Lucy Guo.
Image: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In April 2025, Lucy Guo became the youngest female self-made billionaire after Meta paid $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, the company she cofounded with Alexandr Wang in 2016.
Though Guo had left the company—which builds infrastructure and software to create AI applications—over disagreements with Wang in 2018, she retained her 5% stake in the business, which skyrocketed in value after Meta’s investment.
In 2022 she reemerged with Passes, a platform that helps creators monetise their social media followings by selling access to exclusive offerings—from products and merch to pay-by-the-minute private phone calls. As of February, the company has raised a total of $49 million.
Guo tells me that Passes is growing—its payments to creators have totalled nine figures so far—and profitable. But its expansion has come with some controversy. In 2024, Passes was sued by rival platform Fanfix over alleged anti-competitive practices, and since February it has been facing a class-action lawsuit accusing it of distributing child pornography.
We talked about the lawsuits, as well as what her platform offers creators that they can’t get on Patreon or even OnlyFans. She says the platform’s main differentiator is that her long-term vision for Passes isn’t just engagement, it’s . . .
. . . using AI to grow creators’ earning potential and then managing their wealth.
Why did you found Passes?
I wanted to create a platform where creators could monetise their brand. Creators have such super fans that there’s no customer acquisition cost when it comes to marketing a product, which is unique. The best example was when Kylie [Jenner] made a lot of money through her lipstick brand, and her marketing plan was literally “I’m just going to drop it and people are going to buy it.”
Then we saw these other brands pop up like Logan Paul’s Prime, and even MrBeast’s with Feastables, that make up most of his net worth. I was actually debating whether to start off with a platform like Passes or build something like a YC Safe( a Simple Agreement for Future Equity document developed by Y Combinator to help early-stage startups raise capital from investors), where creators would be able to get equity into brand deals that they work with.
Why did you consider that option?
It is the way to long-term generational wealth. Equity is more important than up-front cash, and I don’t think Hollywood and managers necessarily understand equity yet. No creators would listen to us if we pushed on equity unless we started making them money. The reason creators listen to their managers is that the manager is their main source of income, so we needed to become their main source of income.
Over COVID, I noticed a lot of friends were making money from Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee. I thought it was the perfect time for creators to connect with their fans and offer an exclusive, authentic experience, and I wanted to create the infrastructure for that.
What differentiates Passes from, say, a Patreon or an OnlyFans?
Quite a lot. We have paid livestreams, paid one-on-one calls where fans pay per minute. You can sell your own merchandise or you can create merchandise on our website and sell it without having to own inventory. We’re building out new features in the fintech space. We offer health insurance. We want to create these unicorn creators and get into wealth management.
Say a creator is on OnlyFans or Patreon, how do you convince them to switch over to Passes? We don’t compete with OnlyFans—they’re a completely different platform. We don’t allow nudity, so when someone’s on OnlyFans, we tell them that if they switch over to Passes, they’re probably not going to make any money.
There are plenty of non-pornographic content creators on OnlyFans.
Yeah, for sure. But even if they’re doing other stuff, I think their fan base has the hope of getting something else. Because of that, people are willing to spend more on OnlyFans because they know they’re not going to get anything on Passes. As for Patreon, the pitch is pretty easy. We take less of a percentage from creators’ earnings, we have more features, so there are more ways to monetise. We’ve seen creators switch over from Patreon and make 30 times more.
You’ve said elsewhere that creators who make a lot of money on Passes often have something like 100,000 followers on social media. The most-followed people in the world don’t necessarily have the closest relationships with their fans. Why is that?
Creators who have millions of followers are very busy. They’re focused on shooting movies or flying out for brand deals. Creators who have between 100,000 and a million followers aren’t getting as many opportunities. They’re desperate for a way to monetise their fan base, and they happen to have more superfans because they’re creating more content to gain traction and grow their follower numbers. They’re creating more content, and more content equals more money.
This article has been edited...if you would like to read the entire interview with Guo, click here!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yasmin Gagne is a staff editor at Fast Company and the co-host of the magazine’s flagship weekly podcast, Most Innovative Companies. She has written investigative features and essays on companies including Rent The Runway, WeightWatchers, Compass, Yuga Labs and Victoria’s Secret