Cheap Thrills

Peter Szulczewski’s Wish was the world’s most downloaded shopping app last year. Its ultra-cheap wares make Walmart look like Bergdorf, but his 90 million users can’t afford to care—and their impulse purchases have added up to a $1.4 billion fortune for Szulczewski.

- Parmy Olson

On a sun-filled San Francisco afternoon, Peter Szulczewski is climbing the stairs to the top of a Sansome Street skyscraper, past floors filled with Wish data scientists and engineers, pool tables and DJ equipment. Large windows give way to a stunning view of the city. But most of Szulczewski’s customers don’t work in offices like this or live in Northern California coastal enclaves. In fact, most of them don’t have much money at all. Wish’s customers are typically working-class Americans from places like the Florida Panhandle or East Texas, Dollar Store shoppers who find Amazon Prime’s $120 annual membership too rich for their blood.

“Forty-one percent of U.S. households don’t have $400 worth of liquidity,” Szulczewski says, referring to the Fed’s latest estimate. He says customers of his ultra-bargain shopping site have their credit cards declined most often right before payday, rattling off statistics as he easily mounts another flight of stairs, his legs conditioned by decades of weight lifting (he says it helps him relax). The 37-year-old Polish-born former Google engineer is obsessed with ordinary folks’ finances and has used that obsession to tailor an e-commerce marketplace just for them, filled with no-name merchandise shipped directly from Chinese merchants.

Wish was the most downloaded shopping app worldwide in 2018 and is now the third-biggest e-commerce marketplace in the U.S. by sales. Globally, some 90 million people use it at least once a month. Taking a 15% cut of their purchases, Wish doubled its revenue last year, to $1.9 billion. As of its last fund raising round, it was valued at more than $8.7 billion, and Szulczewski’s 18% stake makes him a billionaire. (His cofounder, Danny Zhang, owns just 4.2%.) Szulczewski says investors should expect an IPO in the next year or two.