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At just 30 years old, tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo recently surpassed Taylor Swift as the youngest self-made female billionaire globally. Yet, don’t expect to see her celebrating with Champagne.
βI feel like the title changes every year,β Guo told The Post about the Forbes magazine ranking. βIt means almost nothing to me personally.β
Guo’s billion-dollar wealth stems from Scale AI, an artificial intelligence data-labeling startup she co-founded with Alexandr Wang in 2016 at the age of 21. Although she left two years later, she retained roughly a 5% ownership. This seemingly minor stake became significant in April, as insider shares valued Scale AI at $25 billion, giving Guoβs share an approximate worth of $1.2 billion.
So, yeah. Sheβs officially a billionaire, but doesnβt feel like one.
Guoβs motto? βAct broke, stay rich.β
Now a coder-turned-entrepreneur, Guo maintains 90-hour workweeks, beginning her days at 5:30 a.m. and stretching to midnight β even fitting in as many as four Barryβs Bootcamp sessions daily. She attributes her relentless work ethic to her parents, Chinese immigrants, who were engineers in the San Francisco Bay area.
The fast-talking tech trailblazer doesnβt believe in wasting time.
βI donβt watch TV or scroll TikTok,β Guo admitted. βSo that gives me many extra hours in a day. Iβm constantly on the go, whereas a lot of people build in relaxation time. I do fill in my schedule with fun stuff, like at 10 p.m. maybe Iβll go get dinner with friends.β
While she may not splurge on Bentleys or Birkins, Guo has no shortage of interests β including Barryβs, EDM music festivals, skateboarding, skydiving, collecting PokΓ©mon plushies and building startups from scratch.
Her latest professional passion project is Passes, the creator-driven platform she founded in 2022 thatβs already generating six-figure incomes for influencers, YouTubers, podcasters, astrologers and even golfers.
βPasses is a full-stack business platform for creators,β Guo explained. βThey can sell merch, subscriptions, unreleased YouTube videos, live streams and group chats to their superfans all in one place.β
The idea for Passes came to her during the pandemic while running a start-up incubator. Guo saw creators like Logan Paul and Kylie Jenner building nine-figure brands and realized the real power lay in ownership.
βCreators are very unique. They can sell anything, and they donβt have the typical customer acquisition costs that normal people have,β she said. βThey are these small businesses that can become larger businesses, but theyβve been mismanaged. No one was helping them get equity or build generational wealth.β
With Passes, Guo aims to fix that. Sheβs introduced a suite of tools to help creators monetize their brands, from in-house design to AI. Most significantly, creators keep 90% of their profits.
βWeβve become 80% to 100% of the creatorβs income,β Guo said with obvious pride. βEven creators who have millions of followers on other platforms tell us that we are the most consistent income they have, and the majority of their income as well.β
Unlike Instagram or TikTok, Passes is focused on the relationship between creators and their superfans, with monetization baked in. βInstagram builds for breadth,β Guo said. βPasses builds for depth. Weβre more like Patreon.β
Still, comparisons to another platform, OnlyFans, persist. She insistβs that not accurate.
βOur feature set is vastly different from OF. And even if youβre not doing nudes on OF, the type of creator we attract would never go on OF because they donβt want that as part of their brand.β
The digital disruptor also points out that Passes has a no-nudity policy and stricter guidelines than OF. Nevertheless, thereβs been some controversy at Passes. A class-action lawsuit this year alleged underage content slipped through the cracks β claims Guo calls βa shakedown.β
βWe filed a motion to dismiss,β she said, denying the allegations. βTheir claims donβt match the investigation that we found. Bad actors are always going to be bad actors, and we just do our best to try to prevent this.β
Passes currently has around 50 employees, thousands of creators and millions of subscribers. The biggest moneymakers include golfer Charley Hull, YouTuber Sssniper Wolf and a surprising niche: astrologers who sell daily horoscopes.
βOur creators are doing amazing things,β Guo said. βAnd weβre just getting started.β
Her career has always been ahead of the curve. She began coding in second grade, studied computer science and HCI at Carnegie Mellon β and then dropped out after earning a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship. The California native interned at Facebook, became the first female designer at Snapchat and met her Scale AI cofounder, Wang, at Quora. The rest is billion-dollar history.
But despite her self-made status, Guo is still sometimes underestimated.
βPeople donβt understand how much work it takes to get here,β she said. βThey see the headlines, but they donβt see the 18-hour days.β
And the billionaire has had her fair share of headlines, including the time she hosted a wild rager at her $6.1 million luxury apartment in Miami, replete with a lemur and snake. The party did not win over her neighbors like David Beckham, and she was reprimanded by the buildingβs HOA.
Soon after, Guo moved back to the West Coast, and bought a $4.2 million, five-bedroom mansion in Los Angeles that boasts a dipping pool and screening room.
Being in LA also allows her to personally interact with creators in Passesβ 25,000-square-foot state-of-the-art office.
βThey come to our office to shoot content and record podcasts,β she said. βItβs a relationship-driven business. Weβre even building a music studio.β
Guoβs love of music, especially EDM, runs deep. Her obsession began at age 20, when she saw Major Lazer at Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
βWhen I was living in San Francisco, I was not as happy as a person,β she admitted. βBut I was blown away by my first EDM experience. I think itβs been proven that EDM makes you happier based off the BPM. Itβs all very positive, happy energy.β
Guoβs now learning to DJ and often hops behind the decks when friends perform: βI played for 30 minutes at a club in LA recently and people were like, βThat set was so good!ββ
She always keeps a music-filled USB in her bag, and will fly to a music festival on a minuteβs notice, especially for her favorite DJs like Layton Giordani, Kygo, Gryffin, Mau P. and Zedd.
Already this summer, she hit Europe for a month of VIP access at various music festivals. Guo also attended the A-list launch of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection in Barcelona, alongside Tom Brady, SofΓa Vergara and Naomi Campbell. Sheβs next planning to visit Kenya and witness firsthand the great migration of wildlife across the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem.
βI pick destinations based on views or mountains,β she said. βIf it has a Barryβs Bootcamp, even better.β
Guo is also a low-key Swiftie β though she jokes that beating Taylor Swift on the billionaire list hasnβt changed things much for her.
βThe only difference is my DMs are popping,β she said. βLots of celebrities trying to hang out. But now Iβm more cautious. Do they think Iβm hot? Do they want advice? Or are they just hoping for a PJ ride? Itβs made me put up my guard more.β
Guo was even mistakenly linked to Orlando Bloom in a tabloid because they were spotted next to each other at a party.
βI turned around and glanced at a wall, and the paparazzi snapped a photo,β she said, laughing. βIβm definitely not dating Orlando Bloom.β
The 30-year-old insists she doesnβt have time to date, in fact.
βIβve been on all sides β engineer, VC, founder β but what excites me the most is product,β she said. βFiguring out the next feature, building tools people actually use, helping creators go big. Thatβs what I love.β
Just donβt expect Guo to slow down anytime soon.
βI have too much energy to burn.β