Youngest Self-Made Female Billionaire Lucy Guo on Money, Success, AI & Building Passes

0:03In case you missed it, you're allowed to be hot, smart, and rich. So let's get into it.

0:14Lucy Guo, are you ready to get Hot Smet Rich? Aren't we already Hot Smet Rich? I was so excited for your answer to be like, what is her answer going to be based on who you are? But we're going to start off the episode like we always do. What is the last thing you put on your credit card to buy and the last most expensive thing that you bought? the last thing i put my credit card to buy was actually an uber x on the way here and then you said the most expensive thing i've ever bought no last most expensive thing that you've bought last most expensive thing i bought was a pj to london okay lucy i was so excited about your episode because i feel like you are the definition of hot smart rich which is really like you aren't put into a box like you're so multidimensional you care about so many different things but obviously we have to start with the rich part because you are officially the youngest self-made billionaire woman.

1:10What does it feel like when someone says that? Honestly, it feels like nothing. I feel like that title has changed every year, right? And I actually think it's a good thing that title has changed every year because that's a sign that more female founders are succeeding and we can continue to support each other by reinvesting in the ecosystem. So, yeah, I mean, it's cool, I guess. But I'm excited for like that torch to be passed on. And you don't really like it sounds like you think of yourself as so much more than that. Who is Lucy beyond that title of people are just hearing about you for the first time today?

1:43Yeah, I honestly think that most people would associate me as just like someone crazy that doesn't really sleep, which I really thank my parents for. my parents need like three to five hours of sleep a night and I definitely think I got that gene where it's like you know you don't need to sleep I have like an obsession with Barry's boot camp I think people associate me with that people associate me with like loving music I do think they're like my personality is interesting right like I have my skydiving license my scuba diving license I ride electric longboards I am always down for a crazy adventure I'll go on like a 24 hour trip to Japan just to eat the freshest fish.

2:24I like finding life hacks. I love free things. People. Yeah. And you're still taking Uber X's, which I love. Is that part of your mentality? Act broke, stay rich. Can you explain what that means to people that are hearing that for the first time? Yeah. I mean, I think that when I think about how I spend money, it's like, do I really need these things? Because every single dollar that I spend on something that I don't necessarily need, I could be reinvesting, right? So my mentality is like, if you act broke, and like, you're constantly reinvesting your money, that's how you stay rich. There's certain things where, you know, like, if I really, really like a piece of jewelry, I'll get it.

3:02But I try typically not to spend money on material things I don't need. So for example, an Uber block is not going to get me to a destination any faster so why would i spend money on an uber black instead of uber x versus when i do fly private it i actually do the math it's like okay if i'm giving like a ride to a bunch of friends like collectively do we all save money yeah um even if i am the one covering it it's fine like in my head it mats out and then also just like the convenience of like okay i'm saving like let's call it two to three hours not going through airports what if i get delayed.

3:36That's like another 10 hours. And like, how much money could I be making with that time? It's so interesting, because I think so many people think about their money in such a different way. Have you always thought about money like that? Or has that changed? What as you've succeeded in your career? I think I have. In the beginning, when I first made a few million, I would say I probably didn't necessarily think that way. Because I was still writing Uber pools. And my friends were trying to tell me later like hey like you know money is time time is money um you're wasting so much time writing uber polls instead of uber x's um you could be using that time doing something more productive that overall is better for your business and makes you more money but i couldn't really wrap my head around like why would i pay double when like uber pulls half off one of the things i love about you you talk a lot about living your life in experiments which i find fascinating because then you can solve and like really identify a pattern of like what worked and what didn't.

4:36And you talked about doing this experiment where you were like, when I first had money, I was dressed a certain way, wearing Walmart, wearing Shein. And then I was like, I'm going to experiment with how people treat me when I actually do have money. And it was a completely different shift. Do you think that the title that was blasted everywhere, cover of Forbes, has made people treat you differently now that you are known as the youngest self-made billionaire? Honestly, with my friends, not at all, or not even just my friends, but like people that already knew me. Life is very much so the same.

