Designing, building and growing Binder, my own card collecting app

Binder is an iOS app for sports card collectors. I designed it, built it and grew it on my own. It now has over 3,500 users and reached $1,500 in monthly recurring revenue, with no ad spend. I wrote up how that growth came together.

Growth was part of the design from day one. Onboarding and the share loop were both built to bring in the next collector. These are the decisions that did the most.

I treated pricing as a design problem. Free users get enough to love it, so paying feels like a steal. Here's how I shaped the paywall.

Content made for collectors pulls around 250,000 weekly views across Instagram and TikTok. This is what made it feel native to the hobby.

Churn sits at 2.4% against a category average of 5–9%, without leaning on streaks. Here's what keeps collectors coming back.