Steven Schwartz - Co-founder of Whop, Building a $1.6B Fin-Tech Company at 26

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by Steven Schwartz, the co-founder and CEO of WAP. Steven, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thank you, Casey, for having me.

Of course. So, you know, I've, I've been following the journey of not only yourself but WAP for, for many years now. And, you know, seeing the evolution from Sneakerbots back in the early days to your recent round of funding with Tether, I kind of want to start with where we are today because I know, you know, WAP has evolved so much over the years. And I first want to say congrats on the recent announcement of $200 million raised from Tether. What does that mean for the company and for those that are just maybe coming across what WAP is today? What is WAP before we dive into the backstory here?

Yeah, it's, it's only a few people have been following along as long as you know the scene so well. And I mean, when we first launched WAP, we were basically a marketplace to buy and sell sneaker bots. So super, super niche. And then from there, we basically pioneered the paid Discord market. And then we were somehow very used by people that were selling education programs and launching long-form video content. And then we introduced clipping to the world last year. And then now we basically have kind of like this culmination of so many different fads that have occurred over the last 5, 4 to 5 years where WAP is representative of the most effective ways people make money on the internet. And what we do all day is help people launch businesses, design ways for newer beginner people to come on and earn an income. And given how powerful the internet is now, there's going to continue to be all these different fads and different ways to make money. And at WAP, we are on a mission to deliver everyone a sustainable income. And that's what we try to build.

Absolutely. I love that aspect of helping deliver everyone a sustainable income because you know, in the world of AI now. And I kind of want to start here where not only is it more important than ever in terms of jobs, people getting replaced with AI and people needing to utilize technology when it comes to that mission approach, I wanted to kind of take a step back in terms of how you met your initial co-founders. You know, you've been sort of raised by the internet, you like to say, in terms of being 12, 13, learning how to code, meeting your founders in these different forums. If you were to kind of bring us back to the origin of WAP. How has the mission evolved over the years? You know, you know, you guys have really taken it step by step and it's been this natural evolution, as I said. But take me back to the early days of when you met your co-founders and when you guys really decided to take a stab at what has now become WAP.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I met— I met Cameron, one of my co-founders, when we were 13, like you said, in a Facebook group. And we both were sneaker resellers. Basically, we sat there all day and bought shoes and then resold them. And Cameron was this kingpin at like 13 years old in the Midwest that moved more shoes than anybody else combined. And he was looking for a software engineer to help him build an iOS app. And I was learning how to program iOS apps, and I messaged him. I was like, yo, I can, I can help you build this. And we started to build little apps together, and one thing led to another, and we basically launched so many different companies along our childhood. And he dropped out of high school.

I—

my parents became made me or encouraged me to continue college. And we basically went business to business until, until WAP. And WAP was just like any other project where it started out, let's go to our big list of domains and let's just pick a random domain that we had. We had wap.io and picked wap.io and it was meant for sneaker bot renting. So it wasn't even really buying and selling sneaker bots, it was super, super niche. And at the time it was just like, let's, let's build a better version of what we found in the forums where we were actually making a good amount of money at the time. It was just the shittiest process ever because you're just like Venmoing and Cash Apping people. You know who they are, you know what they're selling, you have no idea if they were legit. And WAP fixed a lot of those problems. And then I think it was positioned in a way and built in a way that supported not just sneaker bots, but virtually almost anything. And I mean, we grew up building payment products, building marketplaces, we grew up building chat apps, and we kind of knew a lot of what elements you need in these platforms to, uh, have success. And we started Stickerbots, and quickly people were like, yo, can we sell, uh, private Discords also? Can we sell chat rooms? Can we sell long-form video? And we're like, yeah, this is actually pretty easy to do. And I mean, now we have almost $1 million a day being sold in physical products. So that's completely different, um, yet still works well in our ecosystem.

Yeah, it's so cool to hear that. And I think too, like, so much of your founder journey from having, you know, software companies to having your own agency clients to the SneakerBot stuff. Like, it feels to me, and I think this is so important from the founder perspective that I want to dive into, that you and your co-founders have experimented with so many different businesses over the years, and it kind of all fits within this umbrella of what has now become Wapp. And, you know, one thing that I want to spend time on, which is just a testament to you and the team and the belief in the mission, is, as I mentioned before, you guys just closed $200 million round with Tether. But I want to kind of go into a story that I remember reading on Twitter that I think the listeners would appreciate, which is one of your early investors, Justin Mateen. I remember you guys had an early acquisition offer and, you know, maybe you're about to take it, maybe not. But, you know, if you guys were to kind of go down that path, we wouldn't be sitting here today. And I want you to take me back to that time in the early days of WAP where you're building in these different directions and you're garnering interest, you're maybe raising money. What led you guys to say no, and what's the importance of having, you know, really great advisors and investors in your ear during the early days of a company?

