Lucy Guo, the tech entrepreneur best known as a co-founder of Scale AI, has officially dethroned Taylor Swift to become the youngest self-made woman billionaire at only 30 years old.
Guo co-founded the generative AI start-up in 2016 with Alexandr Wang and left the company in 2018. Today, the San Francisco based company is valued at $14 billion, but the company is currently wrapping up a tender offer that would place its valuation at $25 billion. Guo still owns an estimated stake of about 5%, worth $1.2 billion.
After leaving Scale AI, she co-founded venture capital firm Backend Capital, which primarily funds promising engineers. She didn’t stay out of the startup game for long, though. She is the current CEO of Passes, a company she founded that offers monetization tools for content creators, similar to Patreon or OnlyFans.
The company markets itself as a mainstream alternative to OnlyFans and has signed deals with basketball great Shaquille O’Neal and gymnast Olivia Dunne.
Passes, which is backed by $40 million in seed funding, and Guo, are currently facing a class action lawsuit that alleges the company profited from explicit content of minors. Passes says the basis of the lawsuit is “categorically false and recklessly disregards the truth.”
Passes lets creators keep 90% of their earnings and monetize content through subscriptions, live streams, and messaging with fans.
The FIRE movement
Guo previously told Fortune that the FIRE movement influenced much of her decision making in her early career. “I would go onto Reddit and look up Lean FIRE (financially independent, retire early) and Fat FIRE forums, because they really do teach you a lot about money management and wealth. If you’re young, you can afford to get a lower salary.” she said. She liked the idea that she could “retire off of, essentially, not that much money and still live a pretty nice lifestyle.”
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She’s long been an advocate of a frugal lifestyle, advising those looking to grow their wealth to “live below your means.” As a newly minted member of the billionaire’s club, she certainly has access to a lifestyle that many would dream of.
Guo is one of six self-made women billionaires on the planet under the age of 40, according to Forbes. She’s also the only one who has made the majority of her fortune from a company she no longer works for. In addition to her adherence to the FIRE movement to build her net worth, she also utilized many of her working relationships to elevate in business.
“Your network is your net worth,” she previously told Fortune. “If you’re well connected to a lot of funds, and also early-stage startup employees or founders, you can make good money brokering secondaries in hot startups.”