Lucy Guo's advice to other billionaires: 'Act broke, stay rich'

New York Post

5 days ago

Tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo, 30, recently dethroned Taylor Swift as the youngest self-made female billionaire on the planet. But don't expect her to be popping Champagne bottles.
'I feel like the title changes every year,' Guo told The Post about the Forbes magazine ranking. 'It means almost nothing to me personally.'
Guo's billion-dollar bounty comes from Scale AI, the artificial intelligence data-labeling startup she launched in 2016 with Alexandr Wang, when she was just 21. She left two years later but held onto an estimated 5% stake — a small slice that turned into a massive windfall this April when insider shares valued Scale AI at $25 billion, making Guo's cut worth an estimated $1.2 billion.
11 Tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo, 30, recently dethroned Taylor Swift as the youngest self-made female billionaire on the planet.
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So, yeah. She's officially a billionaire, but doesn't feel like one.
Guo's motto? 'Act broke, stay rich.'
The coder-turned-founder still clocks 90-hour workweeks with a schedule that starts at 5:30 a.m. and ends at midnight — including up to four Barry's Bootcamp classes a day. Guo credits her 'no sleep' DNA to her parents, Chinese immigrants who worked as engineers in the San Francisco Bay area.
11 Guo made the cover of Forbes in April. Her billion-dollar bounty comes from Scale AI, the AI data-labeling startup she launched in 2016 with Alexandr Wang, when she was just 21.
guofortit/Instagram
The fast-talking tech trailblazer doesn't believe in wasting time.
'I don't watch TV or scroll TikTok,' Guo admitted. 'So that gives me many extra hours in a day. I'm constantly on the go, whereas a lot of people build in relaxation time. I do fill in my schedule with fun stuff, like at 10 p.m. maybe I'll go get dinner with friends.'
While she may not splurge on Bentleys or Birkins, Guo has no shortage of interests — including Barry's, EDM music festivals, skateboarding, skydiving, collecting Pokémon plushies and building startups from scratch.
Her latest professional passion project is Passes, the creator-driven platform she founded in 2022 that's already generating six-figure incomes for influencers, YouTubers, podcasters, astrologers and even golfers.
11 The Post previously photographed Guo at home in 2022.
Sonya Revell for The New York Po
'Passes is a full-stack business platform for creators,' Guo explained. 'They can sell merch, subscriptions, unreleased YouTube videos, live streams and group chats to their superfans all in one place.'
The idea for Passes came to her during the pandemic while running a start-up incubator. Guo saw creators like Logan Paul and Kylie Jenner building nine-figure brands and realized the real power lay in ownership.
'Creators are very unique. They can sell anything, and they don't have the typical customer acquisition costs that normal people have,' she said. 'They are these small businesses that can become larger businesses, but they've been mismanaged. No one was helping them get equity or build generational wealth.'
11 Among her extracurricular passions — learning to DJ.
guofortit/Instagram
With Passes, Guo aims to fix that. She's introduced a suite of tools to help creators monetize their brands, from in-house design to AI. Most significantly, creators keep 90% of their profits.
'We've become 80% to 100% of the creator's income,' Guo said with obvious pride. 'Even creators who have millions of followers on other platforms tell us that we are the most consistent income they have, and the majority of their income as well.'
Unlike Instagram or TikTok, Passes is focused on the relationship between creators and their superfans, with monetization baked in. 'Instagram builds for breadth,' Guo said. 'Passes builds for depth. We're more like Patreon.'
Still, comparisons to another platform, OnlyFans, persist. She insist's that not accurate.
11 Guo posted a photo with Bill Gates on her Instagram, joking, 'One of my guilty pleasures is being the dumbest person in the room.'
guofortit/Instagram
'Our feature set is vastly different from OF. And even if you're not doing nudes on OF, the type of creator we attract would never go on OF because they don't want that as part of their brand.'
The digital disruptor also points out that Passes has a no-nudity policy and stricter guidelines than OF. Nevertheless, there's been some controversy at Passes. A class-action lawsuit this year alleged underage content slipped through the cracks — claims Guo calls 'a shakedown.'
