Steven Schwartz (Whop) on Building a Unicorn, Creating Millionaires, and the Future of Work
Social Currency with Sammi CohenShow Notes
What if the future of work doesn’t look anything like the office jobs we were told to chase?
Steven Schwartz started building businesses as a teenager and eventually turned that obsession into Whop, one of the fastest-growing marketplaces for internet businesses. Today, the company is valued at $1.6 billion and helps thousands of people earn income online.
In this episode, Steven joins Sammi to break down how he met his co-founder on Facebook at 13, why they almost quit Whop after just three months, and how they scaled it into a unicorn backed by names like Peter Thiel and Kevin Hart.
They also unpack the creator economy, why everyone is a creator now, why traditional 9-to-5 career paths are being disrupted, and what “agentic income” could mean in the next era of work. Plus: why Steven thinks the biggest mistake aspiring entrepreneurs make is waiting to feel ready.
Follow Sammi Cohen on Instagram
Subscribe to the Social Currency newsletter
Check out Whop
Here’s what Sammi covers with Steven:
00:00 How Steven Met His Co-Founder at 13 on Facebook
03:15 Building Sneaker Bots as a Teenager
06:00 20+ Side Hustles Before Whop
10:30 Almost Quitting Whop After 3 Months
14:00 What Whop Actually Is
19:00 50,000+ New Users Per Day
22:00 The $1.6 Billion Valuation Explained
25:00 Why Stablecoins Matter for Global Business
29:45 Whop Has Created Hundreds of Millionaires
32:30 Advice for New Entrepreneurs
36:00 AI and the End of the Creator Economy
39:30 What “Agentic Income” Means
41:30 The Company That Tried to Buy Whop
43:00 Why Steven Wants to Redefine Work
46:00 Whop Finance and the Future of Money
50:00 Why Creators Shouldn’t Rely on One Platform Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Mary Holland Nader spent five years managing money for ultra-high-net-worth clients at Deutsche Bank. Then she quit to film a reality show with her three sisters… and pitched a fintech company on camera.
What if kids could finish a full day of academics in just two hours? That’s the promise behind Alpha School, the AI-powered private school claiming its students learn 2.6 times faster than their peers and graduate with an average SAT score above 1470.
Bala started with $5,000, a sketch and a yoga class that wasn't hard enough. Today, the brand behind the bangles on every workout influencer's wrists is growing 50% year over year with just 12 full-time employees.
For the first time in its history as a public company, Peloton turned a profit. After years of billion-dollar losses, the fitness brand posted $63 million in net income this fiscal year. Just three years ago, it was a punchline.
Nearly a billion people open Snapchat every month, and almost half a billion use it every single day. Fifteen years after Evan Spiegel and his co-founders launched the app, formerly known as Peekaboo, out of a Stanford dorm room, Snap is betting its next decade on something you wear on your face.