Grant LaFontaine
Grant LaFontaine is the co-founder and CEO of Whatnot, a live commerce marketplace he established with Logan Head in late 2019. He previously held product and marketing roles at Google (YouTube) and Facebook, working on areas including video, AR/VR, and Marketplace. Whatnot has grown into a major livestream shopping platform, surpassing $8 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2025 and operating across multiple countries.
“No matter how great your vision is... stories are sort of BS. A lot of stories in terms of business are really a mechanism to convince people to follow you versus something of real substance.”
Source→“The real one was, like, the first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer... the PR just didn't want eBay to be known for like broken junk. And so, you know, told the Pez dispenser story.”
Source→“Grant Lafontaine — Co-founder and CEO of Whatnot, previously worked at Facebook and YouTube, and had started a company before being 'aqua-hired.'”
Source→“"I worked at YouTube for a long time, and so I did video, and then I was working at Facebook, and I was working on Marketplace stuff, and so I did some of that and then whatnot, sort of the amalgamation of all those things."”
Source→“Co-founded Whatnot with Logan in late 2019, scaling it to billions in GMV across 10 countries and 100+ categories.”
Source→AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.