'We filed a motion to dismiss,' she said, denying the allegations. 'Their claims don't match the investigation that we found. Bad actors are always going to be bad actors, and we just do our best to try to prevent this.'
11 Guo is also an avid skateboarder.
Sonya Revell for The New York Po
Passes currently has around 50 employees, thousands of creators and millions of subscribers. The biggest moneymakers include golfer Charley Hull, YouTuber Sssniper Wolf and a surprising niche: astrologers who sell daily horoscopes.
'Our creators are doing amazing things,' Guo said. 'And we're just getting started.'
Her career has always been ahead of the curve. She began coding in second grade, studied computer science and HCI at Carnegie Mellon — and then dropped out after earning a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship. The California native interned at Facebook, became the first female designer at Snapchat and met her Scale AI cofounder, Wang, at Quora. The rest is billion-dollar history.
But despite her self-made status, Guo is still sometimes underestimated.
11 She founded the platform Passes — which occupies a 25,000-square-foot office in Los Angeles.
Margot Judge for NY Post
'People don't understand how much work it takes to get here,' she said. 'They see the headlines, but they don't see the 18-hour days.'
And the billionaire has had her fair share of headlines, including the time she hosted a wild rager at her $6.1 million luxury apartment in Miami, replete with a lemur and snake. The party did not win over her neighbors like David Beckham, and she was reprimanded by the building's HOA.
Soon after, Guo moved back to the West Coast, and bought a $4.2 million, five-bedroom mansion in Los Angeles that boasts a dipping pool and screening room.
Being in LA also allows her to personally interact with creators in Passes' 25,000-square-foot state-of-the-art office.
'They come to our office to shoot content and record podcasts,' she said. 'It's a relationship-driven business. We're even building a music studio.'
Guo's love of music, especially EDM, runs deep. Her obsession began at age 20, when she saw Major Lazer at Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
'When I was living in San Francisco, I was not as happy as a person,' she admitted. 'But I was blown away by my first EDM experience. I think it's been proven that EDM makes you happier based off the BPM. It's all very positive, happy energy.'
11 The billionaire has had her fair share of headlines, including the time she hosted a wild rager at her then-home in Miami, replete with a lemur (pictured) and a snake.
Guo's now learning to DJ and often hops behind the decks when friends perform: 'I played for 30 minutes at a club in LA recently and people were like, 'That set was so good!''
She always keeps a music-filled USB in her bag, and will fly to a music festival on a minute's notice, especially for her favorite DJs like Layton Giordani, Kygo, Gryffin, Mau P. and Zedd.
Already this summer, she hit Europe for a month of VIP access at various music festivals. Guo also attended the A-list launch of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection in Barcelona, alongside Tom Brady, Sofía Vergara and Naomi Campbell. She's next planning to visit Kenya and witness firsthand the great migration of wildlife across the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem.
11 Guo collects Pokémon plushies.
guofortit/Instagram
'I pick destinations based on views or mountains,' she said. 'If it has a Barry's Bootcamp, even better.'
Guo is also a low-key Swiftie — though she jokes that beating Taylor Swift on the billionaire list hasn't changed things much for her.
'The only difference is my DMs are popping,' she said. 'Lots of celebrities trying to hang out. But now I'm more cautious. Do they think I'm hot? Do they want advice? Or are they just hoping for a PJ ride? It's made me put up my guard more.'
11 'I've been on all sides — engineer, VC, founder — but what excites me the most is product,' Guo said.
Margot Judge for NY Post
Guo was even mistakenly linked to Orlando Bloom in a tabloid because they were spotted next to each other at a party.
'I turned around and glanced at a wall, and the paparazzi snapped a photo,' she said, laughing. 'I'm definitely not dating Orlando Bloom.'
The 30-year-old insists she doesn't have time to date, in fact.
'I've been on all sides — engineer, VC, founder — but what excites me the most is product,' she said. 'Figuring out the next feature, building tools people actually use, helping creators go big. That's what I love.'
Just don't expect Guo to slow down anytime soon.
'I have too much energy to burn.'