Peter Szulczewski is the co-founder and CEO of Wish, an online e-commerce company.
Early life and education
Peter Szulczewski grew up in an apartment block in Tarchomin, a district of Warsaw, and then immigrated to Canada with his family at the age of 11. Szulczewski graduated at the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. He now lives in San Francisco, California.
Early career
Peter Szulczewski joined Google in 2005, where he helped develop software that serves advertisers to target people’s searches. Szulczewski worked at Google for over six years, tackling some of the extensive matters. In 2009, Szulczewski quit Google to start his software company, ContextLogic, which looked at an individual’s browsing to predict their interests. Szulczewski co-founded ContextLogic along with his friend Danny Zhang in late 2010. It was initially a mobile ads startup.
Wish
In July 2010, Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang co-founded Wish, an app where users would create wish lists for their fancied items and the company would approach dealers to obtain that particular amount of a product. They re-launched the company as Wish in 2011. Szulczewski is the company’s CEO and Zhang as CTO.
They also received revenue with a Pay-per-click model by promoting on Facebook. In 2013, Wish became an electronic commerce site after asking merchants to host their products directly on the Wish app, with Wish getting a share of each sale. In late 2015, Business Insider reported that Alibaba and Amazon had proposed Wish with acquisition offers for $10 billion but Wish declined the offers, believing that they could increase the startup to at least $100 billion.
Products and Services
Wish.com’s products include apparel, beauty products, home decor, consumer electronics, and baby products. The website operates further platforms for specific products such as Mama (family-oriented), Geek (electronics-focused), Cute (beauty-focused), and Home (decor-focused). Wish also provides services such as the Wish Outlet, which sells at a lower price for overstocked brand-name goods, and Wish Express, which offers faster shipping.
Funding Rounds
In March 2011, Wish raised in an Angel round of $1.7 million from former Global President of Sales at Google Aydin Senkut, Keith Rabois, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Microsoft VP Hank Vigil, former Microsoftie Fritz Lanman, Twitter Director of Search Elad Gil, Nils Johnson, Digital Garage, Michael Stoppelman, Raymond Tonsing, Paige Craig, CRV partner Bill Tai, Farmville creator Sizhao Yang, Paul Bricault, Brian Koo, Naval Ravikant, and Transmedia.
In May 2012, Wish raised $8 million in a Series A funding, led by Formation 8, with other investors include Morado Ventures, LeFrak, IT-Farm, Acequia Capital, and AME Cloud Ventures. In November 2013, Wish raised $19 million in a Series B funding, led by GGV Capital with existing investors from LeFrak, Formation 8, and AME Cloud Ventures. Existing seed investors, including Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, also participated in this funding. Additionally, Hans Tung, GGV Capital’s managing director, joined the company’s board of directors.
In June 2014, Wish raised $50 million in a Series C funding, led by Founders Fund, with participation from existing investors GGV Capital, Formation 8, Legend Capital, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, and others. This funding values the company at $950 million. In June 2015, Wish raised $500 million in a Series D funding, led by Yuri Milner of DST Global, with other investors like DHVC and 137 Ventures. This funding values the company at $3 billion.
In November 2016, Wish raised $500 million in a Series E funding, led by Temasek Holdings with existing investors from Founders Fund, GGV Capital, and DST Global. Other investors include Third Point Ventures and Atlas Ventures has participated in this round. This funding values the company higher than its previous valuation of $3.5 billion but lower than $5 billion, according to Recode.
In January 2017, Wish raised an undisclosed amount in a Secondary Market funding from All Blue Capital. In September 2017, Wish raised $250 million in a Venture round to boost its rapid expansion, giving it a pre-market valuation of $8.5 billion.
Wish has raised a total of $1.3 billion in funding rounds. The company has an approximated revenue of $1 billion annually. Wish competes with Spring, Keaton Row, and Wanelo.
Acquisition
On July 14, 2015, Wish acquired Locket, an Android lock screen app that brings stuff you care about to your lock screen based on your interests, swiping habits, and time, in an undisclosed amount.
Net Worth
As of 2019, Peter Szulczewski has a net worth of approximately $1.4 billion. Szulczewski was also named as America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 in 2016.