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

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Lucy Guo says Passes can help creators build businesses by turning fan relationships into income, commerce and financial products.

- Show: Sourcery
- Hosts: [Molly O'Shea](https://realalpha.app/people/molly-oshea/)
- Guest: [Lucy Guo](https://realalpha.app/people/lucy-guo/) is founder of Passes.
- Published: Dec 13, 2024
- Length: 35 min

## The best minutes

- [6:09](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=369) [Daily posting helps creators build durable income](https://realalpha.app/s/daily-posting-helps-creators-build-durable-income/) (3 min)
- [11:51](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=711) [Passes uses fan spending data to shape new products](https://realalpha.app/s/passes-uses-fan-spending-data-to-shape-new-products/) (3 min)
- [18:01](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1081) [Passes grows creator relationships with break-even events](https://realalpha.app/s/passes-grows-creator-relationships-with-break-even-events/) (4 min)

## Also worth watching

- [28:52](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1732) [Guo uses investor updates to create fundraising competition](https://realalpha.app/s/guo-uses-investor-updates-to-create-fundraising-competition/) (2 min)
- [9:31](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=571) [Creator commissions may shift to whoever brings the deal](https://realalpha.app/s/creator-commissions-may-shift-to-whoever-brings-the-deal/) (2 min)
- [21:51](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1311) [Passes removed Web3 features to protect creator acquisition](https://realalpha.app/s/passes-removed-web3-features-to-protect-creator-acquisition/) (2 min)
- [25:59](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1559) [Passes sees local search as a route to psychic bookings](https://realalpha.app/s/passes-sees-local-search-as-a-route-to-psychic-bookings/) (3 min)

Skip the consumer-social and legacy-media discussion, the platform-misconceptions section, and the closing long-term goals, nonprofit and workout chat.

## Summary

Lucy Guo is an entrepreneur and investor who was an early employee at Scale AI and co-founded technology startups. She is building Passes, a creator platform that supports subscriptions, direct messages, live streams and merchandise sales.

Guo says Passes helps creators earn from superfan relationships through subscriptions, messages, live streams and merchandise, while its staff and studio help them make content and grow. She argues that creators’ direct spending data could support new financial products and better pricing. Guo says Passes dropped its Web3 features because creators distrusted them, though the company is exploring crypto payments and payouts. She also described plans to expand into NIL, raise capital when investors are competing to get in, and build toward a public listing.

### Minute by minute

- [0:23](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=23) **LA gives Passes a creator advantage.** Guo says she moved from Miami to Los Angeles because the creator economy depends on relationships and LA offers the strongest hub for building those connections. She sees Passes as a company with the potential to become her next unicorn.
- [2:19](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=139) **Creators need direct fan income.** Guo says creators are frustrated by unpredictable algorithms and disappearing brand deals, and that the pandemic exposed how unstable their incomes could be. She sees direct fan payments as a way for creators to earn a living, with subscriptions, DMs, live streams and merchandise among Passes’ offerings.
- [4:09](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=249) **Independent media is gaining ground.** Guo says some journalists are leaving legacy media to publish independently, and that distrust of established outlets has created room for alternatives. She cited the perception that about half of Americans felt media spread misinformation on COVID, while noting that the claim itself is debatable.
- [6:16](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=376) **Daily content helps creators grow.** Guo says consistent posts on Instagram Reels and TikTok can help creators get discovered and turn some new followers into paying fans. She said some Passes creators earn close to half a million dollars a month, and creators earning $5,000 or more monthly had 100% retention. Passes also offers trend guidance, photo and video support, and studio space; Guo criticizes agency deals that take a cut of earnings without bringing the deal.
- [12:02](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=722) **Passes plans to build financial products.** Guo says Passes could reach a billion dollars by adding creators, but she has bigger ambitions around helping them build generational wealth. She says the platform sees what fans buy and what they are willing to spend, and its CRM tracks message opens, conversions and merchandise sales. Passes is also building smart pricing tools.
- [14:54](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=894) **Superfans matter more than follower counts.** Guo says Passes’ highest-earning creators often have 100,000 to one million followers, including a dental hygienist and a creator who feeds farm animals, both making six figures monthly. Passes scrapes forums and other sites for creators with fan communities, then uses an earnings model to identify leads; relationships also help the team reach creators and their managers.
- [18:01](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1081) **Events help creators build connections.** Guo says Passes limits large parties to preserve their appeal and has funded events through sponsors, often breaking even or doing better. The company also organizes smaller activations, including dinners, collaborative shoots and event access, to strengthen creator relationships and help them reach new audiences.
- [21:38](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1298) **Passes removed Web3 to recruit creators.** Guo says Passes removed its Web3 features because creator distrust was hurting recruitment, though she remains bullish on the technology. She wants to wait for broader acceptance before bringing those features back, but says the company is exploring crypto payments and payouts.
- [23:51](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1431) **Creators can monetize in many ways.** Guo says Passes does not allow nudity, despite the misconception that creators must post it or fit a particular look to earn money. She says covered cosplay outfits have sometimes been flagged by filters, and that some creators make $100,000 a month from neck-up selfies. She also sees opportunities in university partnerships and NIL programs.
- [26:18](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1578) **Psychics could find customers on Passes.** Guo says psychics and astrologers already earn money on Passes, but she sees the category as largely untapped. She believes some psychics give accurate readings but criticizes those who use them to pressure clients into expensive add-ons. She says Passes could help customers find and book psychics while keeping calls on-platform.
- [28:52](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1732) **Guo raises when investors show urgency.** O'Shea noted that Passes had raised about $50 million in two years. Guo says the seed round began with a text message to her LPs and quickly became oversubscribed; for the Series A, an investor update led to a term sheet within two days. She says creating FOMO is key to fundraising.
- [30:58](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1858) **Guo wants Passes to go public.** Guo says her goal for the next decade is to take Passes public. Longer term, she is considering using technology to help combat human trafficking, either through a nonprofit or by supporting others’ work. For 2025, she wants to crack NIL and advance Passes’ fintech products, which she said should be ready in Q1.

