The concept is already creating a new class of Gen Z entrepreneurs.
“We had this 17-year-old who essentially started in his grandma’s bedroom and just scaled his whole business to over $100,000 within a few months,” cofounder Neil Shah told Fortune. “That’s a true testament that you’ve actually built something where people can go from zero to 100.”
Another seller, a 22-year-old named Maddie, turned the platform into a full-time business despite health challenges. Maddie, who is deaf and has fibromyalgia, sells niche streetwear brands. After initially reaching “upper five figures” in monthly sales, she surpassed $100,000 in June, according to the cofounders.
Those success stories aren’t isolated. Another sneaker seller generates roughly $260,000 in monthly sales, according to the company. These sellers are taking advantage of a global market, with bidding opening on nearly anything they decide to present on stream.
Gen Z’s big bet on social commerce
The app’s rise reflects a broader shift in social commerce, where entertainment increasingly overlaps with shopping. Livestream commerce has exploded across China over the past several years, but Western markets have been slower to adopt the model. The app joins Whatnot, a California-based livestream shopping app, generating momentum in the U.S..
Whatnot has become one of the largest live shopping marketplaces outside Asia, raising multibillion-dollar valuations as the demand for an interactive shopping experience grows.
Like Whatnot, Tilt believes auctions—and the sense of urgency they create—are the missing ingredient.
“The auction format being as powerful as it is was definitely a surprise,” cofounder Abhinavan Thanendran told Fortune. “Prior to this, you had eBay auctions, but they weren’t really exciting. Here, the engagement from buyers on auctions has been incredible.”
The initial spark came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when local shops were forced to close their doors. Thanendran said he thought of potential solutions for shops to continue operating during the lockdown, including a livestream system.
“We thought, why don’t the store owners just livestream from inside their shop, show people what they have, and then people can come pick it up?” he said. “As time went on, we realized there was so much more to this than just stores.”
That idea eventually evolved into Tilt, which launched in 2023.
Today the marketplace hosts livestream auctions across categories including apparel, sneakers, luxury accessories, trading cards, sports memorabilia, watches, beauty products, food and beverages, and clearance merchandise. Some sellers even specialize in liquidation inventory, selling appliances such as microwaves, refrigerators, and air fryers that might otherwise end up in landfills.
How Tilt uses AI to differentiate itself from Whatnot
The way the app positions itself from its competitors like Whatnot, however, comes from the AI systems built into the platform, according to the cofounders. The app uses AI to scan, research, and list items from livestreams for its user base of over 1 million buyers to search and bid.
“It’s now just like a multi-layered AI—multimodal, multi-layered—with so many different AI models layered on top of each other to essentially come up with the final result,” Shah said. “Models to understand that condition, models to understand the price, to understand the brand.”
According to Shah, the system correctly identifies products roughly 90% of the time. Sellers can edit any mistakes before an auction begins, and those corrections are used to further improve future AI models.
“We validate it through seeing how many edits have been made on these products, and then we’ll just tune the models to be better,” he said.
The founders argue these tools make it easier for anyone, not just experienced resellers, to build a business on the platform. Building the AI pipeline wasn’t easy, however.
“One of the most surprising things was how much sellers really hate to list,” Shah said. “So we set to solve it from the get go. We put in like a ton of R&D into basically building a bunch of models.”
Tilt has raised roughly $50 million from investors, including Balderton Capital, Earlybird, Seedcamp, TQ Ventures, and most recently Vinted Ventures, the investment arm of secondhand marketplace Vinted.
The founders believe livestream shopping won’t remain confined to collectors or resale communities. Instead, they expect video to become the dominant interface for e-commerce.
“We think the entire future of commerce is going to change to video and livestreams,” Thanendran said. “Whether you’re a traditional retailer or a resale marketplace, the medium is going to change.”
