\u201cIf you look at us from the outside, we look like degenerates just spending money on Pok\u00e9mon and stuff like that. Just having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muhammad Rashid
Collectr<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s card collections continued to grow while they secured seed funding<\/a> for Doorr and eventually sold<\/a> the mortgage platform to Finastra in 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there was a boom<\/a> of interest in the card collecting hobby, especially for Pok\u00e9mon cards<\/a>, as people were homebound by lockdowns. A new genre of entertainment emerged in the form of YouTube and Twitch creators, like Logan Paul<\/a>, opening booster packs of trading cards on livestreamed video. Even Hijleh had his own short-lived YouTube channel to share his collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a love of ripping packs with people and [the] genuine reactions,\u201d Hijleh said. \u201cThen, the million-dollar question everybody goes to is \u2018How much is this [card] worth?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sick of using spreadsheets, in December 2021, Rashi and Hijleh made an app to track the value of their collection, similar to an investment portfolio but with trading cards instead of stocks. Hijleh said the founders were initially building for themselves, but after some encouragement from friends, decided to launch Collectr for the rest of the hobbying world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Alongside fellow Doorr co-founder Abbas Ali and an old colleague from Flipp, Mark Hopson, the founding team made a series of posts<\/a> about their \u201cside gig\u201d on hobby forums. Within 24 hours, they claim they added 5,000 users. Four years later, Collectr has more than four million users worldwide, eight figures of annual recurring revenue (ARR), and DJ Steve Aoki as an advisor to the team, all without spending a cent on advertising.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at us from the outside, we look like degenerates just spending money on Pok\u00e9mon and stuff like that. Just having fun,\u201d Rashid said.<\/p>\n Collecting trading cards is an intricate hobby. Cards are introduced to the market through sealed booster packs, so collectors don\u2019t know what they\u2019re going to get when they open (or \u201crip\u201d) a new pack. A run-of-the-mill Pikachu might be worth anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars, but special editions can feature holographic \u201cfoil\u201d or limited edition art that can boost a card\u2019s value considerably, like the one Collectr\u2019s founders obtained.\u00a0<\/p>\n Collectors often get their cards \u201cgraded,\u201d or evaluated by a trusted third-party company for quality and authenticity. A card with a grading of 10 is in mint condition with no signs of wear. The world\u2019s most valuable Pok\u00e9mon card, a 10-grade holographic Pikachu Illustrator, was purchased<\/a> by Logan Paul for $5.3 million USD in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n Collectr\u2019s app helps trading card hobbyists keep inventory of all those factors across multiple brands in their collection, including Pok\u00e9mon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh. It also tracks other collectibles, like Funko Pops. Users can search for a trading card or use a camera to add items to their portfolio, as well as share posts about their loot through the app\u2019s social tab.\u00a0The app is currently tracking over 600 million products worth over $1.5 billion collectively.<\/p>\n RELATED: Proptech startup Doorr acquired by mortgage business of Finastra<\/a><\/p>\n Each card\u2019s value is tracked through integrated affiliate listings on popular online marketplaces like eBay and TCGplayer, which is how Collectr earned a five-figure ARR for most of its lifetime. Collectr runs the largest ad network specifically for collectibles, with over 550 million impressions delivered to its partners. While an app with four million users may seem like the perfect opportunity to launch a competing marketplace, the founders don\u2019t see that as their lane.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to protect [both] buyer and seller, why not let the experts that have been doing this for so long and do it really well continue to do it?\u201d Hijleh said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Outside of the affiliate links and ads, Collectr didn\u2019t really have a monetization strategy until eight months ago when it launched its Pro subscription, according to the founders. The $7.99-per-month subscription (in both USD and CAD) boosted the company from five-figure to eight-figure ARR within six months. The subscription gives the app\u2019s power users unlimited card scans, analytics tools that help track profit and loss, access to historical pricing data, home screen widgets, and entries for exclusive giveaways.