Yeah, I guess taking you back to that time, it was a pretty not fun time for anybody. I mean, we were basically, we drove from Austin, Texas to Boston, and we were working out of our friend's house for a little bit. Basically just sleeping on the couch and programming all day, nonstop. With a couple breaks to go outside as a group and play whatever, frisbee or something. And we were pretty underwater because we were having new customers basically ask us to build so many different features and we had to build really fast. And I vividly remember the other company basically, yeah, trying to acquire us. And I think we didn't really have any advisors at the time, actually. We were very bootstrapped and it was only 3 of us, really 4 of us maybe. And we were— I remember Cameron left this 20-minute voice memo at like 5 AM that everyone woke up to, and it was all the reasons why we shouldn't take that deal and why we should bet on ourselves and keep building. And that was definitely the moment. It was like, all right, well, let's obviously keep building. And I think the importance of having the advisors and investors and mentors in your circle. We didn't really have that at the time. And I mean, Justin obviously was the, I think, the first person that really was like that to us and was like, yo guys, snap out of it. Let's build some cool stuff. I think the importance of it is just like to learn. You don't really know what you're doing until you go through it. And being able to hear from people that have gone through situations that you aren't sure how to navigate is super helpful.

Yeah, no, great. Great response. And I think to just to kind of circle back to, you know, from that moment to today, I know we started with it here, but what does it mean for the company to bring on a strategic partner such as Tether in this funding round? And kind of talk to me about how that sort of came to fruition. You know, you're at the stage of the company where I'm sure you could go to many different, you know, traditional venture capitalists. Why Tether and why now?

Yeah, well, so we have a ton of different investors, angels, other companies, traditional VC, institutional VC, and I think everyone adds a unique bit of value here and there. Um, and the times that we've had most fun talking to our investors is when they truly are operators and they have had or have active businesses themselves. The founder of checkout.com is a very early investor of ours, and I mean, founder of Vercel is an early investor of ours, founder of YouTube is an investor of ours, and those are the people that we actually get to talk, talk to you about the real business. And I think Paolo and Tether, they've built maybe the most successful business in history of the world because they are a tiny team printing $10, $15, $20 billion a year in free cash flow with almost 100% profit margins. So I think like there's almost nobody better to talk to about building a business if that's the bar that they've set. And I think we are much more excited about that than working with another VC that's going to, of course, be somewhat helpful. But they're not building a huge company like that. So for us, the synergies beyond the operating aspect, I think they obviously are the predominant currency in many, many countries for almost half a billion— more than half a billion people. And us having that relationship and that partnership is really amazing, because we're going to be able to help all those users. And all those users are going to be able to take advantage of our ecosystem.

And it's amazing. When I saw it, it was— I love when you see deals, you're like, that just makes sense. And one thing that I would love to dive into as well is in terms of the WAP payments side of things. Whenever I was seeing this product come out, and I know I've spoken to your team in terms of transitioning my company over to WAP in terms of the payment side of things, what led to wanting to go build the rails of this payments ecosystem? And how has that process been for you and the team?

Yeah, I mean, we never really set out to build a payments company. That was never like our thing. But I think that given our mission is to deliver everyone sustainable income, that's the most important part of it, right, is the payments part. Because if you can't deliver people income, then it's pointless and the mission is kind of fraud. So for us, like, we wanted to— we were building a core product. And initially, I remember I remember building the initial Rails, and we had grown up building on Stripe and Shopify, and we know payments very well. So when we built WAP originally, we never really built it in a way that would pigeonhole us into being dependent on any given platform. We built it in a very abstract and generic way, and that allowed us to, when we wanted to go serve extra countries, for example, or offer additional payment methods that are not supported by any Stripe or whoever, we were able to do that. And that's why we kind of, I think, started to do that, is we wanted to go to new demos and new regions and so on. And we were able to do that because we know how to build payments products, and we've been building payments products, and we grew up on Stripe, and it wasn't terribly difficult for us to do so. So how has that process been? I mean— I don't spend that much time on— like, I think WAP is— services two different audiences. On one end, it services people that have existing businesses that are really savvy, that know what they're doing, that make millions of dollars a year. And those are the people that, that the payments product is very useful for, and it has a more compelling offering than many other payments platforms that exist. But on the other end, we have this huge long tail of people that don't really know how to operate a business, and, come from all over the world, and they don't really care about the payments piece as much as, as the other guys. So, um, it's— we're always caught in this middle ground where we have about 50,000 to 60,000 people signing up a day that are in this bucket, maybe 4,000 to 5,000 people that are starting businesses each day, and maybe only a fraction of those actually go on to have success. Um, but I am very focused on figuring out how to make sure that the long tail people actually have success, because that's our mission. And in the meantime, we obviously have an amazing payments product that is critical to serve these longer tail people. But that's the story of the payments system.

Very well said. And I think it's, it's exciting. And one thing that you mentioned there too, in terms of these different audiences and something that I've always appreciated about WAP is I remember being 16 years old and for context, I'm 25 now. But when I was 16, kind of coming out of this football injury where I was almost paralyzed in a neck brace, I kind of found this ecosystem of young entrepreneurs on Instagram, on YouTube. And that's kind of like what pushed me down this rabbit hole of being a founder myself and trying to make money online as a, you know, from a small town of Virginia with no mentors around me in any sense. And, you know, some of these core people that I started following, whether that's people my age or older people that were like kind of selling information, really opened my eyes to like what's possible. And I think WAP has done, as you know, past like such a great job at culture and community and like really speaking to the youth of the next era of founders and entrepreneurs. And, you know, I know I mentioned it before we jumped in, but, you know, a friend of mine and someone who's involved in WAP, Iman Gadzhi, like seeing his journey over the years from when I had him on the show at 17 to kind of what he's been able to build now, I want to kind of talk about that is what makes the culture of WAP so unique in your perspective in terms of how you're speaking to the youth? Because I think so many companies out there that maybe try to just do not do it effectively. And I think that's, you know, the aspect of being Gen Z as we are and kind of understanding the, the taste, if you will. So where does that thesis come from in terms of community building and really having that, I guess, finger on the pulse?

