This Y Combinator-backed startup is building AI that can lobby the govt, so you can win government contracts. Startup: Locke

This is one of those sleeper companies that has nearly unlimited TAM because people are always traveling.

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on spending $470K of its $500K YC funding on cards: “Even before I started YC, I was like, ‘This is gonna be venture scalable.’ The reason for that is that this type of business has existed in Asia.” “He was like, ‘Out of the $500K that you guys have, how much of it do you have left in the bank?’ I was like, ‘I have like $30K left.’ This is like week three.” “He’s like, ‘Where’d you spend the $470K?’ I was like, ‘Dude, I bought cards.’” “The inventory that we bought during our seed funding, it’s gone up like 3x.” “I don’t have a 401(k). I just park everything into cards.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on how Catchback makes money from mystery packs: “We give people an expected value above what they pay for the pack.” “Let’s say you put in a hundred bucks. On average, you’re gonna get a card that’s worth around $104 or $102.” “We allow people to create their own mystery packs. That’s the entire point of our company.” “You can either get that card that you hit shipped to you, or you get a buyback offer of 90%. So every time a pack is opened, we have a margin of 10%.” host - @brycent

,@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on the market inefficiencies behind its business model: Brycent: “If I open a hundred-dollar pack, you can give me prospectively $104 in value and still look to make money on me lifetime?” Joseph Zhang: “Yes, exactly. And the reason for that is some form of slippage.” “The industry is a very inefficient industry that basically gets propped up on fees.” “When you buy and sell a card through eBay, eBay will charge like a 15% fee. That margin of the 15% is basically an expectation that people have when they sell a card off.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on whether Pokémon cards have hit the top: “There’s no way we are at the top.” “I guarantee you, in the next two years, it’s gonna be the most growth in this space.” “A lot of people wanna become vendors. A lot of people wanna make a side hustle buying and selling.” “I don’t think we’re anywhere near the top.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on Coinbase entering the collectibles space: “They’re one of the investors on our cap table. There’s a lot of synergy that we would have with Coinbase. More on that later.” “There’s gonna be so many more eyes on the space. It’s blowing up.” “I did my master’s in AI at Stanford, and then I decided to build this instead of the AI B2B SaaS company.” “Now that Coinbase is getting in, I’m like, ‘All of the other giants are gonna follow suit.’” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on why rare cards are becoming a status symbol: “Rolex will have a limited allocation of a specific type of watch. Pokémon cards are the same way.” “There’s Instagram pages that kind of track every single owner of each card.” “You get to join some sort of exclusive club that shows that you can flex that you own this very expensive card.” “Number one is the eye appeal. Does it just look like a very pretty piece of artwork? But another one is the rarity of it.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on why sealed cards have become an entertainment business: “What people don’t understand about sealed product is it’s a form of entertainment as well.” “People are bidding up on the cards because it’s a form of entertainment.” “Over time, the product becomes ripped open. The supply goes down, demand still stays high.” “Cards as a whole have become very hot because a lot of people like yourself are getting back into the hobby. People are putting capital into here, and it’s just an overall super fun ecosystem.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on what keeps people opening collectible packs: brycent: “When you look at product, whether it’s Pokémon, basketball, football, all these different industries, they have IP that people crave.” “The thought of there being a chance, related to the experience of unpacking an incredible card, makes it something that everyone is interested in.” Joseph Zhang: “You will always get something of value whenever you’re ripping a pack. That’s part of the fun of a gacha pack.” “You have sports collectors, you have Pokémon collectors, you have watch people. You have a lot of different types of people all grouped under this umbrella culture of collectibles.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on borrowing against collectible cards: brycent: “I see you guys as more than just a gacha platform, and eventually you become a financial institution. Is that a world that you think exists in the future?” Joseph Zhang: “Absolutely. That’s something that I pitched to Robinhood, actually, and that’s why they invested into us.” “You can put up cards, you can put up watches, you can back them with loans. There’s a lot of cool things that you can do.” “In the past, people would buy and sell a gold bar. Now people started buying and selling a digital representation of the gold. Catchback is positioned in the same way, where people are gonna buy and sell the digital representation of the cards.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on opening a $100K mystery pack and hitting a $150K card: “On our platform, you can create a mystery pack of just Steph Curry cards. That’s something that no one else does.” “Recently, we launched a hundred-thousand-dollar mystery pack. The mystery pack costs $100,000 to rip.” “I partnered with like 25 high-end vendors in this space. Each of them consigned a card.” “We had a whale, like three days ago, rip one of the packs. He hit a $150K card.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on a $20K Pikachu and the money behind collectible cards: “This is a Curry and Wembanyama card. That’s what makes it kind of special. This card is worth, I think, around $10K right now.” “This card is a Poncho Pikachu. This is worth around $20K.” “There’s a lot of institutional capital in Japan, where there’s all these rich people, and they get together and they’re like, ‘We will buy X amount of these cards for X price.’ So they prop up the price of certain cards.” host - @brycent

.@sohan_zhang from @catchback_cards on The Vesting Show on a $15K card getting flipped for $55K: “I sold a card this morning. It was like $15K, and I think the buyer flipped it immediately for $55K.” “It’s only stuff like this that you can do in the cards industry, because information asymmetry, as well as demand, is just so hard to gauge.” host - @brycent

VESTING: Instinct Raises $1B, Coinbase enters gatcha, Special Guest: Catchback (YC W26) nitter.siddz.com/i/broadcasts/1vKpPNEyL…

Base Power (@basepowerco ) raised $1B at a $13B valuation and unveiled a 39.2 kWh home battery that can back up a house for up to 36 hours. It now installs 100 batteries a day. The grid is becoming a product that gets installed at home.

Valar Atomics (@valaratomics ) raised a $1B Series B led by @sequoia, alongside a $200M credit facility led by Erebor and JPMorgan. The next AI infrastructure race may be decided by one thing before chips. Power.

Horizon3 AI (@Horizon3ai ) just raised a $250M Series E at a $2B valuation, backed by @NEA and NightDragon. Its AI security platform has run 310,000 production tests with zero disruptions. AI attacks are getting faster. So is the market for testing defenses.

Flapping Airplanes (@flappyairplanes ) is reportedly in talks to raise hundreds of millions at a $5B valuation. The lab is working on AI training methods that need far less data. If it works, the next frontier-model breakthrough may come from using less, not spending more.

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