Chief Executive, Co-founder
Whatnot
LaFontaine co-founded the livestream shopping platform Whatnot in 2019, after a long career in product development at Google and Facebook. Whatnot is one of the earliest U.S.-based companies that capitalized on the emerging social commerce trend that was popular in China before TikTok made it popular in the U.S. The company moves more than 200 units of product every minute and hosts more than 2 million hours of live streams every week. Today, Los Angeles is a hub for social commerce, with startups like FLYR, Popshop Love and NTWRK being based out of the area. Whatnot is valued at nearly $5 billion, according to PitchBook, and has raised more than $750 million since it started six years ago.
YEARS ON LA500: 2