Yeah, I mean, I think that at the end of the day, Wapp is built for us. Yeah. And we are the number one customers of the platform. And when I say we, I mean people that are internal, myself and people that I get to work with each day. And because of that, it comes off probably really authentic because It's— we're not trying to— we were so in tune with the product, and it was literally built for us to sell our own sneaker bots. So stemming from that, I think maybe 70 to 80% of our team are former founders themselves, and they grew up in the same space, and they know the product very well. And everything we do is just like, if we're gonna make a video that's posted, it's, do we love the video ourselves? And if not, then we're not gonna post that. Yeah. And if we're, if we're not really enthusiastic about a new product, we're not gonna ship it. And I think that because of that, it is a very team market fit, and it hopefully shows in the community that we build and the culture that we're building.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think, as you said too, you guys love creating movies, if you will, like the content and how you guys speak to the audience. It's amazing, and even just to touch on that for a moment, I remember last time I saw Iman here in LA, and prior to him making the announcement of working with WAP. How did that relationship kind of come about and what would you say is the importance of bringing on, you know, I guess you could say just great influencer creators, other business owners to associate with the brand and to really kind of bring their community onto a platform like WAP?

Yeah, I mean, I think that like everyone that we work with is hopefully, almost required to be some type of entrepreneur themselves. Because otherwise they have no idea what they're doing. And, um, Iman is one of the best people in the world, uh, with, uh, marketing and videos and YouTube and, and talking to the next generation of people that are going to go on to build big companies. Um, so for us it's very important that we're focused on the youngest demographic possible because those are going to be the biggest builders of tomorrow. And I'd say that's like, that's what it comes from. Yeah, I think that— yeah, I don't know if that answers your question.

Of course. No, that makes total sense. And I think too, when I saw like his initial announcement video, and I think just his whole community was super excited about it because there was just so much alignment.

So yeah, yeah. I mean, it's— we get to learn a lot of, of new things and we want to make sure that we're building the product for people that have had success on the internet, and he's definitely someone who has. I love it.

Before we jump into kind of deep background of yourself, I remember the first time I came to the WAP office and something we briefly touched on before we started the show is just, you know, around leadership and community and culture. I remember stepping foot in the office, one, taking off your shoes right away and just feeling sort of engulfed by the, the energy in the room. And I still, still to this day, like, tell many founders that I meet, I'm like, You haven't been to the WAP office in New York, you just got to go. Like, it's very much so contagious and you feel the mission that you all are on. Talk to me about leadership, you know, from the top down as CEO with your co-founders from the early days. What has hiring looked like to build that contagious, energetic energy from the ground up to now where you guys are as a team?

Yeah, I think that it's very important for any leaders to be deep into the work and I am, I'm a programmer. One of my co-founders is Sharky. Jack is a programmer. And Cameron represents everything go-to-market and everything not programming, basically. So between the three of us, it's important that we're leading by example. And I think that when we're working on something, we are really into the work and we're so addicted and consumed by what we're building that I think it naturally rubs off on everyone else who's around. In the early days, I mean, we basically lived in an apartment together and everyone we worked with lived in the apartment.

It was like 10 people, right, in a 3-bedroom apartment?

Exactly. And all we're doing is just sitting programming all day. So it's like, if someone doesn't want to do that with us, then get out of here. And we don't really want to work with you because that's what we're doing all day. So that's how we set, I think, the tone from the beginning. And then I'd say, as we've grown, it's definitely been interesting to watch how some people Like in the shoes off example, like, who wants to have a dirty office? I think it's a lot easier to do that when the office is smaller. When it gets bigger, people bring guests, and it's just, it gets to be a nightmare. So maybe we lose some of that. But it's not ideal. And I think that, I mean, I'm doing, we're very adamant about, I'm very focused on culture building right now and making sure that we're We're bringing the right people on that are a good fit. So yeah, I think we got to just be in the fight. And I'm programming a lot of the day right now, especially with all the AI stuff. It's so fun. And I know Cameron's in the trenches on the go-to-market side. And we're not on the beach drinking beers and whatever while everyone's just in the trenches. So I think that's probably the most of it.

Absolutely. And I think, too, that just speaks— It's very clear to that from the content in terms of how you guys show up from, again, in person to online. And I kind of want to kind of take a step back in terms of your individual background, founder journey. I know you lived in China for a period of your life and you speak Mandarin, if I'm not mistaken. You moved around a lot as a kid. I remember Hawaii to China to just going to a different high school, middle school. Talk to me about when you were, you know, prior to kind of getting engulfed in this world of business entrepreneurship at 12, 13, like, What were some of your ambitions as a child? Was it sports? Was it always business? Was it computers? Like, kind of bring me back to early Stephen before you kind of found these different communities online and kind of how you saw your future potentially.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I liked to do a couple things. I loved to program and I thought that you could almost achieve anything via programming. And I was really passionate about building either some type of software that had a lot of users on it, because it just, it was, it felt like it was the litmus test of did you build something useful for the world? Alternatively, I love to trade and I love to build algorithms and arbitrage bots and things like that around crypto markets and whatever. And like 2016, 2017 is a big, big year for arbitrage. And I was pretty obsessed with that. My ambitions were generally just like, I think I was very into into— every time I sold, we had a new customer and they liked the product, it was just such an addicting feeling. And I think that that's a very real driver of my day, is just like how many people like what I build. And that's what I'm going to gravitate towards.