5:12Like nothing has changed there. I would say in terms of new people that I'm meeting, probably. And then my DMs are just slammed. Like I with like love stuff or with business opportunities or like, like it's just a mix of both. Like I have a lot of very cool celebrities that like I probably used to have a crush on, honestly, that I'm now like internet friends with. That's amazing. I also have a hat that the girls love that says cash poor, equity rich, which a lot of people don't understand because they're like building their business. They're putting everything into it. And then there's hopefully going to be a payoff with equity.

5:50But I feel like the world is just waking up to equity. And there's this misunderstanding of people that hear the word billionaire and they're like, oh my God, she has a billion dollars in her bank account. Can you break down to people what it actually means to be a billionaire in the way that you've been talked about in the press as it relates to like liquidity? Yeah. So most people that have any status as a billionaire, most of their net worth is tied up into assets. Assets can be anything, whether it's stock in a company, it can be art, it can be real estate, but these aren't necessarily liquid.

6:24For example, even with real estate and art, you can own a billion dollars worth of items. But are you going to be able to sell that? Also, it's perception, right? Like you might earn a billion dollars worth of art in Basquiat's at today's value. But if there's no one willing to buy it, like you may never get liquid. Right. And I think that that's and we see this with like tech company founders where, you know, their net words or their company shoot to billions of dollars. But at the end of the day, when it's not cash and go to zero at any point in time, when you have the money that you have now, What do you think your relationship has been like with trends?

6:58Like as an example, like everyone being obsessed with Hermes bags or LeBuboos. Like, are you following that because you now have the opportunity to do that? Or are you like, now that I have it, I don't feel the need to go and chase those trends? Yeah, I've never really felt the need to chase trends. Like I actually don't own a bag at all. So true. You walked in with literally keys, a coffee, and now we're wearing these cool sunglasses. Yeah, exactly. I love free things. So these sunglasses were free and I was like, oh, amazing. I'll take them. It's actually so funny how much I love free things.

7:27Like I saw a pile of lip balm and I don't even wear lip balm in my hotel. And I grabbed and scooped it up and put it in my friend's bag. And she was just like, Lucy, why do you fill my bag with lip balm? You don't even wear lip balm. And I was like, it's free though. And like the bag ended up being filled with like ponchos, lip balm, like mints, etc. Like everything I could find just because I love free things. But no, I don't really feel any of the Chase Trends at all. I would feel like if I did feel that need ever, it was during my experiment when I first started dressing nice. And I was like, oh, my God, let's see how like people would treat me differently.

8:02And it was such a switch like night and day that I think I became addicted to it for a little bit. And I went on like shopping sprees for a few months. Then I hit a point where like this is really stupid. Why am I wasting so much money? And I think at that point also, I like people just like I established who I was. So when I switched back to normal clothes, it was really whatever. And it'd be funny because I remember I got a dress from like a costume shop for$5. I wore it. And I really do believe this is why you can get away with fakes and whatever, depending on who you are, because everyone thought it was couture.

8:38And I'm like, I'm wearing a$5 dress for like a costume shop. This is not couture. But I think that's why I'm so happy for people to listen to this, because like the people that aren't at that place, right? Like they can feel confident knowing that like Lucy doesn't feel the need to wear all of these things that we see on social media that you need. One of the things that I've always found really fascinating when we talk about like power and money and femininity and like Silicon Valley is I think when men get a lot of money, it is so it's good associates with power and people respect that and they want to be around it.

9:11And I think when women come into a lot of money that they have rightfully earned, a lot of people are like angry or try to tear it down. Do you think that you were prepared for people not to like you once you achieve the success that you did? Oh, I saw it starting from when I got the Teal Fellowship. I got the Teal Fellowship and I had quite literally men in my Teal Fellow class tell me I only got it because I was a woman. I had a guy tell me I only got my Facebook internship because I was a woman. And I was like, bro, I went to the number one CS school in the country. You didn't. So stop being salty.

