Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
On any given workday, you might find Whatnot employees hawking trading cards, apparel, or other items on the digital live-shopping app. They’re not slacking on the job or trying to make rent—they’re actually evaluated on whether they’ve spent time selling and buying on the app.
“We only exist to the extent that we provide our customers a lot of value,” says cofounder and CEO Grant LaFontaine. “If you want to build a customer-centered culture, you have to actually follow through on building one and inject it everywhere you possibly can in the organization.”
At Whatnot, which launched in 2019, focus on the customer starts with the hiring process. “If you interview at Whatnot, somewhere along your interview pathway, someone’s going to ask you, ‘Have you used the app? What do you think about it? What could be improved?’” LaFontaine says. “We want to see that you actually use it, you understand it, and you can think through the lens of a customer.”
Try before they buy
Once hired, every one of the company’s more than 1,000 full-time employees is required to answer customer support tickets each quarter, plus sell and buy on the app. The company provides $150 in credits to make purchases and lets employees do their required buying and selling on company time.
Many companies say they engage in “dogfooding,” a term derived from the phrase “eating our own dog food,” or testing one’s own products. Enterprise tech giants such as Microsoft and Cisco have frequently touted the way they used their own tools to drive productivity.
But few companies mandate dogfooding the way Whatnot does. LaFontaine says no employee can “meet expectations” on their performance reviews if they fail to purchase and sell on the app and answer customer queries. LaFontaine has gone live and sold Pokémon cards and toys. Last quarter, he sold some Whatnot swag and donated the proceeds to charity.
LaFontaine says that his own stints as a seller have helped him understand the pain points some customers may experience, such as the challenge of trying to remain composed on camera while also queuing up additional listings—a challenge he has encouraged his product teams to address. He notes that when product teams add new features for sellers, they can get immediate feedback to coworkers who are power sellers—some employees sell thousands of items a month. The customer service teams who talk to buyers and sellers are more fluent in solving problems because they have hands-on experience in the app.
Culture-keeping in action
Whatnot’s approach appears to be paying off. The company says 20 million new accounts were created last year; the app hosted more than 500,000 hours of live shows in December 2025, up 186% from a year earlier.
LaFontaine says he has no plans to abandon the dogfooding requirement as the company scales. In fact, he says, “As you get bigger, you have to be more stringent. It becomes easier for people to hide, and it’s harder for the culture to cascade through so many layers.” Indeed, some employees have started to question the policy, saying that they’re too busy or that they should be rewarded for doing excellent work without engaging on the app. “We haven’t wavered,” he says. “And I hold myself to the same standard. In fact, I have to go live in the next couple of weeks or I’m going to miss my deadline.”
I asked LaFontaine how he’d advise CEOs who might be trying to introduce or reintroduce a customer focus into their companies. He acknowledges that the task might be difficult for some organizations, but customer obsession is table stakes for any business that aspires to excellence. “If you’re going to build a great business, you have to [focus on customers],” he says. “I would advise people to do it sooner rather than later, build it everywhere, and take it seriously. And it starts with the CEO and the leadership team.”
Programming note
Please check out our first live-streamed event exclusively for Modern CEO subscribers: On Monday, May 18, at 1 p.m. ET, I’m hosting The CEO’s Guide to AI. Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies, will help leaders understand where AI can have an impact—and what’s hype. You can RSVP here, and if you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up here. And if you have questions for Matt, you can submit them to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com.
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