When you say, you know, you were obsessed with kind of building a software product and having a lot of users, what are some core examples of companies that inspired you early on?

Well, Facebook and Skype is basically where I spent my time. So Facebook and what I guess more of Facebook than Meta, but Facebook specifically was super influential. Apple, I learned how to program by building iOS apps in early App Store and Xcode and all of the WDC, WWDC keynotes and what Steve Jobs did and Apple ecosystem. And really, like, as cliché as it sounds, Apple ecosystem and Facebook is kind of the my childhood.

I think it's, you know, especially early on in the app, I remember getting my first iPad, iPhone. It's just like that moment. So sticky for like people that I think, you know, you're 27, right? I'm 25. And, you know, I think I got my first iPhone at what, 13 or so? And it's like you, you had a childhood without it and then you kind of were growing up in this era of you have access to social right in the precipice of it all. So I think it's, it's kind of creates that unique perspective. Um, I want to talk about something that I, as it was always fascinating to me when you guys launched it, which is content rewards and this whole clipping ecosystem overall, you guys have really, um, like created a lane there, if you will. What led to content rewards and kind of what is it for people that may not know?

Yeah. So we have this app store in our product where people can build apps and, um, businesses can install the apps and users of those businesses can use the apps. So it's kind of complicated, but it's, it's a feature on our platform and. I think a year and a half ago, we had someone build a bounties app where businesses could create bounties and the users of the businesses could solve those bounties for money. So they could go on and business could say, I think someone said, "Get a tattoo of my business logo and I'll pay $1,000." And then people go on, they all get tattoos, and then they get paid. And what we saw was that a lot of people were making bounties around posting content. So you'd have people post bounties saying, yo, go talk about our business on your Instagram page, and then submit the link here, and we'll pay you $5. And when we saw that, it's like, okay, well, let's maybe make a more structured market for that. And we did. And then the market was solely focused on payment for views, and it just kind of exploded. And obviously, given that that's a very viral concept, we had a lot of people come up to that.

I mean, it's, it's, it's one of those things where it's like if I was 13, 14, 15 years old, you come across Swap, it's like, how do you go not only make your first dollar online? It's just with all these different AI tools and the ability to go edit content and have that ability to have, you know, those opportunities right in front of you. I mean, I'm curious to know from your perspective in terms of the people that are doing the creation, is it young, you know, people that are looking to make their first dollar online? Is it kind of spread across the board in terms of people who are then kind of taking advantage of these opportunities?

Yeah, I mean, I think clipping is a good example of a way to make money that isn't starting a business. And it's obviously kind of thematically similar to starting a business, but you don't have to go necessarily and go find customers and do all this other shit. It's a way that is very much in the person's control to make as much money as they want while not having to guess what the guardrails are of success. And I think because of that, It works really well. And I'm very bullish on the future of what these micro markets are going to look like for labor. And I mean, clipping— yeah, I agree with you. I was 14, 15 years old, I'd be clipping all day. It's like gig work, but not actually gig work. And I think the gig work has a bad connotation, but it's kind of cool to be a clipper. But it's not as cool to be an Uber driver, for example. Like, no one's gonna be like, oh, I'm an Uber driver. Like, of course, it's good. Money. And it's, it's an interesting— Uber's done a good job pioneering that market. But I think there's more— the future of work is more fun than, for example, driving Uber.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And speaking of that, all these different, you know, markets, if you will, you guys have done a lot of partnerships with different companies like Micro One. And, you know, I think I spent a lot of time just following and kind of understanding prediction markets and how that's going to kind of evolve in the next 5 to 10 years. Curious to know your thoughts on all things prediction markets as a founder and kind of how you've seen it evolve over the years.

Yeah, I'm close with both the prediction market companies, and I think that when I get to talk with them and use the products, it's similar meta where it's like the future of all things financial and We have some stuff coming out soon that is— it will allow people on our platform who are making money to place bets on prediction markets. And I'm— I mean, yeah, as a trader myself, it's a very, very cool asset class. And I'm bullish on prediction markets, I guess.

Yeah, I think it's one of those things too, where I think it's all things, you know, I had a conversation with one of the co-founders of DraftKings probably a year and a half ago, Paul Lieberman, and You know, he was talking about like the fundamentals of being early to something is obviously lots of upside potential, but also there's so much regulatory frameworks you got to create and get through and kind of from sports betting to then like prediction markets, if you will, and how that's changed over the years to starting a business online. Right. There's so many of these like early arbitrage opportunities. And I'm curious to know, like from your perspective, right, if you were the 14-year-old Stephen kind of focused on those arbitrages at the time, where do you see the biggest forms of arbitrage for young founders or just anyone that's kind of looking for those opportunities right now in this era?

Yeah, well, I think that the truth— like, I think that the thing about prediction markets and content rewards as well is that truth usually wins. And if people have a barometer of what truth is and what success looks like that is completely universally the same, then that's what people are going to go gravitate towards. And that's where the arbitrage is pop up. Because it's so much baked in reality. And it's not like, it's not like you're just posting some content to Instagram and hoping for some followers. You really have some, some real outcomes you can go for. So the future of arbitrage is going to continue to look like the way it's— as you've acknowledged, I mean, I think like truth doesn't lie and prediction markets represent truth. And I think we're trying to do a lot around what the economic truth looks like on how you can actually earn money that's not Necessarily purely speculating on an outcome, but more maybe what's in your actual control, like the clipping, for example. So I'm bullish on all of those. And I mean, we basically spend all of our days whiteboarding out what the arbitrage opportunities could look like. So yeah, we'll see.

