Lucy Guo, the 30-year-old billionaire who co-founded Scale AI with Alexandr Wang, is now focusing her energy on a new business in the crowded creator subscription market.
Her latest venture, Passes Inc., aims to give influencers and celebrities like Olivia Dunne and Bella Thorne an all-in-one platform to monetize their audience, backed by $50 million in funding since its December 2022 launch, according to Bloomberg.
The Hermès Treatment For Digital Creators
The company's headquarters in West Hollywood mirrors its mission. With neon lights, a bar, and a water feature, the office is styled to resemble the lifestyle of the influencers it serves. Guo compared the service to luxury retail, saying, "We give that Hermès-level service to our creators."
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Passes operates between the lines of Patreon, Cameo, and OnlyFans, Bloomberg reported. Its focus is on influencers who built their followings on TikTok and Instagram and who want a reliable income without depending on sporadic brand deals. Passes does this by allowing creators to charge fans for exclusive content, including video chats and direct messages.
Employees help creators record podcasts, design merchandise, and shoot videos. Creators keep approximately 90% of revenue, while Passes provides the infrastructure. By February 2024, Guo reported paying out tens of millions to roughly 1,000 creators.
"We just want to be like a superfan club for creators," Guo said. Her goal is to provide "the entire infrastructure to be a business."
Alyssa McKay, a lifestyle influencer with over 10 million TikTok followers, uses Passes for exclusive content like house tours. “It allows me to create a unique and specialized experience with my audience,” McKay told Bloomberg. “I was so surprised and moved with how many people subscribed just to see the first look of me being a first-time homeowner.”
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From Scale AI Success to Social Media Struggles
Guo, a Carnegie Mellon dropout who won a Thiel Fellowship in 2014, has long been immersed in building apps and startups, Bloomberg reported.
After her work at Facebook, Snapchat, and Quora, she co-founded Scale AI at 22, which sold a 49% stake to Meta (NASDAQ:META) in June for $14.3 billion. That deal left Guo a billionaire by her late twenties, despite leaving the company in 2018 following a reported falling out with Wang.
Still, her ambition quickly turned toward a new frontier: creator-driven income. “You could do a brand deal and you might not get paid out for like six months,” Guo told Bloomberg, explaining why she targeted the creator economy. “Brand deals are super inconsistent.” Within 24 hours of texting investors about creating the next Patreon, she raised millions.
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Passes Chief Business Officer Seth Melnick told Bloomberg that several creators on the platform have achieved millionaire status, though specific numbers were not disclosed.
To entice migrations from other apps, Guo began guaranteeing creator income for platform switchers, with some offers reaching $500,000, according to a person familiar with the agreements, Bloomberg reported.
Still, scale may be a challenge since Patreon reports more than 100 million memberships, while OnlyFans cites nearly 380 million fan accounts.
Guo expressed confidence about competing with larger platforms. “I see it growing much larger than Patreon,” she said. “Sorry, Patreon.”
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