9:47You did not get the new trip. So crazy. I feel like that's what I get from some of the interviews I've watched of you. And I want to hear a little bit more depth to this. But like, it feels like that proving people wrong has motivated you. Was there a moment that you can take us back to of like being told you couldn't do something when you were little Lucy or you were like just growing up that has motivated you more so than money has? Yeah, I mean, I think I was told I couldn't, I wasn't good enough starting from when I was really young. My brother was just much, much smarter than me in like every single way from an IQ standpoint.

10:22He skipped a bunch of grades in math, was taking AP Calc BC in like sixth grade, was doing competitive math, etc. And I just like wasn't like he's like a prodigy, right so I was just wasn't that smart and um I think that just like from all angles my peers telling me that like I wasn't cool and whatnot I've always just wanted to prove people wrong um I was always a little bit rebellious to the point where I mean sorry mom and dad but like I just enjoyed pissing them off I remember like every time they'd leave I would just have friends hop over the fence and hang out with them um and it got to the point where like I knew like reverse psychology was happening to me, but I just like, I just didn't want to listen to them.

11:06You just like kept going and kept your head down. Now that you have this title, has it ever worked against you where it puts you back into that mentality of like being told no? I think I'm constantly just trying to like, like even now, right? Like I'm like, okay, everyone's saying, okay, she had like one company, she was lucky, whatnot. And then I felt the need to start a venture fund and prove like, oh, I can do other things too. And that venture fund is doing very, very well, mostly due to ramp. So shout out to Kareem. I love you. Thank you for letting me put money in it. Biggest mistake was not putting in more money.

11:42But yeah, I think I like still feel the need to just prove more to myself. It might not necessarily be like proving people wrong, but like proving more to myself. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

12:19One of the things that I always find so fascinating with people that have achieved success, right, because, like, you talk about having failures before, and I love that. You're like, I pivoted a company. If it didn't work within, like, two weeks, I would just, like, be on to the next. do you feel like you still have that same beginner's mindset where like if you were to try something new today and it didn't work out do you feel like there's more pressure because you are known as now like the Lucy Guo you know like is that fear or like that pressure in you today to just succeed because you already have I definitely think there's a pressure to succeed but I would absolutely pivot um right away if I thought something wasn't working like even today right like past this is doing well but if i saw an opportunity that to pivot passes into something that'd be more successful i would absolutely do it because it's something that i need to do for my investment like i've never lost anyone the money so it's like okay yeah like it's like if i have the opportunity to be able to like help people make more money um so like let's just say for an example like we decide oh okay cool like actually um we should create a creator bank instead and here's why um I would pivot resources to that how do you have conviction or like how do you even see those trends like if someone's listening to this and is like I think I have an idea I think I want to go in this way like how do you initially even start to think about where that opportunity could be yeah so I mean I think I evaluate market size first and I always try to map out from like bottoms up how to get to like 100 million dollars a year in revenue and then based off of that I look at how feasible it is so it's like okay let's see I'm doing an enterprise business and that my customer base is companies like between 100 and 500 employees and I'm going to charge like five dollars a month per employee I look at like what how many companies I would need to hit 100 million dollars a year in revenue and then what percentage of companies that is in the grand scheme of things like is it like I just need a get 0.2 percent of like the population to use my product and then I hit the 100 million a year or do I need to get 50 %?

14:21If it's 50%, that's a really small market. The chances you capture 50 % of market is very unlikely. So I do that first and then if the numbers work out, then I believe in selling a product before you build. So this means going out to companies and getting LOIs signed, et cetera. And if I get enough LOIs signed, then I build the product. So interesting. I love seeing this. of you because I will say your personal brand that's available to the public is very different than I think like the founder hat that you wear internally every single day. I wanted to say this till later, but I was actually going to say to you, I read that you are like the female Elon Musk, but I actually think you're the tech Dua Lipa because you make everything look like a holiday, even though you're like grinding so hard.

15:08How did you decide or was it was it conscious how you decided to build your personal brand to the public that was different from maybe the personal brand that people know of you as, as like the CEO? I would say it happened by accident, quite literally. I was doing a like LP dinner for my fund in Miami. And then what happened was my address got leaked and I was also helping organize this hackathon in Miami at the same week. So, you know, started the hackathon founded it you know was a judge brought in the engineers etc my address got leaked to the engineers and it was like quite literally during this lp dinner for my venture fund and i'm just like a nice person and i was like well i have no furniture in my house and people just started showing up like by the hundreds at my house and i was like well okay fine you guys can all come in and then obviously i mean it ended up being kind of a party um wasn't meant to be and next thing i know the New York Post writes like, you know, Lucy, well, Miami is like biggest party girl or something.

