WAP CEO: $200M/month flowing through platform with 75 people — and AI integration is next big unlock

platform for developers develop and fine-tune models with serverless GPUs and ondemand clusters. And we have our next guest in the reream waiting room, Steven Schwarz from [ __ ] There he is. Stephen, what's going on?

Oh, what's up, man? How are you?

We are great. It's great to uh great to have you back on the show. Uh you you and the team have been insanely insanely busy it seems. Uh give us give us the update from the last few months.

Yeah. Um so I think we talked in March and since then um things have been really crazy. Um I I think the best way to put it is that at this point in time in our company in order to even grow the business by 50% um we have to add more than a billion dollars in [clears throat] earnings on our platform each year. And I guess just to put in perspective what that looks like, if we were to onboard um 1,000 businesses that do a million dollars a year, which uh those are not small businesses. Um that would only grow our business under 50%. Which is pretty bad. So I think that the story of our of our recent months has been how are we going to really 10x this thing and that requires us to think a lot bigger. So we've been expanding pretty aggressively internationally. Um we we have been partnering with really amazing platforms. We had an announcement earlier today and I think that I mean there's a lot of stuff that breaks when when we when we grow, but um the year's been pretty nuts. There's a lot of stuff coming out soon and

I'm really excited.

And and how big is the team today? The core team, you know, people w2 by WO because I know I imagine like part of the benefit is you know everyone on the platform has some incent, you know, incentive to grow the platform and support but uh I'm curious what the core team looks like. It's about 75 people. Um, so it's actually pretty similar size. I think that everyone's going at a really high RPM. I we like to have our our team really lean and and um everyone has a lot of autonomy and and almost no bloat anywhere. So I think uh it's we're definitely underwater right now. Um and there's about 75 people total.

Wow. Uh so talk about talk about the shape of the business. The uh you know you guys had a a post going viral uh this week. Somebody was saying you know team talking about grinding you guys the team's grinding because you guys are you know generating uh billion you know there's billions of dollars uh flowing through the platform and only 75 people working on the team uh but uh the the criticis the common criticism would be like you know [ __ ] is uh you know a course platform and obviously like some of these partnerships you're announcing like the bigger broader vision I think is certainly uh starting to uh crystallize for me, but talk about the shape of the business and really like where where this is all going.

Yeah. Um well, I think it's really funny how how many people get offended when when um these teams that are hard at work. I think it's it's obviously like results are are the most important and I think that um is not really the the intention is is nothing about trying to rage bait anybody or or um even to seek necessary attention. I don't even think Cameron expected that to go down viral. But I think at the end of the day, I mean, when when our team is is excited about something, people are going to be working hard. And um given the nature of our team, we have a lot of former founders and a lot of former entrepreneurs that are are really driving huge parts of our business forward. And I think that um the the common people know W for so many different things, right? We started in in sneaker bots and then that naturally progressed into more a broader variety of different desktop software and then people are like, "Hey, can we sell chats with the software?" And we're like, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Let's make sure you can do that." And then people are like, "Hey, can we drop the software entirely and just sell chats?" And we're like, "That sounds pretty cool. Paid chats. Let's do it." And then people started to do that. And then they're like, "Can we also add long form video?" And that made sense. People used to make the long form video as a way to explain how to use the software. And pretty quickly people are like, "Wait, we don't even need to sell software or chats. We can just sell long form video." And that's what a course is. And I I don't think that we ever set out to be a course platform at all. We really focus hard on on the primitives that are necessary for the future of work and and for the future of commerce generally. And I think that the one of the lowest way lift ways to start a business is making a course. And I think that when you look at our business today, I mean I think we probably do more more than a billion dollars a year in uh paid groups and educational programs. We probably do almost a billion dollars in in agency services that are sold on the platform. Um we we'll do maybe do um three400 million dollars of pure software sales and I mean on the emerging side I think we even have more than $50 million of physical product sales each year now. Um so I think that the when you go to our homepage we do a pretty poor job showcasing a lot of the supply. That's not been a huge priority of ours to date. we are very focused on our infrastructure for the sellers and and for the the platforms now that are integrating with our product. So I I think that there there's a the core sellers are generally the loudest because they're very good marketers and um they typically run out I think a lot of the the other stuff in the platform and people know what as well for clipping and things like that which are also really awesome ways to to make money. Um but yeah the the course stuff is is is funny

