How world’s youngest self-made female billionaire Lucy Guo's startup turns content creators into millionaires

At 30, Guo became a billionaire after Scale AI, a company she co-founded with Alexandr Wang in 2016, was partially acquired by Meta for $14.3 billion in 2023. Although she left the company in 2018, her stake in Scale AI contributed to her $1.25 billion net worth, according to Forbes.

In 2022, Guo launched Passes, a platform that helps creators generate income by selling access to exclusive offerings such as products, merchandise, and pay-per-minute private phone calls. By February 2025, Passes had raised $49 million.

Passes serves a wide range of content creators, including lifestyle influencers, gamers, musicians, and podcasters. The platform’s key feature is fostering direct creator-to-fan engagement. "The majority of a creator's revenue comes from their DMs or subscriptions actually tied to direct messages," Guo said in a 2024 interview with Forbes, adding that they have "created several millionaires" by then.

Lucy Guo, world's youngest self-made female billionaire and founder of Passes. Photo courtesy of Guo's Instagram

In a recent interview with Fast Company, she explained she considered other startup ideas but chose Passes, believing it to be the key to long-term generational wealth for creators. "Equity is more important than upfront cash," she said. "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."

When asked how Passes compares to platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans, Guo highlighted that it offers paid livestreams, one-on-one calls, and merchandise sales without requiring creators to own inventory. The platform also plans to expand into wealth management, offering services such as health insurance and financial management.

AI plays a crucial role in Passes’ operations. The platform uses AI to help creators secure the right brand deals, with a feature called smart pricing that adjusts content prices based on factors like fan history and content type. She revealed that creators who use this feature typically see their earnings increase by three times.

"We’ve already paid out creators nine figures," Guo said. She emphasized that creators with smaller followings, around 100,000 followers, are often more successful on Passes. These creators are highly engaged, consistently producing content to grow their fanbase and increase revenue.

She envisions wealth management as the future of Passes. Creators frequently ask how to turn passive income into passive equity, the best wealth managers to work with, and how to set themselves up for life. "This is all stuff we should just be able to do," Guo said.

Guo expressed skepticism about AI-generated talent, saying she did not believe AI creators would replace real ones because "human connection" is difficult to establish with something known to be "fake." She predicted that the creator economy would continue to expand, saying more people would become creators in the future since trends often follow younger generations. "When you talk to kids nowadays, they all want to be creators."