Steven Schwartz

Schwartz started his first side hustle at 13. With Cameron Zoub, whom he met in a Facebook group and who shared his interest in limited-edition sneakers, he built and sold iOS apps that automatically bought in-demand sneakers before they sold out, known as “sneaker bots”; the business, called Sole Sniper, sold bots priced from $20 to $500. Schwartz recalled that the two a couple of times made hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day, but income was hard to predict.⁠[1][2][3][3][4][4]

Before finishing high school, Schwartz had already worked for a New York City hedge fund. He has said he ran at least 22 side hustles before founding Whop, spanning marketplaces, consumer apps, games, social networks and software companies, including a disappearing-chat tool that predated SnapchatSnapchatA visual messaging and social app developed by Snap Inc., launched in 2011, with photo and video messaging, Stories, augmented-reality Lenses, Snap Map and Spotlight.Open the full entry and a hamburger delivery service in college.⁠[3][1][1]

Schwartz studied at New York University’s Stern School of Business. As an undergraduate he interned as a summer analyst at Accenture’s Singapore office, programming projects for major businesses in Southeast Asia, including chatbots for shipping companies, and he kept selling such tools after leaving.⁠[3][3][3]

In late 2018, Schwartz and Zoub started an IT agency that built websites and apps for clients, bringing in $100,000 a month in revenue at its height; Schwartz said that although the business solved clients’ problems, the two did not find the work creatively fulfilling.⁠[4][4]

In 2021, Schwartz completed his undergraduate degree, and that March he launched the online marketplace Whop with Cameron Zoub and Jack Sharkey, becoming its chief executive officer. He described Whop as “EtsyEtsyEtsy (Etsy, Inc.) is a U.S. public company headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, that operates Etsy, an online marketplace centered on handmade goods, vintage items, and creative products. Founded in 2005, it listed on Nasdaq in 2015 and moved its stock listing to the New York Stock Exchange in 2025. The company acquired the music gear marketplace Reverb, the secondhand fashion marketplace Depop, and the Brazilian handmade marketplace Elo7, then sold all three between 2023 and 2026, returning to operating only the core Etsy marketplace.Open the full entry for software products” and said a good venture should be oriented around a real problem that needs to be solved.⁠[3][4][4][4]

On July 20, 2023, Whop announced a $17 million Series A round. Schwartz said Whop’s mission was to centralize all products on the internet and offer a one-stop solution for anyone looking to participate in the digital economy, and that Whop saw itself as competing with social media, where people had sold software with a poor experience.⁠[2][2][2]

In June 2024, Schwartz recalled that investors took notice only once the platform had about 1,000 monthly users making about $1,000 a month; one early investor then brought Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry on board and introduced him to Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, who has since advised him regularly. Schwartz said Whop aimed to give 1 million people a sustainable income of $2,000 a month within five years and, in the longer term, hoped everyone in the world could make a living through its platform.⁠[1][1][1][1]

Schwartz argued that his generation would rather make content, find customers and find friends online than take consulting or banking jobs; he expects most employees to work in the office and said young people do not hate offices as such, but the offices they don’t like.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On February 25, 2026, Tether announced a strategic investment in Whop. Speaking as CEO and co-founder, Schwartz said the investment would accelerate Whop’s vision of building “the world’s largest internet market,” adding that the next generation of internet business is global from day one and payments need to move as freely as the internet itself.⁠[5][5][5]

In May 2026, Whop launched Whop Ads and Whop Cards. Schwartz said advertising remained the biggest expense and obstacle for lean businesses, that Whop Ads let businesses immediately reinvest what they earned on Whop into ads, and that this was “phase one”; he also said Whop Cards advanced the vision of a “closed-loop economy” in which businesses can earn and spend on the platform.⁠[6][6][6][7][7]

In June 2026, Schwartz said he envisioned a future in which everyone has their own agency and spends their days on work far more fun than what they do today, without having to worry about money. On hiring, he said what matters most is whether a candidate “has built something,” followed by their energy and how fun they are to be around.⁠[3][3][3][3]

On August 4, 2026, Whop launched the command-line tool Whop CLI. Schwartz said many businesses on the platform lack a dedicated engineering team, and that Whop CLI gives people who have never written code the same access to Whop’s full capabilities as developers.⁠[8][8][8]

On October 21, 2026, Whop announced a $200 million Series D round led by Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry and Shopify VenturesShopify VenturesShopify Ventures is the venture capital arm of the Canadian e-commerce software company Shopify, investing mainly at the seed through Series B stages in technology companies that serve merchants, developers and entrepreneurs; in October 2026 it co-led Whop’s Series D round with Sequoia Capital.Open the full entry at a $5.1 billion valuation. Schwartz said Whop’s design takes inspiration from the traditional economy and that, because businesses are the primary conduit by which people earn money and create value, the company treats them as its primary customer. As of October 2026, he remained Whop’s co-founder and chief executive officer.⁠[9][9][9]

Whop: Official website: https://whop.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[9]