But I know it's exactly similar to past for sure. Absolutely. One thing I want to spend time on, I know you've touched on it where like you guys based in New York and when it comes to a moment of the business that you guys recently went through, you know, raising this large amount of capital As CEO, like, how do you think about the next 6, 12, 18 months in terms of scale, in terms of team, in terms of product? Because, you know, this is, I would assume, at a time where just a lot of change is going to be happening in an exciting way. So how do you think about the next 6, 12, 18 months as CEO? And how has that maybe changed from, you know, the previous 12 months overall?

I really try to think about the next 3 months and the next 5 years maybe, or even Yeah, around that. I think it's really hard, and I'd be lying if I said what's going to happen beyond 3 months. Even 3 months is pretty challenging. So we have a very aggressive roadmap every 3 months, and towards the end of that 3-month period, everybody gets really confused because we completed the roadmap and we're due for a new one. So we try not to plan out too much longer than that because it's just bullshitting everyone, and, uh, that's how I usually approach it. So I mean, how do we think about what's going on in the next 3 months is like, well, what does our data suggest people want in the platform? And what do we want in the platform as we're using it? And where is the world currently? And what is the overarching meta? And does it support our mission? And we have a lot of stuff rolling out towards the end of the first quarter, the first 3 months in the next couple weeks. And then we'll be ready for our new roadmap at the end of this month. I'm pretty excited about it.

So I love that. And where does this, you know, this aggressive 3-month roadmap thesis, does that come from just how you guys have always thought about it historically, or has that changed over the years? Or do you kind of, do you pull that from other company founders that you've spoken to, or where does that thesis come from?

I think I've definitely heard, heard the same thesis from some founders and some companies. I think, I think, I think Meta does it. And I think Facebook used to, I guess Facebook used to do it. I think maybe Peter Thiel suggested this, but I think that the importance of a cadence is just, is real, and giving everyone, including yourself, some mental framework of when to plan and when to execute is important, and if it's longer than 3 months, everybody gets super lost. I think it's arguably even too long at that. Maybe a month or even a couple weeks is not bad.

My company's in a much earlier stage, and we think in, 2-week sprints and kind of we stack up probably 3 of those. So it's like 6 weeks of like aggressive sprints overall. So I think it's— it obviously changes with size and team and everything, but it's cool to hear. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah. When it comes to the, the ability to pivot an idea, I think, you know, over the years, as we talked about early on, of following up and seeing how the product has evolved, why is it important for founders to not only get aggressive around customer feedback, but to be willing to change and not fixate on what they think I think you guys have done a great job at taking feedback and evolving aggressively. How do you think about that as a founder from this point on in terms of taking in constant customer feedback and not being afraid to pivot and to kind of shift gears, if you will?

I think in the early stages, as you're trying to find product market fit, it is extremely important to almost do everything that your customers say. But I think that at a certain point, if you continue to do that, you will die. And I think you have to be very stern on what you're going to build. And at some point, if someone doesn't like it, then they have to go to another place and use a different platform. And you can't bend over, like bend backward or whatever, and, and just change everything constantly because then you're just building nothing. So I think it's honestly a challenge now where we have so many different users from so many different places and they all ask for different things and it's like All right, like, we do this, then that trades off this. And someone's basically asking for both things at the same time, it's not possible. So we have to pick one. And when we pick one, one side's gonna be really pissed and the other side's gonna be pretty happy. So it's tricky. Yeah.

That's like the idea of feature fatigue, right? So you can't build everything for everyone at some point. And is there a process that maybe you could recommend to other founders that are in aggressive, hyperscaling mode where it's like, what— you obviously probably have to make mistakes and learn along the way, but how do you guys sort of validate and, um, I guess you could say prioritize those different directions to go based on all the feedback that I'm sure is great across the board, but you gotta kind of be stern, if you will.

Yeah. Um, hmm. Someone told me this once where it's like, some people are generally right often, and then, uh, some people are just almost always wrong. And that's kind of like fine. This is how it is. And I think that when you are able to meet people that are in either of those buckets, um, they can be pretty useful. Um, and I, uh, I think there's not always a framework that's gonna tell you, um, if, if you have all the facts together, then you kind of just make a call. Yeah, I honestly think, and it's like if you are somebody who's seen a lot of these different edges and seen a lot of different data and talked to so many different customers and used the product all day, you kind of just have this weird sense, all right, that's the right way to do it. Whereas I think sometimes if you don't have that insane context amount, then you may just make the wrong decision. But there's not a framework other than I'd say just be as curious as humanly possible and try to understand every little detail of everything. And you'll make some really damn good decisions. And also a lot of bad ones. And you kind of just quickly fix it when you make a bad one.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's very common, a cliché for a reason, where it's like I've interviewed hundreds of founders over the years and it's, you know, you hear things like keep going, never quit, or it's like you have to fail fast. And I think these clichés have, at least from my end, is you hear clichés over and over again and you start to recognize just like, oh yeah, it's like you got to recognize they're clichés for a reason. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where I think early on in the journey you kind of be pushback around them. You're like, oh, everyone says that. But it's throughout the journey, you kind of look back and say, oh yeah, I've felt that personally in the context. So when it comes to how you and the team view, I don't know, not only hiring but scaling now, let's say new offices and kind of bringing that culture outside of just one single location. I believe you said you just opened up an office in SF. Is that? Palo Alto. Palo Alto. Got it. How does that kind of— how do you think about that in terms of now having a new location office overall?

