Lucy Guo, the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, was recently featured on the Forbes list with a net worth of USD 1.3 billion. At only 30 years old, she has already established herself as a serial entrepreneur. Guo has said that her biggest inspiration came from her parents’ hard work and frugal lifestyle, which motivated her to pursue entrepreneurship.
Her first major venture was Scale AI, a company specializing in data labeling for artificial intelligence. The firm quickly gained prominence in the tech world and was later acquired by Meta for nearly USD 25 billion. Currently, Guo is leading Passes, a content creator monetization platform she launched in 2022. She also founded Backend Ventures in 2019, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology startups.
Growing up in Fremont, California, as the daughter of Chinese immigrants, Guo learned the value of education and money from an early age. She recalls how her parents would push her to participate in abacus competitions and placed constant pressure on her to excel academically.
She went on to study computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. However, just two years later—only a year shy of completing her degree—she made the decision to drop out. Guo admits this came as a shock to her parents. Soon after, she joined the Thiel Fellowship, a program that provides young entrepreneurs with USD 200,000 in funding to build innovative companies.
Lucy Guo’s entrepreneurial spirit had started much earlier. Even in elementary school, she was finding ways to earn money—selling Pokémon cards, colored pencils, and other small items. By the second grade, she had already secured a debit card from Home Depot and opened a PayPal account to manage her savings.
As she grew older, she expanded her ventures online. Through the game Neopets, she sold rare virtual pets and in-game currency for real money. Later, using her coding skills, she developed and sold bots designed for the game. Over time, she began creating websites, generating revenue from Google AdSense, and building internet marketing tools. According to Guo, “One venture just kept leading to another.”
