Steven Schwartz - Co-founder of Whop, Building a $1.6B Fin-Tech Company at 26
The Casey Adams Show
Listener.com
4.8 • 634 Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on my show I sat down with Steven Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Whop, the platform on a mission to deliver everyone a sustainable income. What started as a $75 sneaker bot sold in Facebook groups has grown into a global marketplace that recently closed a $200 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation, with nearly 40,000 people earning over $270 million every single month on the platform.
We got into the early days of sleeping on couches in Boston, turning down an acquisition offer, and the 5am voice memo that changed everything. Steven breaks down why they partnered with Tether to open up financial networks for unbanked regions across the globe, how Whop has evolved from sneaker bots to content rewards and beyond, and why 70% of his entire team are former founders themselves.
We also got into building aggressively in the AI era, why he left New York for Palo Alto, three month sprints over five year plans, and much more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by Steven Schwartz, the co-founder and CEO of WAPP. |
| 0:06.8 | Stephen, thank you so much for coming to show today. |
| 0:08.3 | Thank you, Casey, for having me. |
| 0:09.5 | Of course. So, you know, I've been following the journey of not only yourself but Wab for many years now. |
| 0:14.3 | And, you know, seeing the evolution from sneaker bots back in the early days to your recent round of funding with Tether. |
| 0:21.6 | I kind of want to start with where we are today because I know WAP has evolved so much over the years. |
| 0:27.6 | And at first one, I say congrats on the recent announcement of $200 million raised from Tether. |
| 0:32.6 | What does that mean for the company? |
| 0:34.6 | And for those that are just maybe coming across what WAP is today, what is WAP before we dive into the back story here yeah it's it's only |
| 0:41.7 | few people have been following along as long as you know that this means so |
| 0:45.0 | well and I mean when we first launched WAP we were basically a marketplace to |
| 0:48.9 | buy and sell sneaker bots so super super niche and then from there we basically |
| 0:53.7 | pioneered the paid Discord market. |
| 0:55.9 | And then we were somehow very used by people that were selling education programs and |
| 1:02.8 | launching long-front video content. |
| 1:04.9 | And then we introduced clipping to the world last year. |
| 1:07.0 | And then now we basically have kind of like this culmination of so many different |
| 1:11.3 | fads that have occurred over the last five, four to five years where WAP is representative |
| 1:15.8 | of the most effective ways people make money on the internet. And what we do all day is help people |
| 1:22.2 | launch businesses, design ways for newer beginner people to come on and earn an income. And given how powerful the |
| 1:31.8 | internet is now, there's going to continue to be all these different fads and different ways to |
| 1:34.7 | make money. And at WAP, we are on a mission to deliver everyone a sustainable income. And |
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