Startup To Watch: Inside Chattanooga’s Trading Card Analytics Startup
Key Takeaways
- Chattanooga-based Double Holo is building a trading card marketplace and analytics platform that co-founder Kacy Lombard describes as a “Bloomberg for trading cards.”
- The startup has more than 260,000 app downloads, 125,000 registered users, after only fully launching in March 2026
- Double Holo raised a pre-seed round from Overline VC, Restive VC, and Brickyard VC, and is now moving its team to Chattanooga.
- The company is starting with Pokémon cards, but sees a larger opportunity across collectibles as trading cards increasingly behave like an alternative asset class.
CHATTANOOGA, August 25 (Hypepotamus) - Even if you aren’t a Pokémon card collector, there is a reason to watch the startup Double Holo.
And that is because they are building for a fast-growing community.
“If you are looking for an interesting way to diversify your investment portfolio, collectibles are a really awesome opportunity to do so,” Kacy Lombard (in featured photo), co-founder of Double Holo, told Hypepotamus.
For serious collectors and sellers, though, Double Holo is tackling a more immediate problem: bringing better market data, pricing tools, and business infrastructure to the trading card world.
The venture-backed startup, which just officially launched earlier this year, is a trading card marketplace and analytics platform that Lombard describes as a “Bloomberg for trading cards.”
Double Holo currently focuses on Pokémon cards, though the team sees room to expand across the broader collectibles market. The trading card game market is estimated at roughly $8 billion to $9 billion annually, with Pokémon accounting for about $2 billion in annual retail sales on top of a sizable secondary market.
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From Passion Project To Startup
Lombard, a Georgia Tech graduate, grew up collecting Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards. Years later, he rediscovered his childhood collection and began selling cards on eBay and at conventions as a side hobby. That experience exposed gaps in the market.
Specifically, he saw that there was no established two-sided exchange built to connect buyers and sellers, Lombard said. Collectors also lacked sophisticated analytics and market intelligence, while professional sellers and card shops had few dedicated business management tools.
He started working on Double Holo as a passion project in 2025. By December, the concept was fleshed out enough to bring on co-founders. Double Holo publicly launched, along with its app, in March 2026. The platform now serves as a marketplace for buying and selling cards, a market intelligence tool to provide real-time pricing, deal alerts, ROI calculators, and price forecasting, and a vendor hub with inventory management and automated repricing.
That has attracted an impressive number of users in a short amount of time.
Double Holo now has more than 260,000 app downloads and over 125,000 registered users.
“I knew the idea had legs when it had grown to $250k+ ARR and 50k+ users from just a couple of passionate co-founders working on it part-time,” Lombard told Hypepotamus. “At that point, I started taking Double Holo very seriously, began working on it full time, and started trying to fundraise our pre-seed round.”
The company ultimately raised its pre-seed round from Atlanta-based Overline VC, San Francisco-based Restive VC, and Chattanooga-based Brickyard VC.
Building From Chattanooga
Lombard connected with Brickyard through Askari, and the Double Holo team is now moving to Chattanooga to join the venture firm’s community.
Lombard describes Chattanooga as “a smaller city with great bones,” with the added advantage of much less traffic than Atlanta. He said Brickyard has helped the early-stage team grow by forcing them to "work harder and to think bigger and be more ambitious.”
Maija Ehlinger
Lombard is building Double Holo alongside CTO Justin Yoo, and Mike Werb, who is the startup's Head of Growth. Werb is also co-founder and president of PokeNotify, a trading card media brand and restock notification service.
Next up, Double Holo is focused on expanding its vendor hub and building out its card scanner.
The startup may be operating in a niche market, but Lombard sees something much bigger forming around it.
Luxury watches, sports cards, and other collectibles (and yes, Pokemon cards) offer “an interesting way to get exposure to a different asset class,” he said. And unlike many investments, they come with something else: large hobbyist communities built around buying, selling, collecting, and meeting other enthusiasts.
Double Holo, as Lombard put it, is ultimately a “niche startup” building around a “really unique community.”
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