totally. uh what's going on on the actual infrastructure side? You guys used to work with Stripe on the back end. You killed that part. You moved on from that uh partnership at at some point. How how are you guys processing payments today on all these different verticals? And uh I'm I'm assuming that's like a core part of the offering for these uh individuals, businesses that are coming onto the platform and you're giving them a variety of ways to monetize.

Yeah. So you can kind of think about the core value prop to be payments and distribution all out of the box. And I think that we never really set out to be a payments platform. I think that's pretty boring. And I think that there's a lot more that we can do. I'd say that today money is is much more commoditized than it was 10 years ago. And especially on the payments front, we don't think that that's a real long-term way to to create value. And I think that when we look at our ecosystem as a whole, the the mentality is like how can we bring all these parts of the internet together in a way that makes it really easy for retail and for general consumers to actually get what they need to start a business, right? You have when people think of payments today, they really only generally know Stripe and and after that is a huge falloff is no one really can generally name even another company that's similar to Stripe. You may have Shopify in the picture, but they're very very focused on physical and and larger shops now. So for us, it's really really important that everything is extremely tightly integrated. And when when you're asking about infrastructure, um the way that we look at it is is we have people earning about $200 million a month on the platform today. So part of our infrastructure is dedicated to to thinking about how can we get uh more functionality delivered to those merchants so they can do a lot more with their money. Today just for for reference the the uh process is almost universal across every merchant. They'll make money and then they'll withdraw to their bank and then they'll go invest on on Meta and Tik Tok ads or or whichever ads platform of their choice and then they'll invest in in crypto. And I think that um it's really exciting right now on the infrastructure side because we're about to let merchants do a lot more with their money. So you can imagine you make money, go invest it into ads, you go invest it into cryp bitcoin, you go place pred bets on poly market, you go um and do a lot more with your money. So we're we're doing a lot to bring a lot of our um activity on chain and and to tap into the broader um financial application layer that exists today. Um so that that's one part of our infrastructure side and the other part of our infrastructure side is um on on the uh the advertising front I think it's it's um distribution is critical and we've recently partnered up with a number of different for example games on Discord or uh publishers uh writing blogs that will actually render products that are listed on [ __ ] and that means that anybody selling on our platform gets to take advantage of pretty immediate distribution. Um, so, so those are the things I think I'm pretty excited about in the infrastructure side. The move away from Stripe. I think I mean I've been building on Stripe since I was 12 years old and I love Stripe so much and I think that we're we're still partner with Stripe and and we still use Stripe and um, I have nothing but great things to say about Stripe. I think that when you're looking at our mission, which is to deliver everyone a sustainable income, there's certain primitives that need to be uh, available and those are simply not available on Stripe. So I mean getting paid out in Venmo, getting paid out in crypto in other emerging markets throughout Africa is very very important um to our our mission.

Interesting.

So So talk more about the partnership with Micro One that you guys announced today. That is uh uh I'm I'm curious like maybe break down Micro One and their business for people that aren't familiar and then and then how you guys are integrating.

Yeah, so Micro One is a really cool business. They basically uh partner with AI labs to offer general public um access to pre-recorded videos and um situations that the general public can weigh in on and say uh what would they interpret the most likely solution to any set of visual problems to be and the AI labs will use that as fuel for their training data. and micro one um is essentially aggregating all those opportunities and delivering payouts at scale to the general public um that's paid for by the AI labs. So when we're thinking about [ __ ] and what the partnership means to us um there there are so many ways that people can earn income on the internet today and it's only going to get crazier and crazier. So we've invested a lot over the last few months in our public SDK and our developer infrastructure so that platforms can tap into our network and uh that's exactly what what Micro One is doing.