## Transcript

Sourcery, hosted by Molly O'Shea, with Lucy Guo.

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[0:00](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=0) Well, Lucy, congratulations on moving to LA and this fabulous space. Thank you. I'm hoping you're enjoying the podcast studio. We actually just opened it up. I think this might be like the second or third podcast we filmed in here. So, um, thanks for being here. We're breaking it in. Um, you guys can't see this, but we're actually in a shipping container and it's, it's massive. It's huge. This space is quite large. I don't know. It's got to be like 20,000 square feet. The space is around 20,000 square feet. Okay, easy. I'm pretty good at that. Yeah. Okay, great. Well, okay, so what brought you to LA?

[0:34](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=34) You were just in Miami for quite some time and you kind of made your name known in Miami. So why the shift to LA and building out this big studio space for creators? Yeah, so I mean, I think I very quickly realized that the creator economy is a very relationships-driven business. And obviously, you know, I want to give myself the best advantage possible when building this company. And there's just like LA is the hub for creators, right? I think it's very similar to like if you were building an AI company in SF versus New York. Like New York might be number two. And I think Miami is number two in the creator economy.

[1:10](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=70) But it makes sense to be in a spot of like where you're going to have the most advantage possible. And I mean like I want this company to be the next unicorn that I built. So I decided to pack up and move to LA. Honestly, spot on. I actually was at a dinner the other week. This is just what happens when you're in L.A. You get invited to dinners, and sometimes they're at celebrities' houses in the hills. Being in V.C., some celebrities have their funds, and it's kind of just a natural thing. So the other week, I was actually at Carter Reams and Paris Hilton's house, and they were hosting a dinner.

[1:45](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=105) 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

[2:53](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=173) 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.

[3:33](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=213) 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.

[4:51](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=291) 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

[6:01](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=361) 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, you're helping out creators from like all ends of the spectrum. So what does it take to make it to the 1%? And how are you helping emerging creators get to that place? Yeah. So I think that content is king in this when it comes to making it to the top 1%, both on passes and on outside platforms. If you look at like the creators that are doing the best, they're typically posting every single day on passes, but also every single day on Instagram reels and TikTok. I would say that

[6:47](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=407) **Lucy Guo:** Instagram reels and TikTok are probably the best for discovery. So if you're posting one reel a day or one TikTok a day, you really only need like one hit, for example, to suddenly go viral. And

[6:56](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=416) then you gain a bunch of new followers, which a percentage will convert into super fans. And then you can monetize off them with passes. I would say like we actually try to predict creator earnings based off of like how much they're putting out on Instagram reels and TikTok. And we weigh that more because we know that they're constantly gaining new subscribers, which means that even if their old subscribers churn, it's not as big of a deal. And we see that the creators that are putting out daily content are actually making more month over month versus if you're not someone that posts content, like you might get a wave of subscribers at first, but you know, they churn and then that sucks right yeah are you able to share how much some of your top creators are making yeah we have creators make um close to half a mil a month wow half a mil a month okay and what is the typical range um i mean like we have creators i would say that creators that make five thousand dollars a month or more um we typically have like a hundred percent retention on uh but the range really just depends on um how much content they're putting out how many existing subscribers they have topic.

