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Meet the CEOs Building a $1BN Empire for Creators (Whop)

Meet the CEOs Building a $1BN Empire for Creators (Whop)

The new way to make money online.

Mike Thurston
June 27, 2025

You don't always need a revolutionary idea.

You need to fix something that genuinely annoys you every day.

All the wildly successful founders started by fixing something they themselves saw a need for. They built things that they actually wanted to use, not just products they thought might sell.

Joining us this week is Cameron Zoub and Steven Schwartz, who turned a shared obsession with sneakers into Whop - a platform that's now revolutionising how creators make money online.

Together, they almost accidentally created the infrastructure powering today's creator economy. Their platform is now projected to process over $1 billion in payments annually.

FROM SNEAKER BOTS TO BILLION-DOLLAR CREATOR ECONOMY

Start solving first

Don't build the marketplace itself at first; become the first seller and understand every pain point of your demographic.

Cam and Steven were the sneaker resellers. They experienced every frustration firsthand: waking up at 4AM, camping outside shops, missing releases by seconds.

When they built their first bot, they knew exactly what features mattered because they'd lived through every problem that their future customers would face.

Follow usage patterns

Rather than sticking rigidly to your original vision; watch how people actually use your platform.

→ Let user requests guide your product roadmap rather than forcing your original vision.

→ Build features based on proven demand, not theoretical possibilities.

Whop added Discord integration. Then creators realised they could skip the software entirely and just sell valuable Discord communities.

Each expansion came from real user behaviour, not boardroom speculation.

"If you know how to program and you know what people want, then I think it's a superpower."

- Steven Schwartz

Scale existing behaviour

In Cameron and Steven’s early case, the market was proven.

People were literally sleeping outside shops for shoes. The pain was real, the demand was obvious - they just made the existing process 100 times more efficient.

Look for manual processes that lots of people already do repeatedly.
Automate proven behaviours rather than creating entirely new habits
Choose markets where demand is visibly demonstrated through current manual effort

❝

Execution beats strategy... Always do something to push what you're working towards.

Cameron Zoub

Gamify everything possible

Instead of creating another course platform where people passively consume content, transform passive viewers into active players who compete, earn money, and stay engaged long-term.

- Replace passive consumption with active participation wherever possible.

- Add competition and rewards to increase engagement and retention.

- Create systems where your audience can earn money, not just spend it.

You first identify a real problem in a market you understand completely.

Then, you build the simplest version that solves your own pain first.

You scale when your customers start demanding features you haven't even thought of yet.

Later this week, we’ll be sending a deep dive into everything that was covered in more detail to ensure you don’t miss any value from your watching.