In a strict enforcement of internal product testing, live-shopping platform Whatnot now requires all 1,000+ employees to buy and sell on its app and answer customer support tickets every quarter. Failure to meet those requirements can result in not meeting expectations on performance reviews, according to cofounder and CEO Grant LaFontaine.
“We only exist to the extent that we provide our customers a lot of value,” LaFontaine said. “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.”
The mandate applies to everyone from engineers to executives. New hires are grilled about their app usage during interviews: “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 explained. “We want to see that you actually use it, you understand it, and you can think through the lens of a customer.”
Details of the Policy
Employees receive $150 in credits to make purchases and can conduct their required buying and selling on company time. The company, launched in 2019, also requires every staffer to handle customer support tickets each quarter. LaFontaine said the goal is to embed customer empathy deeply into daily work.
Many tech companies talk about “dogfooding”—testing one’s own products—but few enforce it as rigidly as Whatnot. LaFontaine himself goes live to sell Pokémon cards and company swag, recently donating proceeds to charity. He said his own stints as a seller revealed pain points, such as the difficulty of staying composed on camera while queuing up additional listings—a challenge he pushed product teams to fix.
Background
Dogfooding, a term popularized by enterprise tech giants like Microsoft and Cisco, usually involves employees using internal tools to improve productivity. Whatnot’s approach goes beyond that: it treats customer-like usage as a measurable job requirement. “We want to see that you actually use it, you understand it, and you can think through the lens of a customer,” LaFontaine said, repeating a hiring interview mantra.
The live-shopping app, which gained traction during the pandemic, competes with platforms like TikTok Shop and Amazon Live. By forcing employees to act as both buyers and sellers, Whatnot aims to identify bugs and friction points before they reach millions of users.
What This Means
This policy signals a shift from dogfooding as a voluntary practice to a core performance metric. For Whatnot, it means employees are constantly immersed in the customer experience, potentially leading to faster iteration and more user-friendly features. However, the mandatory nature could also create tension among staff who prefer not to engage with the product outside their job function.
For the broader tech industry, Whatnot’s approach may inspire other startups to institutionalize customer focus. As LaFontaine noted, “We want to see that you actually use it … and you can think through the lens of a customer.” The policy reinforces that customer empathy isn’t just a value—it’s a measurable job requirement.
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