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Chance.live - Trading Card Game Startup
Building a creator operating system from scratch
Turning a vague creator growth initiative into a connected ecosystem for discovery, commerce, fulfillment, and community.
Company
Chance.live
ROLE
Systems Designer
Product Growth Strategist
Team
Front-end Developer
12 Person Company
Duration
1 week
July 2026
Context
Chance.live is building a more social future for trading card collecting
Chance.live is a Series A startup reimagining how people buy, open, collect, and trade Pokémon cards online.
What excited me about Chance wasn't just building another TCG marketplace (there are already plenty). It was the opportunity to redesign the experience around the thing collectors actually love: the community, anticipation, and shared moments behind every pull. The cards were the product, but the experience around them was the opportunity.
A major part of that vision was creators. Today, Chance works with dozens of trading card creators and livestreamers who introduce new collectors to the platform. These creators are the community layer of the product. They entertain, educate, build trust, and create the moments that make collecting exciting.
The Problem
A creator ecosystem existed, but the infrastructure didn't
Chance had built strong relationships with creators, but the experience powering creator sales was held together by disconnected tools, manual workflows, and constant coordination from a small team.
Creator experience
Creators joined Chance because they were good at building communities and entertaining collectors. However, selling packs required them to become operators. The workflow worked at a small scale, but every additional order increased operational complexity.
one of our creators and his spreadsheet to keep track of orders
Buyer experience
Discover creator → Watch creator livestream → Click creator link / Shopify store → Purchase pack separately → Send payment confirmation → Wait → Creator manually tracks order → Wait → Watch stream to see if your pack opens → Creator manually fulfills cards
The excitement of Chance came from watching a creator open packs live. However, the purchasing experience was disconnected from that moment. After checkout, buyers often had no visibility into their order. The most exciting part of the product happened after the transaction, but the product experience stopped at checkout.
Chance team experience
Recruit creators → Create referral links manually → Answer creator questions → Track creator performance manually → Troubleshoot missing orders → Coordinate fulfillment issues
Internally, we faced another challenge. Creators were one of our primary growth channels, but there was very little visibility into creator performance. Many creators didn't know where to find their referral links, how many users they were bringing to the platform, or how their audiences were converting. As a result, the team spent a significant amount of time manually answering questions, tracking referrals, and helping creators understand their impact. What should have been a scalable growth engine required constant hands-on support.
the opportunity
Reinventing the trading card experience around community, not transactions
Traditional trading card platforms are optimized around transactions: buy a product, receive a product, repeat. But the excitement of collecting has never just been the card itself. It's the anticipation of opening a pack, sharing a rare pull with friends, watching someone else experience a big moment, and being part of a community that understands the hobby. Our north star was building a more connected version of the trading card ecosystem.
This changed how I approached the product. Instead of asking, "How do we add a creator page?" I started asking:
How do we make creators the center of the collecting experience?
How do we turn a livestream into an interactive community moment?
How do we create tools that help creators grow while making collecting more social for buyers?
How do we build infrastructure that allows this ecosystem to scale?
My Role
Turning ambiguity into something the team could build
The more questions I asked, the more the project shifted from UI design into product design. This is usually the part of design I enjoy most: figuring out what a product should be before figuring out what it should look like. Before opening Figma, I try to understand the entire system around the feature: who is using it, what problem it solves, what technical constraints exist, and whether it should exist at all. My first steps are usually not visual. I map flows, talk to users and stakeholders, research competitors, understand the frontend and backend constraints, and identify where confusion or friction might appear before we build. I think of it as measuring twice and cutting once. Once the underlying system makes sense, the interface becomes much easier to design.
On any given day I'm:
Mapping user flows, edge cases, and product architecture in FigJam
Talking with creators, watching livestreams, and observing how people use the product
Designing flows and systems in Figma while building reusable components as we go
Vibe-coding prototypes in Figma Make to test ideas quickly
Presenting prototypes to founders and engineers to align around a north star
Reviewing analytics, finding bugs, and identifying opportunities to improve the product
Working through our React frontend/backend constraints to make sure designs are actually buildable
Experimenting with sound design in Reaper because I believe small sensory details can make digital experiences feel more alive
The fun (and challenging) part of startup design is the constant context switching. One hour I'm mapping information architecture with engineering, the next I'm testing a prototype, watching a creator livestream, or motion-designing to make an interaction feel more magical. I don't see design as a handoff after decisions are made. I see it as the process of helping a team make better decisions.
process
Finding flaws before they become expensive
In several conversations with product and engineering, the fastest solution was not always the best long-term solution. My role became advocating for the user experience while understanding the constraints that made certain decisions difficult.
The first version of the ecosystem had several assumptions built into it. I pressure-tested them before we committed engineering resources.
initial user flow, one of many flow charts
Some of the issues i found
One URL serving two completely different audiences
The initial direction combined buyer experiences and creator management into the same space. This created confusing states around permissions, navigation, and user intent.