[8:00](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=480) We really help creators. We have a success team that helps them organize photo shoots. We have an in-house photographer, videographer to be able to just shoot creators whenever they want. We have a green room inside the office. Whenever creators want to get more content, they can just come in here and do it, which makes it super seamless, which is nice because a lot of times creators just don't shoot more content because of the logistics. Our creator success team tells our creators like hey these are like the trends happening right now you guys should create instagram reels and tiktoks around these trends uh which is again helpful because oftentimes a creator like especially a new creator won't really know what the current trends are or like the trending songs that they should be adding onto their videos etc so we also help them grow their outside platform so they end up doing better on passes would you say that other platforms give 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

[9:09](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=549) 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 know that you have also received investment from Michael Ovis's Crossbeam Ventures. He's founder of cia um so maybe you've seen more closely the differentiation between traditional talent agencies like we have in la we're just surrounded by it um versus something next gen which you're building it's much more close to like the tick tock scene the youtubers and more uh early talent so what is the difference between the two and can they mutually exist i do think they can mutually exists um i think that um the more deals creators get the better it is for the entire economy um i think a difference that has been in the past is that oftentimes talent agencies or talent

[10:21](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=621) managers would ask creators to sign exclusivity deals where um they could really only work with

[10:27](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=627) **Lucy Guo:** them which isn't great or they would sign deals where um even if the creator found a brand deal on their own um they would still owe a percentage to the agency or to the manager um i do think that

[10:37](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=637) this is disappearing now that there's so many avenues for creators to make um money and like fine brand deals um we definitely have had an issue where creators didn't want to tell their managers or their agents how much they're earning on passes because they would have to pay 20 to them even though they weren't even involved in passes wow um yeah like we have had creators that have told us they were photoshopping their earnings essentially or you know going into like inspect browser and like changing the numbers um because they didn't want to they didn't feel like they're like managers or agents deserve that 20 which they don't like i think that like in the future um it's gonna be like whoever brings the deal might get a percentage um in terms of like how we're different uh i think that like we are so pro creator uh like we care about like the long term of them and um building like passes as a business right and like helping these creators build generational wealth um and i've seen like good managers that like really think this way about their creators too where they're like hey you should take an equity deal for example um because even though it's less cash up front this is good for you even though the like manager agent

[11:38](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=698) isn't getting equity themselves versus we've seen like very cash hungry agents and managers because usually in contract traditionally they get like 20% let's say of what the creator slash is being offered and everyone really likes upfront capital in Hollywood. I guess going off of that and what these Traditional agencies offer. What is your end goal? Is your end goal to be one of these very large agencies? What does the billion-dollar passes look like to you? I mean, I think the billion-dollar passes is that, well, to be quite, like, if we're being very blunt, like, I think we will reach, like, a billion dollars doing nothing more except getting new creators. But obviously, like, we have bigger ambitions than that, right?

[12:25](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=745) so for us it's like how do we create generational wealth for these creators like the most common question i get asked is how do i turn passes income into passes equity which is very interesting because we have created a lot of accredited investors a lot of creators are making six figures a month so you can imagine there's some pretty interesting things we can do there in terms like fintech products but then also we have more monetization data than like really any other platform like from other platforms you can see like how many likes someone's getting how many comments etc but you don't really see the like conversion rate in terms of like who is willing to buy something based off of your posts versus we get direct conversion of um creators like fans

[13:05](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=785) **Lucy Guo:** on instagram two passes um we can see like what percentage converts we can see like their spending power like um do these creators have fans that are willing to spend like 500 a month or is it

[13:15](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=795) closer to 20 a month or is it closer to 5 000 a month like some creators um their most popular subscription tier is actually their most expensive subscription tier which is like 500 a month um versus like other creators you know like most of their fans are just paying five dollars a month um but like this becomes like very interesting data we can see what they're buying what they're interested in um and really figure out a product that makes sense that they can sell to their fans let's get into that because i remember when we were talking about it you said that you guys aggregate the most amount of data for your creators. So what exactly does passes look like under the hood? What are the inner workings? What is the creator signing up for? What kind of dashboard do they get? Real-time analytics and that kind of thing in order to help navigate them through creating even better content or being ahead of the trend and that kind of thing.

