Alt: the startup built on a $3.15 million basketball card

Transcript

This guy paid $3.15 million for a piece of cardboard. Now Tom Brady is an investor in his startup. Meet Leor Abedard, the founder of Alt. In 2020, Leor runs a tech company, and he's spent four years buying Kobe Bryant cards on eBay. Then, Card Price is explode, and his $15,000 becomes nearly $15 million. But when he asks for a mortgage, the banks turn him down. To them, basketball cards are too risky to lend against. So Leor starts Alt, a physical vault that holds collectors cards and works out what they're worth so it can lend cash against them. But first, collectors have to trust him with their best card. So he enters an auction for a LeBron James rookie card bidding from his kitchen table. He counts down the last 10 seconds, and nobody outbid him. It costs $1.8 million dollars, a record for a basketball card at the time. Then he locks it in the vault, so Alt's own money sits next to every collector's cards. Collectors follow and soon the vault holds $70 million dollars of cards. Tom Brady becomes an investor, and Alt is valued at $325 million. Then in 2022, it starts lending collectors cash against their cards, alone Leor couldn't get. And in 2026, Alt buys the Kobe Bryant card Leor dreamed of as a kid, only 10 exists, and it costs $3.15 million dollars.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.