Whatnot

Country Made makes jerky and freeze-dried snacks out of Oregon. Their products are in over 700 stores across the Pacific Northwest, generating up to $1M a year through wholesale distribution. But wholesale margins were shrinking as distributors started importing cheaper alternatives. Their website brought in only a few orders a month. Angi, the founder, wanted a direct line to customers and more creative control over what she could launch without middlemen or massive minimums. She joined Whatnot. Spent a month as a buyer first, watching shows and learning the format. Then went live from her office with a table and a banner. Early shows hit $1,200+ per hour. Within three months, Whatnot became 30% of their total business with over 20,000 items sold. Angi also uses Whatnot to test small-batch flavors live, reads the room, and decides what's worth scaling to wholesale. The traditional product launch model, reversed. "Whatnot lets us create and test new flavors in small batches, like a blackberry jalapeño Skittle, without having to produce pallets of product." #LiveShopping #SocialCommerce #Retail

Last week at Shoptalk drove home how fast retail is moving. One clear theme: live shopping isn’t a “maybe," it’s already here. As our Chief Product Officer, Tom Verrilli, shared in his fireside chat, live commerce builds trust faster. Real-time connection and interaction - asking questions, seeing products in action - removes friction and gives shoppers more confidence. We saw this firsthand on the floor, with brands live selling directly from our booth. Invicta, Hotel Collection, Yves Rocher, and Elan’s Daughter all went live, showcasing products and driving real-time sales. Excited to keep building with brands leaning into this shift. #ShopTalk #LiveCommerce #LiveShopping #Ecommerce

We launched over 35 new categories in 2025. When Labubu took off, buyers needed to find it fast. When live selling expanded into Australia, our taxonomy had to work there too. Our taxonomy system powers every discovery surface: onboarding, browse, search, recommendations. As we scaled to 200+ categories across nine countries, we needed the system to move just as fast. So our team rebuilt it from the ground up, replacing manual record edits with composable, validated taxonomy migrations that deploy continuously. The marketplace never sits still. Now our infrastructure doesn't either. Read the full breakdown on the Whatnot Engineering blog. https://lnkd.in/gNFrQgXj #LiveShopping #SocialCommerce #Engineering #WereHiring

We'll be at Shoptalk Spring next week (March 24–26) in Las Vegas. Live commerce has more than doubled in the past year, reaching an estimated $22 billion across North America and Europe, and the brands moving fastest are the ones using video to rebuild what e-commerce lost: trust, discovery, and real connection with their customers. Our Chief Product Officer Tom Verrilli is leading a session on where brands are headed with live shopping. Tuesday, 3/25 at 10:20 AM in Lab B. And if you want to see what this looks like in practice, come find us at booth #3159. Brands like Invicta, Freida Rothman, and Hotel Collection will be going live throughout the show. Details here: https://lnkd.in/gk4P8RAz

Stefania from Costura went from $25K a year listing vintage on static marketplaces to over $250K annually selling live on Whatnot. Live selling is a particularly powerful format for vintage. A static photo can't capture the detail of hand-stitched beading or explain why a 20-year-old Mandalay dress is worth stopping everything for. Live lets sellers show all of that in real time and turn a single rare find into an event that keeps buyers coming back. That's exactly what Stefania does. She builds anticipation for days, goes live for hours, and ships close to 1,000 items a month. Fashion is now one of the fastest-growing categories on Whatnot, and sellers like her are showing what product storytelling can do in real time. Great piece from Glossy on why resale is moving live: https://lnkd.in/eUShd3-g Interested in selling on Whatnot? Learn more at https://lnkd.in/g-8_wrpq

Scaling a live commerce platform means your operational infrastructure has to keep pace with your growth. So our team built Atlas: a workflow execution engine that turns customer support playbooks into versioned, automated code. SOPs can now go live in hours, and every agent is always working from the same page. Read how we built it, including the LLM pipeline that made it all possible, on the blog. Interested in working on problems like this across engineering, trust and risk, or CX? We're hiring: careers.whatnot.com https://lnkd.in/gVeHAGqy #LiveShopping #AI #Hiring #SocialCommerce

An Arizona convenience store started selling international snacks on Whatnot and generated $35K+ in its first 90 days. By leaning into a highly specific category (Exotic Snacks), they connected directly with buyers actively searching for hard-to-find imports like Japanese Wagyu chips and Korean Turtle Chips. The result? Strong discovery, high engagement, and repeat customers. This month’s product updates focus on three areas that build momentum and strengthen protections across the platform: - More precise discovery: new subcategories, like Exotic Snacks, help buyers find exactly what they’re looking for. - Clearer buyer signals: buyers are using pre-bids more than ever to lock in the items they love – giving sellers a clear signal of what’s likely to move (shows with strong pre-bid activity see up to 7× more sales!). With a dedicated Pre-Bid Tab and Live Shop filter, that demand is even easier to see and act on. - Stronger shipping protection: Instant drop-off scans create proof at handoff, reducing disputes. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gkp4DmMf #Whatnot #ProductUpdates #LiveShopping #LiveSelling 

Forbes just named Whatnot the #1 Best Startup Employer in America for 2026. The ranking evaluates thousands of companies across employer reputation, employee satisfaction, and growth. In other words, it's shaped by the people who work here, and how they feel about the work they're doing. Over six years ago, we set out to build the best place for people to turn their passions into real businesses and build real community through commerce. Last year, we powered more than $8B in live sales. We now span hundreds of categories across three continents, and hundreds of thousands of sellers build their livelihoods on Whatnot every day. What makes Whatnot a great place to work is the same thing that makes it a great platform: we're community-first, we move fast, and everyone here owns something that directly impacts the livelihoods of the sellers and buyers we serve. If that's the kind of work you want to do, we're hiring across engineering, sales, product, data, marketing, trust & safety, and more: careers.whatnot.com https://lnkd.in/dGSX3ahr #Hiring #LiveShopping #SocialCommerce

Forbes just named Whatnot the #1 Best Startup Employer in America for 2026. The ranking evaluates thousands of companies across employer reputation, employee satisfaction, and growth. In other words, it's shaped by the people who work here, and how they feel about the work they're doing. Over six years ago, we set out to build the best place for people to turn their passions into real businesses and build real community through commerce. Last year, we powered more than $8B in live sales. We now span hundreds of categories across three continents, and hundreds of thousands of sellers build their livelihoods on Whatnot every day. What makes Whatnot a great place to work is the same thing that makes it a great platform: we're community-first, we move fast, and everyone here owns something that directly impacts the livelihoods of the sellers and buyers we serve. If that's the kind of work you want to do, we're hiring across engineering, sales, product, data, marketing, trust & safety, and more: careers.whatnot.com https://lnkd.in/dGSX3ahr #Hiring #LiveShopping #SocialCommerce

The largest live shopping event in US history happened on Whatnot on The Big Game Sunday, and it ran on infrastructure our engineering team has been building and investing in for years. At peak, over 583,000 people were watching a single show and entering giveaways, with zero major incidents. The goal from the start was infrastructure that raises our ceiling permanently, built to last beyond any single event. Read the full breakdown on the Whatnot engineering blog. If solving problems that don't exist anywhere else sounds like your kind of work, we're hiring: careers.whatnot.com https://lnkd.in/gCVqgubz #Engineering #LiveShopping #SocialCommerce