators can make a living and like really be an entrepreneur. So here I am building passes and I hope we are the future of the creator economy. What are the main channels that most of your creators are building off of? Yeah, so I would say the main channels that creators are making money off of right now are subscription, DMs, live streaming, and our marketplace where they can sell both like physical and digital merchandise.

So digital being anything from like a custom video request, very similar to Cameo, all the way to like selling their own custom hoodies. right another large story that's happening alongside this shift in the creator space is also big legacy media so big legacy media is kind of crumbling pretty fast large outlets are being taken down and some of these uh let's say like anchors media people, they're going direct and they're decentralizing themselves and becoming their own platform. Do you see a world in which you take on some of these players? Do you think the impact of legacy media is going to be much more than we would ever assume of its crumbling? Where do you see the shift of legacy media to consumer coming? Yeah, I definitely think that a few things are happening. So journalists are realizing that they can make more on their own, which is why there's so many companies really that are popping off for these journalists to be able to exit the legacy media and essentially be their own reporter, right? I think that during COVID also, a lot of trust in legacy media really did disappear. I would say like half of Americans feel like the media spread a lot of misinformation on COVID. And it's very debatable if that's true or not.

But that is the perception of America nowadays. You can even see this on Twitter, right? Where like people are saying okay like twitter is the better source of truth versus legacy media again very debatable but because this is the perception nowadays i think that legacy media is disappearing um and really it is uh the consumer that's trying to like get the real news so like i would say like either crowdsource news or uh people that used to be at these legacy media companies are branching off to be able to like provide the real truth right yeah and what do you think the biggest challenges will be for those individuals shifting over to being their own platform yeah so i would say that um for those that have an audience to trust them um the biggest issue will just be converting them i actually don't think that's a very large issue i would say for those who like worked for legacy media and like don't have an audience and that legacy media was one that like america doesn't trust um it's going to be very hard to gain the trust of americans to um want to subscribe to them. I think that like in general content and like actually putting out good news is how you gain trust and gain that subscriber fan base. So it will just take a

little bit of time for those people to like really be able to like write on their own and write what they want to write. And eventually like, you know, the audience comes. That's in the top 1% of the market, which typically is the percentage of the market that makes the most money. With passes,

that much white glove service to their clients or customers or creators? Or is this kind of a novel idea where, you know, you are building out this huge facility here. You have all these different rooms. You even mentioned that you're going to add a music production studio. So is this a novel

novelty and like kind of like a perk for these new creators? How do you think about that and versus maybe more legacy agencies? Yeah, I would say that I do think it's a perk for creators. I don't really know any other creator economy companies that have their own creator space with, you know, a podcast room that creators can use at any point in time. I'm an in-house photographer, videographer, green room, music recording studio, et cetera. But there might exist out there and I just don't know about it. Yeah. Well, you're considerably a next-gen talent agency. I do

offered and everyone really likes upfront capital in Hollywood. I guess going off of that and what these

So you have Olivia Dunn, Shaq, Kygo, Emma Norton. Do you have any dream people that you want under the passes platform like what is the dream influencer creator yeah so i would say the dream influencer creator for us is um someone that has a super fan base what we've actually noticed is that um the creators that make the most money on passes are actually not ones with millions of followers it's closer to like 100k to a million followers uh and they're so random like one of our top creators is a dental hygienist we have another that like lives on a farm and feeds farm animals for a living and they're making six figures a month it's crazy um if i wonder if i were to go with like the most obvious um celebrity it'd probably be taylor swift because everyone's absolutely obsessed with her they're like stalking her every like move right yeah um like i would say creators with an internet paparazzi essentially um so uh another obvious one in the influencing would probably be like pokamane and we know pokamane would Do well, just because cosplay is one of our larger niches in terms of revenue, and we have a lot of lookalike creators that are pulling in some big numbers that we think she would be able to match.

So it's not the typical TikTok girly? I like the TikTok girly do make a lot, too. I think everyone has a way to monetize. They just need to figure out what content resonates the most with their fans. um given that you've been able to acquire a wide range of talent like that's a really diverse set of people um how have you managed to build out your network through passes and get these different kinds of talent what is what does the process look like is is there a process or is it just totally abstract yeah so i mean i would say it's a mix of both like it's a relationships driven business, but we're also a data driven business. So on the like data side to get our leads list, we basically scraped the internet everywhere, like Reddit, forums, et cetera, to find which creators had super fan communities. Because if you have a super fan community, they probably, you know, like made a discord about you, a telegram about you, a Reddit about you.