It's been interesting because we never really wanted to dilute our culture, and I think that's a dangerous thing to do. But I also think that for us, if we want to build something really great, there's a reason why there's not so many successful companies in New York when you really zoom out and look at it. Um, there's actually very, very few, especially in consumer software and software generally. Um, most taper out, and the reason why they taper out is because New York is an incredibly distracting place. It's full of extrinsic validation. You get here a bunch of yapping all day. You want to go get coffee later, you want to go to dinner tonight, you want to go to a bar this weekend, and you're talking to a bunch of finance people. I can't wait to go to the bar this weekend, I can't wait to watch the sports, all this whatever. Yeah. And in Palo Alto, it's like you're walking down the street, and it's like everybody's basically in complete nature. And like, no one cares about who's who and what, what anybody's done, really. It's more about the ideas at hand. And let's see something real and right in front of us. And that's what people are going to talk about. So that's, that's my perspective. And I am in the mode of building things right now. And I don't want to be distracted by the external stuff. So I'm in Palo Alto and I think New York is an amazing city that I've lived in for the last while. I've been to NYU. But I think Palo Alto is potentially a better place to build.

And you're there personally full-time now? I'm there in Palo Alto, yeah. Oh, amazing. And how recent is that in terms of the move for you?

Late last year, we got an office here and we made a few acquisitions of other companies that now make up several key product pillars of our platform. And those acquisitions are all based in Palo Alto.

Very cool. Congrats. Have you guys talked about that publicly?

The acquisition?

I think I maybe saw some of them briefly, but how do you think about acquisitions? You know, as a company that to take it full circle, you know, early days acquisition interest and now going out and buying companies and bringing in core team members. How do you think about acquisitions? They're kind of blending culture because I know not only from my last company that got acquired, but just studying founders and, you know, some acquisitions can be great, some can fizzle out, and there's so much to, I'm sure, learn by doing these. So how does Wapp and yourself think about acquiring companies and bringing in talent from external cultures in a sense?

Yeah, I think it's no rocket science that if you build something great, you're probably pretty great. And if you haven't done anything that's particularly interesting or useful, then what is to say that you're just gonna magically do that all of a sudden? And for us now at this scale, it's really important that we're working with amazing, bright, world-class people. And the reality is that a lot of those people have previously started a company. And I think because of that, acquisitions make a lot of sense. And for us to be able to work with other founding teams is awesome. And it kind of just contributes to the high agency and autonomous and putting yourself in the customer's shoes culture that we have.

Yeah. One thing that I— it's such a I'm glad that you brought that up because I recently listened to David Cenro's podcast where he had on Tobi from Shopify. And there was a moment in the podcast where he says, you know, we've made a lot of acquisitions at Shopify. And he said when during COVID and during this very hard point of the company, they have this sort of founder group chat where it's like him and all the founders of companies that they've acquired. And he says, you know, sometimes I'll go to my execs, you know, my C-suite team, and they maybe don't have that founder level experience. So he'll bring these massive decisions to the founder group chat and you know, he'll do these offsites with just the founders. And I think there's a lot to learn. And it was a huge kind of fun fact that I took away from the conversation. I'm curious to know how you view that in terms of, you know, internal WAP team to then companies you acquire and how you maybe communicate or speak to founders of these companies differently given their, you know, abilities and their track record overall.

Yeah, I think I try not to separate out as much what you've done before joining WAP and what's happening at WAP. It's more like I think anybody has— does have potential to do great things. And I don't— because not only is most of our team founders, in fact, it's kind of like everyone's in the discussion for sure. It's kind of like everybody kind of— everybody should want to win given everyone's incentives and ownership of the company. So if, if there's someone better suited to do something and there's someone that's going to be a great addition to the team, I think most people are supportive of that. And when we bring on founding teams, it's like everyone is and should be very excited about that because they're awesome people. And we don't, I don't think, I mean, we obviously like, there's little kind of squads of people that lead different teams internally. And usually like the founding teams will probably lead different initiatives, but it's not, I don't have like a founders group chat.

Yeah, no, of course. No, that's good to know. When it comes to like where you spend your time, I know you talked about how like you're, you're building, you're in the trenches, if you will. Where do you spend your time now most days? Like what do your days look like? Obviously we're here in LA shooting the pod and you're all over. How has that changed over the years in terms of where you spend your time, whether that's team, actually building, coding, etc.?

I honestly don't think it's changed that much over the years when you distill it down to like general buckets of where I spend my time. I'd say 33% of my time is spent on talking to internal team members. And that's basically me just in a bunch of chats.

Yeah.

And what's up? How's things going? Like, oh, that's cool. Giving asynchronous feedback on anything that I see. And 33% of my time is spent using the product on the product in localhost with the product codebase open, making little tinkers and changing different things, talking to customers in DMs on WAP. Yeah. And trying to just make sure that I'm having an amazing pulse on all the platforms. So looking at the data, looking at talking to people, customers on the platform, talking, programming and making little iterations to the product. And that gives me insane context. So that's the other 33%. And then the last 33% is external. So that's like talking to investors, talking to people that we want to join our team, looking on Twitter to make sure that I'm not missing the beat on anything macro. And probably this. As well. But this is— I don't do that much, uh, outside of investors and recruiting. Yeah, I think external.