[14:06](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=846) Yes, I would say our secret sauce is our CRM system. So when you send out mass DMs, for example, you can see the open rate the conversion rate know like what content that uh fans are buying the most essentially what captions are converting the best etc and really optimize your future content to that along with like reusing your most popular pieces of content you can see how much each fan has spent um one day like most recently spent um the like price points that they're willing to buy content at etc um which is super interesting as well and then like we also offer like very similar data in your like merchandise store. So it's like, okay, cool. Like what pieces of clothing are converting to best, what designs, et cetera. And we are currently building in like, I would call it smart pricing. So we can really tell you like how much you should be charging to be making the most money on your content. You've been able to get some really big names so far.

[15:03](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=903) 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.

[16:12](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=972) 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.

[17:10](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1030) 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 thrown some big things you've had big activations i just saw that you guys did an event at the jake Paul fight with better how have you like how have you managed to strategize at least brand

[18:21](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1101) activations and getting creators together and creating this flywheel of like hype and coolness yeah so we try to not do big parties very often because then it loses it's like you know magic to it um and the hype but uh I've honestly given my marketing team like zero dollars so a lot of um

[18:42](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1122) **Lucy Guo:** Pretty much all our parties come out to break even or like net positive, which is nice.

[18:48](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1128) And we can just do this based off of parties that like I've thrown by myself. I remember like our first party that like we actually tried to get sponsors for. It was because I had thrown a birthday party that I paid for by myself. And we had insane guests, like insane musical performances, etc. And just based off of that, sponsors are willing to come in and do our next party. So every single party gets better because we have more money to put into it, which is awesome. and then yeah like we just invite our creator friends like usually you have special guest DJs and that is enough to bring people out I think that because we don't throw a bad party or we haven't thrown a bad party people are just willing to show up like they beg to show up we've had people offer to pay like 10 grand for to come and they're not on the guest list would you say that the lines for your parties are very long we try to not have lines um in terms like we want like efficient security right um a check-in process but they like sometimes we mess up there on logistics right and it becomes long like there was definitely in a party where a very very famous person i can't say was stuck outside for 40 minutes and then ended up leaving oh no

[19:59](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1199) Yeah. Oh my gosh. So besides that, I do know that you throw some serious activations for the creators, and it's on a weekly basis, right? So how does that work? And how do you manage helping them create a larger brand and make sure that they're doing things and are being engaged? What are those smaller activations look like? And how do you keep up the cadence? yeah so for smaller activations um because it's a relationship-driven business we want to make sure that like every single week we're at least taking care of like a subset of our creators so for example um this week happens to be the f1 so we're inviting a bunch of creators to the f1 with us um and again it's really nice that they're creators because we're able to get them free hotels free flights and free tickets not on company dollar but it's also like they don't have the relationships like a lot of these creators don't have the relationships to be able to do that on their own because they are like, you know, the creators with less than a million followers that might live in Alabama, for example. And they're just not plugged into the LA scene like we are. Right. Yeah. Right. And those kinds of events really elevate their brand and

[21:06](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1266) what they're associated with. So then, you know, you get more followers, you get more paid subscribers and that kind of thing. Exactly. And then other activations you try to do are always just like group dinner so then they can get to know us better um we try to do collaborative photo shoots because the number one way to gain new followers is to collaborate with someone um because you guys just you know your followers intermingle and then they become fans of both of you guys um i think there's like a common misconception where like if um a fan like a fan spends on one creator and it moves to another creator they spend less on like the previous one but we've seen that they just end up spending like double. So when Passes was originally created, it was a Web3 company.

[21:47](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1307) 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 and incentives of being on the platform. Yeah. So I would say I'm still very bullish on Web3, and I've always said this, even after we took away Web3. To me, it just makes sense. Interoperability, capability if um you have you're a super fan on passes like you should be able to go on ticket master connect your wallet see like the nft and get a discount right like that just kind of makes sense um but uh we noticed that creators uh have a huge distrust in web3 and uh we were losing out on a lot of creators like they weren't willing to join passes because we were web3 and ultimately

[22:32](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1352) **Lucy Guo:** at the end of the day like creator acquisition is like a number one priority for us so we removed their Web3 components in order to continue to recruit creators. I don't have any regrets about

[22:42](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1362) it. Web3 is still not really popping off. And if it does, I think that I'd want to wait until it's societally accepted and actually accepted, not just a phase, right? Before we reintegrate it back in. We listen to our creators' feedback. And until all our creators say, we want Web3 on the platform, we're not going to prematurely do it. That being said, creators love making money. so we are looking into adding like crypto payments um so people that you know like fans have more ways to be able to spend more money on creators uh because it's a win-win for everyone then and then we are thinking about crypto payouts as well just because a lot of creators like they want money instantly and right now we do have to charge an extra percentage if they want instant payouts because banks charge us an extra percentage um if we do instant payouts versus it'd be much cheaper for the creator to get instant payouts via crypto. So for creators that do want their money in crypto, we are looking at other solutions. This might be a change in the subject, but what are the biggest misconceptions that you faced while building out passes? Is there like a narrative that you've been fighting against? What have you been trying to hold

