About Trovie
We were collectors first
Long before the birth of Trovie, we were kids sorting cards on a bedroom floor.
Jake’s still hoping to track down the shadowless base-set Charizard he lost years ago. Crystal’s favorite toy growing up was the red handheld Pokedex from ’98. Rob has loved Dugtrio since he was a kid, and to this day no one’s been able to find out why. Jay was slinging Magic decks before he could drive – ask him about Tannuk sometime.
Like most people, we drifted away from the hobby for a while. We found our way back as adults – this time from the other side of the table.
Our story
Jake and Rob met in business school. Jake and Jay met at a card show, vending tables apart. Jake and Crystal met outside a dive bar in Singapore. Put the odds together, and this team coming together was about as likely as pulling your chase card in the first pack you open.
At the start of 2026, the four of us landed on the same idea from a few different directions, and under a different name at the time. It was obvious pretty fast that this only worked as one team, not four people building pieces of it apart.
Jake and Crystal built a community of their own on TikTok, and started vending shows themselves to see the business from behind the table. Jay was doing much the same on the Magic side, watching his own collection take over his home and running into the same wall every dealer eventually hits: no real way to know if he was actually making money or just moving cardboard. That frustration is the reason Trovie exists.
Our mission
Trovie provides clarity for the collectibles industry, reduce complexity for both vendor and customer, and fuels growth for the hobby.
Selling cards sounds fun until inventory management and margin clarity destroy you.
Vendors keep getting stuck with the same choice: optimize for profit and lose the joy, or stay human about it and eat the inefficiency. We built Trovie so nobody has to make that choice: to give vendors their time back without turning them into spreadsheet accountants.
Meet the founders
Eleven years in the Army, including years as a Special Operations officer leading teams that grew from a handful of people to well over a hundred, across deployments spanning Afghanistan to the Indo-Pacific. Duke MBA. Now works in enterprise partnerships and sales.
Nearly a decade as a Green Beret in Army Special Forces, then years in risk and compliance for a major cloud platform. Duke MBA, PMP-certified.
A computer science degree and over a decade building and leading engineering and product teams in healthcare technology, with an entrepreneurial streak going back to a small web consulting business he ran in college, turning a $35 investment into $2,000.
Over a decade in sales and marketing, from building and scaling a regional sales team across Southeast Asia to leading enterprise accounts in adtech, martech, and now AI-driven growth.
We still vend, still collect, and still use Trovie the exact same way our customers do.
What we stand for: we SHOW UP
We remove friction, not features. The best system is the one you don’t have to think about.
Outnumbered, never outworked.
Everyone in this hobby, vendor, collector, us, deserves to own their piece of it.
We protect the little guy, no matter what it costs us.
The community, the third space, the belonging that makes this a hobby and not just a market.
The love for this hobby, out loud, in how we work.
Why we’re different
Most tools weren’t built for someone actually working a table. POS systems assume a storefront. Scanner apps hand you a “market value” that blends printings, grades, and conditions in ways any real dealer knows not to trust. Either way, you end up running your own numbers in a spreadsheet regardless.
Trovie tracks what actually matters: cost basis, break-even, ask, the same way everywhere in the app, built for one hand and bad lighting at a table instead of a desk. Pricing suggestions stay suggestions. The final call is always yours.
We built Trovie because none of us could find something that worked for how we actually vend.
Join us
Sign up for the beta, join our Discord, or follow along for updates.