I pushed for separating the consumer experience from creator tooling so each side could be optimized for its actual user.
Creator tools appearing where audiences could see them
Because creators stream through OBS, anything placed inside the streaming experience could accidentally become public.
I challenged the assumption that creator controls belonged directly on the streamed page and proposed moving operational tools into a separate private experience.
Designing for real behavior, not ideal behavior
The original assumptions treated creators only as creators. But creators are also collectors.
I raised edge cases like:
What happens if Creator A wants to buy packs from Creator B?
What happens if a creator is logged in but wants a buyer experience?
How do we prevent role confusion?
These conversations shaped the final architecture.
Potential legal ramifications
After talking to our lawyer, I realized that some of the feature ideas we had could potentially create serious legal issues (fintech is a highly regulated space). For example, we had this absolutely brilliant idea to ███████████████████████████ . Not only that, we also wanted to ███████████████████████ . Later on, we had this absolute stroke of genius. What if we ███████████████████████████████? At this point, we were pretty sure we had invented the future of collecting. We were already mentally spending our imaginary Series B money. Obviously, none of that should ever make it to prod.
current user flow - as of july 27th, 2026
product Thinking
Building five products that work as one
Five connected experiences, each serving a different purpose.
Creator Discovery
Help users discover creators, browse live streams, and decide who to watch.
Creator Storefront
Turn viewers into customers through live shopping, pack purchases, and order tracking.
Creator Queue
The operational side that allows creators to manage purchases, process orders, and fulfill pulls without disrupting their stream.
Creator Dashboard
Give creators visibility into referrals, payouts, campaigns, and business performance.
Community Dashboard
Help creators understand and celebrate their community through collection insights, milestones, and audience engagement.
Systems Thinking
Building the foundation while shipping
One challenge of being the first designer at a startup is that there is no existing foundation.
When I started introducing reusable components and design patterns, the natural concern was: "Do we have time to build a design system right now?"
My perspective was that a design system wasn't slowing us down. It was how we moved faster.
So, while defining the creator ecosystem, I was also building the foundations that would allow it to scale. As new experiences emerged, I created reusable components, interaction patterns, and design decisions that could support future creator tools without reinventing every screen. For me, a design system is a way to make better decisions faster. It creates consistency for users, reduces ambiguity for engineers, and allows a small team to move quickly without sacrificing quality.
Vibe-Coding as a Design Tool
The fastest wireframe is a working product
One of the biggest shifts in my design process has been realizing that sometimes the best way to explore an idea is to build it. Instead of debating abstract concepts in meetings, I build lightweight prototypes that give everyone something tangible to react to.
Instead of:
Idea → Wireframe → Mockup → Prototype → Test
The feedback loop becomes:
Idea → Prototype → Test → Iterate
For startup environments where speed matters, this has been incredibly valuable. Vibe-coding has become a core part of how I think through product problems. Instead of spending hours perfecting a Figma prototype for a concept that might change, I use AI coding tools to quickly create functional prototypes, test assumptions, and communicate ideas with engineers and founders.
AI helps me move faster, but it doesn't replace product judgment. The valuable part isn't generating code. It's knowing what questions to ask, what tradeoffs matter, and what should exist in the first place.
Prioritization
Deciding what not to build
The hardest part of startup design is rarely coming up with ideas. It's deciding which ideas deserve engineering time. Throughout this project, we explored many possible directions:
Creator analytics
Social systems
Loyalty mechanics
Better queue management
Collection sharing
Stream interactions
Advanced notifications
The challenge is determining what creates the most value today. Every feature competes against engineering resources, timelines, and business priorities. I've spent a lot of time working with founders to identify which features unlock the most learning and move us toward product-market fit the fastest, while intentionally leaving room for future expansion.
user testing
Learning from real behavior
The best product decisions came from observing real behavior. I watched creator livestreams, reviewed how users interacted with existing flows, talked directly with creators (user interviews), and used those insights to challenge our original assumptions.
Impact
Creating the foundation for creator-led growth
This project is still actively being built, but the work has already influenced how the company thinks about creators.
So far I've:
Defined the product architecture for a creator ecosystem spanning discovery, commerce, streaming, fulfillment, and analytics
Identified technical and UX risks before engineering investment
Establish the first creator-facing workflows
Established reusable design patterns for future creator tooling
Created prototypes and flows that aligned founders, engineering, and product around a shared vision
Most importantly, I helped transform "we should build something for creators" into a system the team can actually execute on.
Work in Progress
This is an evolving product, so this case study focuses less on polished final screens and more on the thinking behind building from zero.
I'll continue updating this with launches, user feedback, and measurable outcomes.
For now, this is a snapshot of what founding design looks like for me at a startup: navigating ambiguity, challenging assumptions, making tradeoffs, and helping turn an idea into something real.
