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 monetize 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 totaled 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 monetize 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 makes 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 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.

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 that have millions of followers are very busy. They’re focused on shooting movies or flying out for brand deals. Creators that have between 100,000 and a million followers aren’t getting as many opportunities. They’re desperate for a way to monetize 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.

There was a 2024 lawsuit brought on by another creator platform, Fanfix, which alleged that Passes used confidential information to post clients and made misleading claims about creators’ earnings on the platform. That obviously doesn’t match up with what you just said.

I’m used to San Francisco and the tech industry, where you’re competing off of merit and everyone’s just trying to create the best product possible. Hollywood is very litigious and in the Hollywood scene, people are willing to make up lies in order to compete.

You’re also currently being sued in a class action suit over claims that Passes knowingly distributed child sexual materials. How are you responding to that case?

We did our own internal investigation and found that the claims and the case do not match up with evidence that we have found thus far. I think this is just another one of those scenarios where people are trying to shake us down and attempt to get money. That case was dismissed in Florida. [Editor’s Note: The lawsuit was dismissed in Florida, but transferred to California, where it remains active.]

You did make changes to the platform as a result, though. Now people under 18 can’t join.

We had the idea that everyone should be able to monetize. When you look at YouTube, a lot of families are monetizing their content. But at the end of the day, it was a handful of creators that generated near 0% of revenue on Passes. So we decided it was very risky and just not worth it.

You’re a high-profile founder. What is it like for you personally when legal challenges come up?

Now I’m immune to it. I was very surprised at first. What I’ve learned in lawsuits—and this blew my mind—is that you have to assume everything in the claim is true and try to poke legal holes in that. You can’t just hand over proof that the allegations are wrong and move on. That just makes it so easy for people to sue off others of complete lies. I think the hope when people do that is that the cost of another party defending the lawsuit is greater than just settling. I refuse to settle because I would rather spend more and prove things are not true.

What can you say about the future of Passes?

Wealth management. Creators always ask us, how do I turn passive income into passive equity? Who are the best wealth managers to work with? How do I set myself up for life? This is all stuff we should just be able to do.

We’ve already paid out creators nine figures. Every time we send a payout to their bank account, we have to pay a fee. It just makes sense for us to be a bank because then we can give them high-yield savings accounts.

Do you have any predictions about the creator economy?
The creator economy is growing, and we are going to see more creators in the future just because trends follow kids. When you talk to kids nowadays, they all want to be creators. We’re going to be seeing a lot more creators, especially in a range where we monetize well, which is the 100,000-follower range.

What do you think about this emergent class of AI-generated “talent”—I’m thinking of figures like the AI actor Tilly Norwood—in the context of Passes and the creator economy?

I am not that bullish on AI creators. There have already been a few and everyone thought it was going to be the next big thing, but really we got Lil Miquela and some others. What’s much more likely to happen is that people are going to be licensing their likeness out so they can spend more time creating content and interacting with their fans. For example, if a brand wanted to fly me out, I could just license my likeness out instead of that. I could scale myself better so I have more time to do things that I love. We’re not going to see AI creators replace actual creators because it’s hard to have a human connection with someone that you know is fake.

Do you think you can have a human connection with a licensed image of a creator?

I think so. But you can’t dilute your brand too much. At the end of the day, it’s still that creator you have a connection with. You’re following them on Instagram and you love them.

How are you using AI to connect creators with the right brand deals?

We have a feature called smart pricing that basically automatically prices pieces of content creators make based off factors like fan history and the type of content it is, to help optimize their earnings. When creators use this, their earnings go up by 3x usually. Hopefully this quarter, we’re rolling out AI agents for creators. We want creators to be able to focus on creating content. These agents do everything from AB test captions to scheduling mass messages and running strategy under pages.

Do you think we’re in an AI bubble?

I don’t think we’re in an AI bubble. Valuations are higher now because you can build companies at a lower cost. I was in San Francisco other week, and there was this company that scaled from zero to $90 million in revenue in four months. They have Cursor AI doing 99% of their code. Because of all these AI tools you now need less money to get to scale. Valuations are predictive. It’s like, okay, we’re going to give you 10x what revenue is because we believe you’re going to be a 100x revenue. And I think a lot of investors are thinking this way. You don’t need to burn as much capital to get there.