16:13Oh my God. I think I just like owned it after. But I think so many people would be afraid of that. And it's so funny because that's like such a tech thing. You like let the market decide what you actually, what your value is or like what they want. The consumer is always right. Was there ever a part of you that was a little nervous when you started to be known as like the party girl that it was going to detract from your success and what you were actually building? I think at that point I was so used to people detracting from my success anyways. Like, I mean, I think you face it as like a female founder or even like a female engineer, to be honest, all the time that it was just like another blip.

16:47I was like, OK, whatever. Like people are going to look at this. But at the end of the day, like people that know me or meet me in real life, they see how disciplined I am. Right. Like I am at Barry's at like 6, 7 a.m. I'm in office longer than everyone else. I like like last night I was literally working until midnight. And then at midnight, I wanted to go out. I didn't end up going out because no one would go out with me. So I just ended up working till like 3 a.m. then fell asleep. But yeah, like it's I think people see in real life, see like where I am at hours of the day. And they do the calculations and realize like at the end, I just don't sleep.

17:20And that's how I'm able to have so much time to do everything. So when you were building your first company that worked out, Scale AI, did you have any sort of personal brand? or you were just like not on social media and it all really started snowballing once you had started doing your fund and now passes? No, I definitely had a personal brand. Okay. I had a reputation for releasing stuff on Product Hunt. I was Product Hunt maker of the year, like two years in a row. I won a lot of hackathons, which is how I even got the TL fellowship. Like I went to like eight to 10 different hackathons and won a prize at like every single one of them.

17:55So people knew me for sure. And I had a lot of fans. I would say actually at that point in time, I had almost no haters. It was pretty much all just fans because I hadn't necessarily been successful yet. It was when like success started hitting, the haters really came through. How do you deal with that? I mean, honestly, like for my own mental health, I don't read like I've never watched any like podcast I've done. So you're not going to watch this podcast, Lucy? I'm sorry.

18:26I'm going to send you a good clip. I've read clips. I've watched clips because people obviously tag me in clips. But I've never said I don't read any articles or interviews I've done, etc. I don't read comments. If people are hating on me on the internet, my mentality in general is that it's actually a good thing that I'm polarizing enough. I'm being talked about, right? And I think I know me and I have so many people around me that know me and love me. and like, like I, I don't have negative thoughts in my brain. Like I can't really explain it. I don't have negative thoughts in my brain. Like I don't feel the emotion anger.

19:03Wow. Um, for me, it's just like, I, I just like keep it out of sight, out of mind. Wow. I need to take some of that truly because like I have full Reddit threads about myself and I'm like, so just tempted to go in. And I think, especially when you are in this creator economy world, like for me, the way I think about it sometimes is like the consumer is telling me what they want next. So it's like good to listen to both the positive and the negative to see like what people are saying. Yeah, and I would just have my PR team summarize how that happened. But it makes you feel better. Someone hates me enough that I hired a PI, but someone is spending a lot of money, I think in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, they created several bots and like made Reddit threats and like bought, upvoted like all this hate stuff and bought commented hate stuff.

19:50People are like, yeah, I'm being botted all over the internet. Someone is running ads on like, like low cost ads, like India and other countries on me to make me look bad. It's crazy. Like, I don't know what's happening. But to your point, it means that you're doing something right. And I think that is what I love about like people building in public today is they show the good and they show the bad side because then it makes it feel like way less isolating. When you look at founders today who present this idea of like, everything is together, everything is amazing and don't necessarily talk about like the hardness of like the struggle to get there what do you think is going on in the mentality of someone who's who acts like that the founders who just present that like if they're building a seed-based company right and as you know any seed-based company is like a wild card you're like you you might have product market fit but it's like not there yet and they present like everything is amazing and this is all rainbows like is that really what's happening behind the scenes or like where is the mentality of that type of founder.