Yeah, no, I mean, it makes so much sense. Um, what's something that you, you feel you'd like to spend more time on, whether that's now or in the future within the company?

Um, I try to just spend as much time as I can building. That's where I thrive, and I think that's probably still the highest leverage place that I can make a dent. Because at the end of the day, if the product isn't something that people are enjoying using and using a lot, then we don't have a business. So I try to remove anything I can that's not me building.

For sure. Something that I, I always love talking about this because I think a lot of founders can learn from it, you know, early on, you know, I think there's a lot of glorification around raising money all the time. And I know you've talked about this in other podcast, but when it comes to founders, if they want to go out and raise capital, you know, they're building something, like, what's your advice and sort of personal feedback to going out raising capital in the early stages for, you know, founders that may be listening that maybe they want to bootstrap and keep the team small, but they're kind of looking at, say, hey, when do we need to raise capital? Why do we need to use it? What's your experience and what advice do you have to founders if they're thinking about raising capital in the early days?

Um, we've never really ran a formal process to raise money. And I think at our scale that's somewhat rare. We've only basically been approached or by chance have met people that have given us a lot of money. In the early days, we— which is still very early days, so I didn't even know I said that— but when we first started and we had the acquisition offer, we weren't really seeking capital. It kind of just happened where we met Corey and Justin and they're like, yo, We want to give you guys money. Don't do this acquisition. And we're like, cool, that sounds like a good idea. We'll do it. And then after that, we had a really explosive several months. We made another acquisition. And then someone introduced us to Insight Partners and Checkout.com. And they too were like, yo, we want to do this. Are you guys open to this? Yeah, sounds like a good idea. We should do that. And then same thing happened later with Kevin Hart and A*Star. Someone introduced us. And they're like, yo, we want to come to New York, take you guys to dinner. Here's a term sheet. Okay, nice. We'll do that. And then I think similar thing with, with BCV and then similar thing with Tether also. And wow. And I think that that goes to say it's probably best if you bring real results and real products to the table before you try to go out and, and raise money. At least like that's what I'd say. I mean, people have success raising money on almost nothing, I guess, but We want to build a long-term business and we try to make the results happen and then usually the money will come.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's the timeless wisdom of like, you build something great and they will come, right? So it's really cool to hear your perspective and it's cool to hear that's happened not only once but just over and over and over again. It's like this continuous pattern, if you will.

Yeah, it's kind of funny because people will be like, are you guys raising money right now? And we're like, no, not really.. And I think that some funds and people take that as like, maybe, maybe there's no possible way to invest. And then others will take that as, let's try to make something happen. And the people that are trying to make something happen, I think it's somewhat self-selecting out. It's like, we want to work with those types of people anyway. And, and that's what tends to happen.

Absolutely. Something that I've found recently that I'm curious to get your feedback on is like, You know, historically, now more than ever, companies are staying private for longer. And I know, like, with Robinhood, they recently launched their own, like, um, Robinhood Ventures, where you can kind of get access to private companies before they go public. As a founder, not to kind of, like, speak about the future, but how do you think about being private, the possibility of going public long-term, and even just this idea of companies staying private longer?

I don't think it's good. I— the whole point of our country is that people can have good access to, um, the companies that are made in our country. It's weird that people want to stay private. I find, um, if it were easy to give all of our customers and merchant base access to, um, participate in our success, then I would love to do that. And I think a lot of the greatest companies have been built in the public markets. And, um, there's obviously an enormous amount of overhead that comes with it, which I think is is what makes people scared of doing it. But I don't know, if you don't have your financial rigor there and you don't have your story there, then it's kind of like, what are you hiding and what are you trying to do anyway? So I am not a fan of that as much. We don't have any immediate plans. We don't have any plans to go public right now or anything, but I don't think it makes any sense why people try to stay so private.

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think it's seeing what these massive mergers happening, SpaceX and xAI, and it's like the looming— massive trillion-dollar public. It's like we're kind of— you're way ahead of like where the upside— not to say there's no upside, I think there's a massive upside, but in terms of like companies going public earlier to then have that upside to share with the public, if you will, is— right.

It's weird. I mean, it's a lot of, uh, it's—

yeah, totally. I'm not gonna say no for sure. No, we could talk for hours about that. I want to, you know, with the last handful of questions I have here, you know, you're, you're a founder that not only I have so much respect for, but I think it's, it's so clear when I sit down with you and you hear, you know, the, with the lack of nerves you do do, just hearing your perspective on how you build and with your team. Like if you could give your 14, 13-year-old self a piece of advice, like what would you say to the young Stephen? Like, dude, you're doing it, man. Like what would the advice be for your 13, 14-year-old self in terms of building and on this journey today?

I think it would just be to protect the hell out of your time and don't do anything that's not like the best use of your time because it's so sacred. And I think any mistake that I've made in the past involves just such a wasting my time on some random thing that doesn't matter. And it's a lot of trading off a lot of the short-term fun or stuff that you think you need to do. But I would tell my 14, 15-year-old self, just lock in and do not waste your time.

Where— I'm curious, where are moments you feel you've wasted time?

