Valart is a collectible management platform that lets owners track and manage any type of collectible in one place. Founder Elliot Riley-Walsh, a lifelong collector based in Wales, built it to give collectors a single, simple home for everything they own, whatever they collect.
Each item receives an estimated value and an accuracy score, with a written explanation of why, and a legacy tool lets collectors share their collections with loved ones and professional advisers. Valart has since reached more than 350 users across 11 countries through word of mouth and media features including the BBC, all without commercial advertising.
Mentorship has been central to that progress. CodeBase connected Elliot with mentor Jason Wagner, a fellow collector who understands the market, through the Barclays mentorship programme. That guidance helped shape the strategy behind Valart's first high-touch users and the terms of its podcast sponsorship.
This is a case study in matching a founder with a mentor who knows the niche and in letting customer feedback guide the product.
Elliot comes from a family of entrepreneurs and has collected since the age of five, starting with a diecast Land Rover model. When his wife asked whether he knew exactly what he owned and whether it was all insured, he went looking for a proper system.
What he found was either expensive or built for a single category, which would have meant a different app for every type of collectible. Elliot wanted one simple home for everything, so he set out to build it.
Valuation followed, because insurance depends on knowing an item's worth, and then a legacy tool so loved ones would know what to do with a collection.
Valart set out to serve what Elliot calls the last asset class, one people tend to forget about. That meant a good deal of education, particularly around insurance, where many collectors assume a standard contents policy already covers their items. Elliot was also building through sweat equity rather than outside investment, which made the right guidance matter even more.
A specialist who knows the detail takes a founder further than a generalist who covers a wide basis. Elliot wanted someone who could speak to the specifics of his market and knew the routes to reach it.
Elliot's first choice of mentor wasn't available, so he explained what Valart was building and a mentorship manager suggested Jason Wagner, a collector himself, as a better fit for Elliot. Elliot says it sounded perfect for what Valart needed, and the two hit it off well, with Elliot describing Jason as a fantastic guy. Jason, a Transformers collector, understood the market from the inside, and Elliot has since been learning about Transformers figurines himself. Jason's view that no system existed for those collectors shaped Valart's early focus on Transformers figurines, a community with nothing built for it.
Jason's support has been practical. He has been on Discord whenever Elliot needed advice, and he suggested keeping a brag sheet, a record of wins to revisit on tougher days. Jason also advised on how to respond to a customer who had cancelled, so Elliot offered a free three-month pro account in return for feedback. The customer sent back three pages of detail, and Elliot found little to dispute, so it went into Valart's development pipeline. That response reflects how Elliot approaches feedback. He doesn't take it personally, because it comes from people who want the system to improve, and it shapes Valart's approach, from offering the first 150 users free access to following up with every customer who cancels.
Valart has now grown from a single customer to more than 100 high-touch users, and on to over 350 users across 11 countries, through word of mouth and media coverage that includes two features on the BBC. Sign-ups have also arrived from markets Elliot never planned for, including Japan and Canada.
Recognition has followed, with Valart taking the Baltic Venture Launchpad top prize and a Startup of the Year award in Wales. The customer whose feedback filled three pages has since uploaded around 250 books and recommends Valart to others, and he has expressed interest in investing.
Looking ahead, Elliot is aiming for 1,000 users by the end of the first quarter of 2027, with research under way across Asia-Pacific and a push to work with more insurance companies.
For Elliot, mentorship through the Barclays programme, connected by CodeBase, gave Valart a guide who knew the market. His advice to founders is to ask for help, since the worst answer is a no, and to find a mentor who knows the territory.
Valart's story shows what happens when a founder is matched with someone who shares the customer's world and listens to customers.
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