That's pretty interesting. Did you did you think about getting into data labeling earlier and in a direct way? Uh like or or Yeah, I mean did you ever think about like just offering data labeling tasks to the current community of people on [ __ ] Uh because didn't didn't Door Dash like launch the or Uber was going to launch like the ability to do data labeling tasks while you wait for your next thing or something like anyone with a pool of huge human capital is is looking at this right now, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, how do you think about the different eras even? It felt like the 2010s where if you had a cell phone, you could make money in the real world and now it's kind of the continuation of that is like if you have an internet connection, you guys are trying to just enable somebody to open an app and

yeah,

make uh maybe you know, may maybe they're not going to immediately make some, you know, incredible income, but it's a most of the apps you open them, they suck your attention and money and and all that. You guys are trying to have an app that you can open and and have the opposite effect.

Yeah, I think I grew up on Facebook all day every day and Skype and I think that there's two ways you could have gone on the social media platforms. You could have maybe um sat there and just read and watched videos and what the kids call brain raw today. I think the other way is to try to get as much productivity and value out of the network as you can, meeting new people and maybe uh finding customers and whatnot. And for for me and and the people that I met early on in the internet, we focused on the latter. And I think that the the goal of [ __ ] is to bring together all of the pieces of the internet that are super scattered right now and and hopefully make it a place that's a lot more worth your time to spend. And I think that the the money is is one part of it, but I'd say it's also like the idea and dream of starting your own business is very much um aspiration to a lot of people. And we think that um you open the app and I mean you can you can start a business, you can find ways to to uh make money by providing value to other peers on on the network. You can meet people in chats and it's a very much um expansive expansive application that I think uh I think it's it's makes it difficult for people to understand what we do.

Yeah. So with with with Micro One, are you you're just providing the uh like the payment backend? They're actually going to source the experts to do the data labeling. Is that right? And then they're also handling the relationship with whatever lab they're selling the data to.

Yeah. So to answer your question, have we thought about going into that type of market? Yeah. I think that for us, we really try to stay on on what we're good at. And I think what we're good at is and and how we how we handle payments, how we handle payouts, how we handle uh what you can what else you can do with your money as well as distribution. And um we don't know as anywhere near the the amount of of industry expertise that Micro One does. And I think that [laughter] that that's why we wanted to partner with them. And [clears throat] um we don't have any we don't have that's not our forte. So I don't think we we really have thought much about going into that. I mean we did the clipping stuff and the content reward stuff and now I mean there's actually a lot of other platforms that are starting to implement our SDK as well on that front because again like we built that app in two days as a test case to show what you could do with the WAP ecosystem and it obviously blew up. I think we still pay out millions of dollars a month to people all over the world that are clipping, but there's also other platforms now that are integrating that stack um and are able to focus really really hard on making sure that's an amazing product.

Yeah, I feel like you sort of live in the future because you're so tapped into young entrepreneurship broadly and such a wide swath of individuals. Um can you help me get up to speed on how the next generation is thinking about sports betting and gambling? Um because I feel like there was like the drop shipping wave, there was the course wave, the clipping wave. Like is sports betting in a is it going through a boom right now? Because in tech with the prediction markets, I think everyone's like starting to be a little bit more top of mind, but they might forget that, you know, we had we had the CEO of DraftKings on the show with yesterday and I think Google invested in that company in like 2017 and so it's not new. Uh, but it does seem like it's growing a little bit. But I'd love to know like how are you

Capital G invests I think in Flutter or FanDuel.

