The first card Grant LaFontaine remembers selling was a holographic Chansey. He grew up in Maine, trading Pokemon cards with friends, and by fourth grade he had opened an eBay store and was shipping cards across the country. He has told interviewers he started selling online at seven. Either way, the habit was set long before anyone called it a business.
He went on to Facebook, where he worked on the Oculus app store, and to a startup of his own, Kit.com, later bought by Patreon (a podcast summary says so; not confirmed at the source). With Logan Head, another founder, he started Whatnot in 2019, a marketplace for Funko Pops.
The two founders kept a log of every investor who turned them down, with the feedback in a row of its own.
It did not work. LaFontaine has called the first product something really bad that could not make money. Some investors passed, and it took about ten months to find something real. Then the pitching began in earnest.
What almost nobody saw was the spreadsheet. The two founders kept a log of every investor who turned them down, with the feedback in a row of its own. By the time it reached 100 rows, LaFontaine told Fortune in August 2026, they were too demoralized to keep counting. They had pitched hundreds. Nobody had told them yes in the way they needed.
So in 2020 they tried something else: live video. Head had never built video and was skeptical it would work. He shut himself in his room, coding long days, about six weeks by the founders' 2022 account and four or five by their 2026 one. LaFontaine called it mentally exhausting. When Head finished, he was nervous the first livestream auction would flop.
LaFontaine went live himself. In two and a half hours, late in the evening, he sold about $5,000 of Funko Pops. The first outside seller, a husband-and-wife team called Funko Whisper, later streamed their own wedding.
The numbers that followed are large. Sellers moved about $3 billion of goods in live sales in 2024 and over $8 billion in 2025. Whatnot raised $225 million at $11.5 billion in October 2025, then $545 million at $20 billion in August 2026. Bloomberg put each founder's stake above $2.8 billion.
There is a bill attached. The Wall Street Journal reported on buyers who ran up debts in rapid auctions, and in March 2026 arbitration claims accused the company of running an illegal gambling scheme through randomized breaks, which it rejects. It has added optional spending limits.
The boy with the Chansey became the man who sold the first $5,000 himself. When the spreadsheet stopped being bearable, he did not make it longer. He changed the product, and then he went on camera and was the first customer.