- Billionaire school dropout Lucy Guo is reportedly the youngest self-made lady on the planet—knocking Taylor Swift off the highest spot. However even with a $1.3 billion reported web value, the 30-year-old cofounder of Scale AI tells Fortune she nonetheless pinches the pennies and retailers at Shein.
Regardless of founding and retaining a $1.3 billion stake in an AI unicorn, you received’t catch Lucy Guo losing her billions on a lavish life-style to match her new standing.
“I don’t like wasting money,” the frugal 30-year-old tells Fortune.
In fact, generally Guo will splurge—like if she’s received a 16 hour flight to endure, she says she’ll go for enterprise class. And there’s the odd designer gown hanging in her closet for when she wants it.
“But in terms of like daily life, my assistant just drives me in a pretty old Honda Civic. I don’t care,” she says.
“Every thing I put on is free or from Shein… A few of them aren’t going to be that nice high quality, however there’s all the time like two items or so that basically work out, and I simply put on them daily,” the billionaire founder laughs. “I still literally buy buy-one-get-one-free on Uber Eats.”
Guo, who’s at the moment the founder and CEO of the creator neighborhood platform Passes, provides {that a} quote she came across on the morning of our interview completely summarises her strategy: “It’s like, act broke, stay rich.”
Millionaires have to show themself—billionaires don’t
Guo hit the jackpot after the AI startup she cofounded, Scale AI, was reportedly valued at $25 billion in April as a part of a share sale.
Though she left the corporate in 2018 (two years after founding it), the 5% stake she held onto is now value an estimated $1.2 billion—making the millennial one in all simply 5 feminine billionaires beneath 40 in keeping with Forbes’ newest rating, together with Rihanna and Anthropic’s cofounder Daniela Amodei.
It’s why Guo not feels the necessity to show her wealth with a Patek Philippe on a regular basis watch, or a Hermès Birkin to hold her laptop computer. That, she says, is the behaviour of millionaires.
“Who you see typically wasting money on, designer clothes, a nice car, et cetera, they’re technically in the millionaire range,” Guo explains. “All their friends are multimillionaires, or billionaires and they feel a little bit insecure, so they feel the need to be flashy to show other people, ‘look, I’m successful.’”
“I’m not showing off to anyone, right?”
Certainly, for our interview, she’s makeup-free, dressed down, and will go for every other millennial. However earlier in her profession, Guo admits she, too, could have been dripping in designer gear.
“I do think that this is actually something that I personally went through, and I think a lot of people go through when you’re in that middle ground of you’re successful, but not as successful as you want to be.”
“And I think the reason most billionaires dress in a t-shirt, jeans, hoodies, is that they can. They don’t need to be in the suit 24/7 because they’re done proving themselves to the rest of the world. The rest of the world is just sucking up to them,” she adds. “And I think that’s kind of how I like feel, where I’m past that hump. I don’t really have to prove myself to anyone.”
“No one’s going to look at me and point at me like, ‘Haha, she’s so broke’ when I’m pulling up in a Honda Civic because whatever, it doesn’t matter.”
‘Cheap’ CEOs simply need to sound relatable—however not Guo
Guo’s not the one ultra-wealthy to confess she’s “pretty frugal.” The world’s strongest have been boasting about their quiet luxurious life-style for a while now. They’ve been donning logo-less angora wool jumpers and linen trousers that could possibly be from wherever to the unassuming eye. Specialists say their rich friends can inform who’s carrying Zara from who’s in Loro Piana, however the level is to resemble individuals in decrease tax brackets.
Others, like KeKe Palmer and Warren Buffet, have been much less delicate about how they lead very regular lives, regardless of their large web worths—with the world’s most well-known investor going as far to name himself “cheap”.
However in Guo’s eyes, she’s one of many few who really are as low cost as they are saying they’re.
“I think that people want to fit into society. Specifically in America, I do think there is a ‘we hate billionaires situation.’ So because of that, people want to show, ‘look, I’m not your typical billionaire. I’m frugal,’” she explains.
“I’m not saying it to be like, ‘let me show you the world that I’m not like other billionaires,” Guo provides. “I fully admit it, I have gone through that spending spree when I was more insecure, and I felt like I needed to show something.”
And people who actually aren’t spending their tens of millions? They aren’t doing it to be relatable, she says it’s as a result of like her that they had their flashy period—then reached the inevitable realisation: “Why am I wasting my money on something that doesn’t matter?”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