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe growth that we\u2019re achieving today is opening up doors far beyond our wildest expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n Muhammad Rashid<\/p>\n The company has already given away $300,000 USD worth of products since launching the subscription, and is planning to give away three first-edition Pok\u00e9mon trading card packs (worth roughly $6,000 USD each) to commemorate Pro\u2019s one-year anniversary.\u00a0<\/p>\n Holding up one such sealed foil packet in his hand, Hijleh said, \u201cThis is [one of] the first printed packs ever in Pokemon\u2026it feels awesome to be able to give back some of the products that I\u2019ve dreamt of holding, let alone owning.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hijleh remarked how Collectr\u2019s organic growth has led to it already becoming a \u201chousehold name\u201d in the hobbyist space, often referenced in forums and by content creators. One \u201cwild\u201d moment was when the team learned that DJ and music producer Steve Aoki was an avid user, which led to a meeting at a convention and eventually his addition to the team as an advisor.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a wicked DJ, but I had no idea that the collection that he\u2019s amassed is as large as it is,\u201d Rashid said, recounting how Aoki wanted to log his entire collection of approximately 25,000 trading cards on the app. Rashid said Aoki has \u201chis ear to the ground,\u201d and provides Collectr with live feedback, relationships with card vendors, and opportunities to include other trading card games on the app.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rashid said Collectr has drawn interest from a number of venture capital (VC) firms, including Silicon Valley giant a16z, a \u201cstark contrast\u201d from the team\u2019s fundraising struggles at Doorr. This time, however, the Collectr team isn\u2019t interested in outside capital. The creators want to control their own destiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really nice to have these investors come to us, but I don\u2019t know that they would necessarily add that we haven\u2019t already accomplished,\u201d Rashid said. \u201cThe growth that we\u2019re achieving today is opening up doors far beyond our wildest expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n Collectr has only raised a $500,000 friends-and-family round, and Rashid said that was mainly as a courtesy to those who missed out on investing in Doorr. The proceeds of that round still sit in the bank two-and-a-half years later, and now Collectr stands out as the largest app for collecting trading cards in the world. It\u2019s also the only one that\u2019s Canadian, Rashid said, adding that he\u2019s especially proud to build in the country amidst the current political landscape<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Collectr\u2019s founders feel much more \u201cmature\u201d than they were at Doorr, and expressed multiple times that they are fortunate to not need external capital as they build yet another business. Rashid acknowledged that artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how startup math is calculated<\/a> and creating pressure to operate leaner businesses<\/a>, but argued that Collectr is doing just fine with limited integration of AI tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201dWe\u2019re an eight-figure ARR company that is doing this with five people and we\u2019ve got four-million-plus users worldwide,\u201d Rashid said. \u201cTo do all these things with a low head count is possible today, even if you\u2019re not implementing AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Feature image courtesy Collectr.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Doorr founders\u2019 new app has amassed four million users in four years, including new advisor Steve Aoki.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[52335,52334,64,63,99,52329,52330,198,10786,52331,52337,52333,3797,346,5216,8257,52336,52332,3920],"class_list":{"0":"post-65858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-abbas-ali","9":"tag-adam-hijleh","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-collectr","14":"tag-doorr","15":"tag-entrepreneurship","16":"tag-feature","17":"tag-finastra","18":"tag-mark-hopson","19":"tag-muhammad-rashid","20":"tag-ontario","21":"tag-pokemon","22":"tag-retail","23":"tag-saas","24":"tag-steve-aoki","25":"tag-tcg","26":"tag-toronto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Reshiram-Charizard-1024x1024.jpg\" "\\"Reshiram")
<\/a>The Reshiram & Charizard GX Unbroken Bonds card that Adam Hijleh opened at 401 Games in 2019. Image courtesy\u00a0Collectr.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Steve-Aoki-Pickachu-1024x959.jpg\" "\\"Steve")
<\/a>Steve Aoki holding a valuable Pikachu Illustrator. Image courtesy Steve Aoki via X<\/a>.<\/p>\n