CatchBack

CatchBack is an iOS and web platform where collectors build custom mystery packs of Pokémon and sports cards, pick their own odds and chase cards, then rip them digitally and either ship the physical cards home, take an instant buyback to Venmo or PayPal, or list them in a marketplace with a flat $1 trading fee. Every pack is backed by a cryptographic proof generated at purchase with publicly verifiable code, so buyers can independently check that pulls were fair rather than trusting the operator. Founders Joseph Zhang and Sophia Kim are aiming the product at the large but heavily offline card economy, where secondary trading still runs through Facebook groups, eBay, and weekend card shows. This launch marks the company's public seed announcement. Foundation Capital led an $8M round with participation from Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures, Robinhood Ventures, and the Solana Foundation, and CatchBack says its community has grown to more than 50,000 collectors who have opened over 300,000 packs. The capital is going toward deploying on Solana, expanding pack formats like a 100K Infinity Pack and free drops in global chat, and pushing beyond cards and watches into other collectible categories. Zhang previously worked as a software engineer at AWS and as a consultant at McKinsey before leaving to sell Pokémon cards full-time , which shows up in the product's mix of marketplace mechanics and financial tooling. For founders and operators watching commerce infrastructure, CatchBack is a concrete bet that mystery-pack drops, provable randomness, and low-fee peer trading can pull a chunk of the physical collectibles market onto a single consumer app.