It's like, I'm not going to pretend I have like a ton of regrets because it's hard to live life like that. But I think in hindsight, and still I find myself sometimes doing stuff that's just like, what am I doing? Let's get back to work. Please. This is not, this is not going to, I'm not going to be very glad I did this in 2 years. Um, examples could include, ah, it's going to sound like I'm throwing so much shade, but I think it's kind of like even, um, hmm. I think like long-winded, uh, on— I'm gonna sound so crazy, but I think like long-winded dinners, long-winded coffee chats, long-winded like, uh, trips that are like not actually— you're not— I think it— I actually very much value going to some random country for the weekend and looking at whatever culture is going to wake shock you a little bit. Yeah. Um, but going on like a train ride for 2 hours to like Connecticut outside of New York and just going to some like barbecue, like that's the thing, you know, like really set me off. By the time this time is up, yeah, an equivalence to that, it's like, all right, come on.

For sure. No, absolutely. I mean, I think that's the, the beauty of, of like long-term success and sitting down with successful people. It's like when money's not the object, it's like you just, you recognize the most valuable asset of all is your time and where you spend it, who you spend it with, and where you put it in terms of what you're building overall. So that's a cool perspective to have. Something that I know you've— we briefly mentioned, but outside of the work in terms of knowing Mandarin, playing piano and being piano obsessed, I've heard in the past, I know you're someone that's ultra obsessed around what you're doing outside of work and these other passions or talents that you do have. How do you— how do you think about that in terms of like well-roundedness of talents and skill sets outside of programming, team building, and kind of business building overall?

Um, yeah, I mean, I try to, I try to bring a lot of life into work and a lot of work into life and kind of just blur the two completely is the best way to do it, I'd say. Um, but yeah, I love music, I love movies, I love flying airplanes, I love, uh, um, going to see new places and, and traveling to, to, uh not like just a chill hotel on the beach, but like maybe like a random, random small town in Morocco for the weekend with people that I work with. Then we can go over strategy and see some new stuff and try some new food. That's, that's really fun for me. But I, I think if you're not having fun with what you're doing, then you're doing something wrong. And you kind of need to bring, bring in a lot of life elements to the work. So in terms of well-roundedness, yeah, piano in our office, we have watch movies as a team. We travel a lot of times as a team. And I, I don't know, like fast cars and planes. Like, I'm not— I like normal stuff.

I know. I love that for sure. I, you know, when it comes to the future of WAP, you know, I sit here, I've interviewed so many founders, and I know people like Justin who I follow on Twitter, they, they kind of talk about— and I see it and I believe it as well. And I can't wait to look back on this and say, hey, there's a clear path to WAP being a $100 billion company. I know you and the team believe that. When you think about the future of WAP that's going to get you there, what excites you the most and kind of what are you most bullish on internally that what you're doing today and kind of how you see WAP evolving, you know, to hit those large milestones down the road?

That's a good question. Um, well, right now we basically have people on the platform that earn $250, $270 million a month. Month. And in order to become a $100 billion company, we basically need to 50x, maybe less, probably 30, 40x. And you could, on one end, look at that as saying we need $6 billion a month in volume, and somehow it'll work itself out. It's like a very trivial way to do it. And then it's like, okay, well, where will that volume come from? Well, there's a lot of people in the world, and it's a pretty big world. So I think in some ways, we kind of have to stay focused on what has gotten us here so far. Which is just this continuous obsession over onboarding tons of different businesses in that one cohort that I described earlier of people that are already doing it, they're doing it well, let's make sure that they love the product and that we're building for them. And then on the other end, I think the major unlock perhaps from $100 billion to a trillion even is, is getting this long tail of people monetized and getting it so that anybody, whether you're from West Africa, you're from New York, you're from LA, you have incredible business acumen, you have no business acumen, you can't read, Getting those people to earn $2,000, $3,000 a month, I think, is an enormous unlock for the world. And that's what I'm most excited about. We have a lot of AI stuff we're building and taking advantage of to hopefully help that process. We have a lot of fintech stuff we're building to make sure that the people can do a lot more with their money and the money movement is intact and good. And I think between those things, I think we can do it. I'm excited.

Yeah, I'm excited for you, the team. And again, like, I over the years I've had podcasts where, you know, you circle back in 2 years and you kind of say, hey, like we talked about this then, now we're here. I can't wait to not only just follow along the journey, but just so bullish on you and the team and having met Cam and spent time at the office. It's, it's very clear that the future is going to be not only looking bright, but it's an exciting one. So as we wrap up here, you know, there's so many ways for founders, creators to sort of interact with WAP overall? You know, if there's founders out there, business owners out there that are looking to, you know, utilize WAP and get the most from it, where should they start and where is the best place for the listeners, viewers to connect with you and just kind of get immersed into the WAP ecosystem?

Yeah, I think if you have an existing business, then looking at our docs and our embedded components is probably the best place. I mean, like you can embed payments, you can embed payouts, and you can embed chat. And those are all pretty crazy. Yeah. If I had those when I was growing up, it'd be so nice. If you're newer to the business world, then just go to wap.com and be curious and type some things in the chat and start your first business or find a business that you think is interesting that you can earn money from maybe and see where it takes you. In terms of connecting with me, probably WAP honestly. My username is S on WAP and you can message me there.

Love it. Well, Stephen, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. As I said before, just be extremely bullish on you, the team, and looking forward to kind of having this check-in in years to come. So thanks again for taking the time.

Thank you, Casey Adams, for having me.

Of course.