Yo, technology.

What is it all about?

It was somewhere along the lines of when I had gotten probably about 65 rejections from investors.

And they'd all told me it was a terrible business.

And you know, after like that number of rejections and reasons why things are such a bad business,

even the most confident person gets self-doubt

that kind of seeps in and just brings you down.

Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.

I'm your host, Danny Ford's and the West Coast correspondent for the Sunday Times coming to you live or recorded from Oakland, California.

Thank you for tuning in. It is a pleasure to be here for another week. I have a fun

fact for you this week. Did you know that Pokemon cards, that is the buying and selling of cards

between individuals, is a billion dollar a year business? A billion dollars. Trade for these little pieces of cardboard

with, you know, some small Japanese cartoons on them. Who knew? I did not. But this is just

one of the many fascinating factories I came across on this week's episode, which I think you're

really going to find fascinating.

It is with Grant LaFontaine. He's the founder, co-founder, I should say, of whatnot, which is a

live auction app that is absolutely booming. So you can kind of think of it as a cross between

Twitch and eBay. It's like an online auction for the millennial

and younger generations. And the company, just over the past six months, has raised nearly

$75 million in three separate rounds from a bunch of investors from TikTok personalities

and professional athletes to some of the cream of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Why? Because it is blown up as a destination to buy and sell collectibles of all kinds,

...