This profile has not been claimed and data may not be accurate.
96th percentile
YC and Sequoia-backed co-founder and CEO of Whatnot, a $11.5B live shopping unicorn
Credibility
GTM / Distribution · 100th percentile
- Grant LaFontaine is featured on the Sequoia Capital founders page, a top-tier firm whose domain (sequoiacap.com) ranks #12,226 in the Majestic Million.
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Founder score
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)Whatnot is a YC Winter 2020 company, confirming Grant LaFontaine as a Y Combinator alum.
- 98%Probability of being accurate (98%)Current CEO and Co-Founder of Whatnot, an active live shopping marketplace.
- 97%Probability of being accurate (97%)Whatnot raised $262M per the SEC Form D authoritative filing, with Grant LaFontaine as a named related person.
- 97%Probability of being accurate (97%)Grant LaFontaine is featured on the Sequoia Capital founders page, a top-tier firm whose domain (sequoiacap.com) ranks #12,226 in the Majestic Million.
- 92%Probability of being accurate (92%)Whatnot was co-founded with at least one other co-founder.
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)Whatnot is a unicorn with a valuation of $11.5 billion, and public signals indicate the business is generating significant revenue at scale.
What you likely need
You're a unicorn-stage CEO navigating the tension between IPO readiness and aggressive international growth, so the highest-value Festival events for you are intimate rooms with public-market veterans, seasoned marketplace operators, and CFO/CRO talent who've scaled through the pre-IPO gauntlet. You'll also benefit from peer CEO gatherings where founders at your exact stage — post-Series D, managing 1,000+ person orgs across multiple geographies — can speak candidly about burnout, board dynamics, and what it actually takes to ring the bell. Rounding that out, seller-ecosystem and YC network events give you a direct channel to recruit brand partners and early-stage founders who can accelerate Whatnot's flywheel before the public markets window opens.
Would you attend these IRL Festival events?
We will tune and customize your Founder Festival experience to make sure you get invited to the events that would be most valuable to you.
- fundraisingA pre-IPO CEO dinner for unicorn founders (Instacart, Klaviyo, Reddit alumni welcome) and bulge-bracket ECM bankers to pressure-test IPO timing, S-1 narrative, and auditor selection for a $11.5B marketplace
- introsA closed-door roundtable with Sequoia, a16z, and DST Global portfolio CEOs on cross-border marketplace scaling — specifically how to deepen operations across the 22 countries Whatnot already serves without over-indexing on any single region
- hiringA hiring dinner for CFO and CRO candidates who've taken high-GMV marketplaces (Poshmark, StockX, Reverb) through the pre-IPO operational build — focused on finding executives who can own revenue complexity and audit readiness simultaneously
- positioningA brand and retail media roundtable with CMOs from mainstream consumer brands exploring TikTok Shop alternatives, where Whatnot can present seller GMV and buyer retention data to position itself as the trusted U.S. live commerce platform
- introsA YC W20 alumni dinner to recruit early-stage founders as Whatnot sellers or brand distribution partners, turning the YC network into a direct marketplace acquisition channel before Whatnot's IPO roadshow amplifies the brand
- tacticalA tactical lunch with marketplace seller-success operators from Etsy, eBay, and Faire who've built wholesale-to-native-seller conversion programs at scale, to help Grant systematize Whatnot's Country Made-style success playbook across verticals
- wellbeingAn avra-style peer CEO dinner for founders 5–8 years into building $1B+ companies — a candid, no-decks conversation about maintaining strategic clarity, managing board pressure, and avoiding burnout at the exact stage Grant is navigating now