Oh, that's right. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. So, so, so like obviously like like sports betting is not a new invention. Uh, but it does feel like maybe it's going through a renaissance. How are you seeing like the the trend within that industry? Like what what are the trends that you'd even describe?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, sports betting has been around since like coliseum days and even before that. So, I think that it's just it's a really good way for people to be literally bought into what they're watching. And I think that what's happening now is is you're seeing a lot of entertainment, a lot of social, and a lot of integration between all of that on top of sports betting, which makes it a lot more fun. And I think when when you imagine somebody to be watching a football game betting alone, it's it's a lot less fun than betting with your friends. And I think that when when people think of sports betting and [ __ ] a lot of a lot of that um notion is around the communities that are on the platform talking about sports betting and participating in sports betting, but they're not really participate. They're not really betting on our platform. Um and I think that the I mean people very much love to to bet and I don't think that's going to change. I think that the the types of bets will evolve and I mean I'd say that sports betting in the 2000s was probably more popular for retail than investing in stocks which is definitely changing now with Robin Hood and all of the other uh more retail friendly applications. So I think that people like to invest in in things and and to put their money where their mouth is and and I'd say that that trend is going to continue on and um we're seeing during this fourth season. So right now it's definitely pretty popular.

Yeah. Uh I mean like like there has been a long history of folks uh doing financial education teaching you how to trade stocks trading forex has been a big thing that uh there's been a lot of courses around uh are there courses around sports betting are they like roughly the is that the same size business or is that like more niche because it's like more random

yeah well I think asking what kind of categories are on [ __ ] is kind of like asking what categorical content exists on social media it's just ephemeral and it evolves so much that maybe somebody will launch a sports betting community and they'll add a course to it, but it's not necessarily the core part of the product that that somebody to other users.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'm just I'm fascinated because I feel like a lot of tech people are like like, "Oh, there's like this crazy breakout moment." And I think a lot of people, if you zoom out, they see it as much more of like a smooth curve that's been happening for for for decades. How much uh do you do you and the team try to predict uh these sort of like future trends like what is the next sort of trend like clipping? Are is is is it more like reactionary to the current moment and saying like let's build the best possible infrastructure for what's happening today or are you trying to looking in corners of the internet uh you know maybe some subreddit that's gaining popularity or things like that uh to try to predict these things and actually be ahead of them. Um, I think that we lean on our existing customers a lot to to u build around them and to make sure that if they're on to something early that our platform can support what they want to do. Um, I I'd say that every shift in what the predominant form of of way to start a business and way to to earn income on our platform has been trailblazed by a few subset of merchants and then we've quickly built the product to better support that. So, I actually don't think it's it's worth time to to try to predict it because it's getting really crazy and I I don't think we're very tapped into to what the people are are doing, I think, in the in the trenches across the internet, but it's very very very hard to predict. Um, and rather kind of really focus on the primitives that we know are going to be true throughout all these different trends.

That makes a lot of sense. Uh, what are you most excited for for next year? Um yeah, I think Wobb is very underinvested in AI right now and I think that we're that's about to change and um the the platform is very complicated still. There's a lot of of components we've created. We're a very engineering heavy heavy team that's created a lot of infrastructure, but I think that we're we're now flattening a lot of that, simplifying a lot of it and riddling AI throughout the entire platform. So I think that's going to be pretty crazy. Um, and and that's probably what I'm what I'm most excited about uh for next year is just making sure that you guys are actually on the app starting businesses and and find it worth your time to do so. Um, so that's what I'd say.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come.

Great to get the update and uh congrats to the whole team on on a wild year. I I remember

uh we have we have a

uh a mutual friend. won't name him uh because he's anonymous, but I think he he told us at the end he told us at the end of last year, yeah, Q4 of last year, the company that he was most,

and this is like an institutional investor. He was like, "The company I'm most bullish on

that is most under the radar, most underhyped is WOP." And uh you guys have certainly delivered this year. So,

well done.

Really appreciate it. Long, long way to go.

Fantastic. Job's not finished. Love to hear it.

Cheers.

We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one.