Then we applied data science based off of like what we currently have with our creators. And we're constantly changing this model, like quite literally weekly to try to determine how much they can make. And then for everyone that makes about $5,000 a month, we assign them to our AEs because $5,000 a month seems to be the sweet spot where we have 100% retention. So then they just go out and attempt to cold outreach them. Obviously, warm relationships do the best. So I've just been out and about in the creator community. I've made friends with a lot of creators. And sometimes I just ask for an intro. Usually you get the intro and then they have a manager so you get bumped to the manager anyway and i also know a lot of managers and managers are typically friends with other managers so it hasn't been too hard like getting to the creator directly um but definitely i would say like scraping the internet is probably the best source for um finding the qualified leads so you are known for your parties and events um passes has

Since then, you've shifted off of it, but crypto's back and it's booming. Do you have any regrets about that? Why did you move away from Web3? And tell me about the delicate balance between that

there like a narrative that you've been fighting against? What have you been trying to hold

accountable to and like really strengthen so people don't miss, like, there's no misconception around the brand. Yeah, I think that the main misconception around a brand is people think that you have to be a hot girl or a hot guy to, like, make tons of money on passes, or that, like, you're doing, like, nude content on passes to be able to make money. But, I mean, like, that's just the biggest misconception because we actually don't allow for any nudity. If you try to upload something, it will get taken down and flagged. And it's actually, like, the filters are maybe a little bit too strict. for example um we had a lot of creators have issues because they were doing like cosplay outfits and body suits and then that would get taken down even though they were completely covered from head to toe um people of like all different niches are making money right like it's not just hot guys hot girls so um that's been a misconception that we have been fighting um a lot of our creators will make money literally just doing like a neck up selfies and they're still making like a hundred thousand a month like don't know what to tell everyone um but we are working with like podcasters musicians athletes etc like we have universities signed to us and

we're working with their nil programs and developing our own nil fund with the university um so there's so many different ways to make money on passes and uh i think that like the message out there is just like we let you be you and you can make money the way you want to make money um and that's why passes is built with so much flexibility on the different feature sets we have like some people are going to make money off of live streaming other people are going to make money off of merchandise or one-on-one calls, but there's like an abundance of ways to monetize and every creator is different. Are there any white spaces in the market that you think should be tapped into? Like you've seen it all, you're exposed to it all. Where do you think is like the most underrated part of the creator economy? Yeah. So I think like two white spaces that I'm interested in are obviously NIL. It's brand new. It's the first time that like college athletes are able to monetize off of nil and the market is absolutely huge uh like the amount of money spent on college sports is insane and i actually think that in the future college sports will be bigger than professional leagues uh so i'm super excited about that and like really figuring out

how to crack the code um other than that maybe this is an la thing i spend a lot of money on

Forbes 30 Under 30. You helped found Scale AI, and then you went on to found Backend Capital, HF Zero. You're now founding Passes. What are your long-term goals and are you going to continue building? I mean, my long-term goal right now depends what you call long-term, but for the next decade i obviously want passes to go public so working very very hard on that i think long long term i've always had this dream to start a non-profit um combating human trafficking and um i go back and forth on whether it makes sense for like me to do it or whether i should just do what i'm good at which is making money and donating to it because i think a lot of people like decide they want to start a non-profit but they don't really know how to do it right um but they do it out of ego versus like um other people realize oh like this person might be doing it better than me like i should just donate um so i'm going back and forth on that but like how i would want to

do it is probably like use technology to help combat it like i read a story about how someone created a very simple website where you just submit pictures of like hotel rooms and they ended up collecting millions of images of hotel rooms and the police were able to use this like backtrack and find out. which hotels like people were trafficked in which is very cool and so simple and i bet there's like a million other ideas that can be done um to help combat it wow yeah i've never never heard of the technology approach to combating that i've definitely seen the posters in bathrooms and airports yeah but i don't know how that works that would be really interesting yeah there was a human trafficking case um very recently in lax i think like a week ago oh my gosh yeah wow yep okay And it was in the same terminal that a girl that was not connected to the case happened to disappear at.

Still haven't found her. Wow. Okay. Well, we'll get you there. Like, that would be a great mission and a really good long-term goal for sure. I can understand the complexities of, like, do I manage this? Do I have someone else manage this? How does this really work? Given that, you're super busy. You're busy all the time. You know, it's real hard to get you scheduled. and you also do berries twice a day you have multiple businesses going on you're investing you're doing things how do you keep up this energy um i really do think berries is like how i keep up a lot of energy um you know i start my day with two celsius's which is very concerning i don't think anyone should actually do it i've actually been told by a very large shareholder of celsius not to drink that much celsius um but anyways uh i don't know like i start like i wake up and i might be kind of sleepy whatever by the time I enter the like Barry's red room though um and like I usually enter you know it's 6 15 a.m exactly yeah just like the music the lights uh the adrenaline and like the energy of everyone around me wakes me up um I think that I like feel energies um and like I mean even this office right like all my employees energies are very

contagious and it brings me excitement um I also just think like I'm very lucky I think I was born naturally, like genetically, really. My parents would wake up at 5 a.m. every single day and sleep at like 1 a.m. So they also never really got much sleep. So in my head, I'm like, it must be genetic. Yeah. And you're utilizing it pretty well. So why not? That's great. So you have like a really good routine, you're health oriented, you're productive, you're focused. What are your 2025 goals? I mean, I would say 2025 goals is continue to nail down creators. I want to crack nil in 2025 um so we'll see if we like figure out how it works exactly or like how we can monetize it best um and then i'm really excited about like the fintech products that we're building um which you know should be done q1 2025 but we'll see uh i think that like i the fintech part is probably the thing i've been most excited about since starting this company so i'm excited that we're finally getting there fantastic well lucy it was a pleasure to have you on this was such a fun conversation and I'm bullish on psychics. So I hope you figured that out. Thank you. I also hope I figured that out. Thank you. Thank you.