20:52Yeah, that's absolutely not what's happening behind the scenes. Like chances are, startups are a rollercoaster, right? No matter how well startup is doing, it's going to be a rollercoaster because there might be some political drama or like, you know, you might lose a contract and you're worried about it or you're stressed about like a new contract closing. Like nothing is ever absolutely perfect. I think what's going on in the head of these founders is that they're struggling, but they want to present like everything is going well because they want to raise their next round. Right. And as someone who's raised millions of dollars from venture capitalists, what is the best way that you think someone can ask for money?

21:31I think what my strategy for fundraising is fundraising and you don't need to raise. And I always approach like the first investor I maybe want to hit and like, hey, like I'd love to get some advice. For my Series A, what I had done is I sent out an investor update because I knew I would get preempted from the investor update, which is exactly what happened. Like within minutes, VC funds are contacting me and the raise like accidentally began, right? But I knew it was going to happen because the update was so good. And that is typically how I would suggest people to fundraise where it's like, you know, if you say you're fundraising, you don't have money yet.

22:17you're already fighting an uphill battle. But if you act like you don't need the money, even if you need the money, if you act like you don't need the money, you ask for advice or you send a good update, they will approach you and you want them begging to invest in you. I love that. HSR girls are all about drinkable skincare in 2025. Yes, drinkable. This is not just another step in your skincare routine because the HSR girlies don't have time for that. This is the foundation for clear, bright, beautiful radiance. and it tastes amazing. The Radiant Skincare Duo from Peak combines the power of two standout products that work synergistically to protect, nourish, and transform your skin.

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24:40So at the time I was running a venture fund I had started this program called HFZero where we were a YC competitor, but the difference was that we were living with the founders. And so I was just around so much ambitious energy. And, you know, the founders are coming to me, asking me about all these questions, et cetera. Like we were essentially incubating companies. I tried to get a founder to work on this idea and no one would. And I think just being around that environment made me want to go start a company again. and I had a friend ask me to be like CEO of his AI company and I just uh I sat on it for a day and I decided because I've always optimized for learning and I'm like I know the playbook for this I want to try something new and something fun and something harder so um that's when I was like you know what like I'm gonna go incubate this consumer idea and here we are and the creator economy is extremely challenging to build in.

25:36Why do you think that is? I think a number of reasons. And my answer before is slightly different than my answer now. I would say before, I think the challenge in a creator economy was that you weren't getting the best engineers slash tech people because people weren't interested in building in the creator economy. Like when you look at most creator economy apps, they're not tech founders. A lot of them are built by honestly like promoters. and the problem when you are building a company and you're not a technical founder and you don't have a good CTO is you might hire a team in a different country because you want to save on cost.

26:11You built the app, you burn a bunch of money, you don't have product market fit and you ran out of money, right? Or the app is so janky and slow, the UX is bad and no one wants to use it and because it's a consumer app, you can't have something too terrible. So I think the problem lies in that, like my first answer is like, I think the problem lies is because like technical people don't think to build a creator economy. And I think a lot of engineers, like all they care about is solving really interesting technical problems, which is why you're seeing so many people do things in the AI space, for example.

26:42It's harder to hire for amongst other things. I would say now that I'm into creator economy more deeply, I think a lot of it has to do with culture as well, which also scares away founders and engineers. like I didn't realize that Hollywood runs on like litigation what do you mean by that like the agencies were built off of litigation every time like you know something goes wrong in a contract everyone's solution is like let's just sue um like there is a creator where like when creators if they don't I mean we need to get better at this like sometimes we give up fronts and you know we can't really go and sue a creator if they don't like it's a bad look right it's like oh like we gave you an upfront of 100k and you've ghosted us like we should sue but we don't want to be that company um wow but I think the opposite happens we're like we can sign a contract and then we like the creator does something egregious right and then we're like okay we don't want to work with you anymore and then they get all mad and they're and like agencies are you know encouraging them to sue us and we're just like oh my god like that is crazy yeah you live and breathe creators now.