[23:56](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1436) 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

[24:57](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1497) 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

[26:01](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1561) how to crack the code um other than that maybe this is an la thing i spend a lot of money on astrologers and psychics i don't even believe in astrology but still out of curiosity and for fun I do believe in psychics though. And I'm like, I think that our platform is like perfect for this sort of thing. Like we do have astrologers on the platform that make a lot of money and we do have psychics on the platform that make a lot of money. We just haven't really tapped into it yet. Oh, that's so interesting. You know, I also find myself guilty. I feel like I walk like across the street or by like psychic shops all the time or like Reiki. And I'm like, you know what? I think they're going to tell me something today. So my favorite thing is because I like walking into psychic shops because they don't have a chance to like google me they don't have my phone number they don't have my name so then anything they say uh needs to be like from their abilities and if it's like hyper accurate um where it's so specific to me and i've had things that are very very specific to me um to the point where it's like oh i see you just signed a bunch of contracts for a new business that you're starting um that was like like a psychic that i walked into

[27:08](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1628) told me that the day i like sent out um the term sheets are like the safes for like investors to wire i mean i was like that's crazy that's crazy yeah like highly intuitive yeah highly intuitive yeah that was something that's just like it doesn't apply to everyone no it doesn't yeah what they do get me on and i will be a sucker for it one day is like up charging me or selling me on like a 500 candle exactly so that's what i hate about la psychics so like psychics i think that psychics are real they give you hyper accurate readings um at least good ones right and then they're like oh but like you need to fix your chakras or oh but you have a bad spirit following you it'll be ten thousand dollars to fix and because they gave you this like hyper accurate reading you feel the need to spend more money but those psychics are i i think they're bad people personally um so like the psychics that i use are always ones that like don't upcharge at all because they're not trying to get more out of me.

[28:02](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1682) Yeah, I've almost made it to a demon cleansing retreat before. It makes you feel better. My friend and I, we literally did not think psychics were real. It was the first time we went to a psychic, and this was actually the day I sent out the saves to my investors. We walked out a week later having spent like 15 grand each. Okay, new market. We're going to go after this. This is great. We're both like victims of it. It's definitely viable.

[28:26](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1706) **Lucy Guo:** the way people find psychics is they literally google like psychics near me right like that are

[28:31](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1711) referrals which is perfect for a platform like passes because we could just dominate seo um for psychics in like like psychics in la right like you could dominate seo for that and like just provide a list of good psychics that you can book on a platform and have like one-on-one calls with over the platform like there's no need to share your phone number there's no need to share like a zoom etc like you're much more anonymous on our platform which is kind of cool um or yeah like we there's just so many ways to dominate and like get people to find it i love it i love it um so you have raised about 50 million dollars in two years that's a lot of money that's very fast and you're also growing really fast what is your fundraising strategy been like to date like how have you kept up with all this and been able to continue to raise in a very competitive market. Yeah. So I generally think that I like fundraising when I'm at the advantage. So getting preempted is my favorite way to fundraise. I would say the seed round wasn't really preempted. It was more so like I had an idea and I was running a venture fund. So I had to ask my LPs for permission to be able to do this. And then my LPs were just like, let us put

[29:39](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1779) in a check. And I had to do right by my LPs. So I obviously let them put in the checks first and also gave a little bit of equity to the fund and that ended up just oversubscribing very quickly like no name no deck it was a literally a text message fundraise which is pretty wild and then the series a was preempted the numbers were just absolutely phenomenal and i've like obviously you know in venture i saw how my other investments were growing and i knew that i had something very special on hand so i just sent out an investor update like end of year and every single one started contacting me you know i got a term sheet like within two days i think of that

[30:14](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1814) **Lucy Guo:** investor update, use that to cause FOMO and fundraise. The key to like fundraising well is just causing FOMO. We feel it. VCs definitely feel the FOMO. Yes. That's how the whole system

[30:26](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1826) works. What were the numbers? I don't think I can share any more, but they were very good, like in the multi-millions after our first 12 months. Phenomenal. Okay. Not bad. I can see that. As we look back on your career, you're very well accomplished. You were a Teal Fellow, 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

[31:46](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1906) 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.

[32:36](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=1956) 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

[33:46](https://realalpha.app/v/F54fcJFz_7M/?t=2026) 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.