25-year-old skipped college—now her sports trading card company brings in more than $1 million a week on Whatnot

Dakota Peters wasn’t sure what she’d do after high school.

The 25-year-old Florida native weighed going to college but ultimately decided against it. Her older sisters taught her that if she didn’t have a specific direction for studying, she was better off just getting work experience in the real world.

During her senior year of high school, Peters shadowed her family in their commercial real estate business and ultimately went to work for the company post-graduation in 2017. But by 2021, she felt it was time to tackle something different.

She and her sisters started selling sneakers from their decades-long collection on Instagram in 2017, and in the spring of 2021, Peters discovered that the live auction app Whatnot was another platform they could sell on. At the time, the app was only streaming sports trading card sellers but was planning to expand.

As Peters waited for her opportunity to sell sneakers, she got hooked. Watching sellers “break,” or unbox, sealed collectable cards “was just mind blowing to me,” she says. “I was like, where did this come from?”

Peters had always loved sports and decided to give selling sports trading cards on Whatnot a shot. In her first year, her profile brought in just over $1 million in gross revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Today, her company Achickrips has multiple Whatnot seller channels and brings in more than $1 million in gross merchandise value per week.

Here’s how Peters built her booming business.