A 21-year-old computer science graduate from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has raised more than £350,000 to build a price comparison platform for tradable in-game assets.
Joshua Sinclair, who graduated with a First-Class Honours degree earlier this year, co-founded SkinScanner.gg with Nathan Engolodoe.
The pair have built the platform into what they describe as ‘the Skyscanner for tradable in-game assets’.
The free comparison site aggregates live prices from 24 CS2 marketplaces. With new sites added constantly, traders can instantly compare prices to find the best buying and selling opportunities.
Joshua Sinclair and Nathan Engolodoe of Skinscanner.gg
Sinclair moved to Liverpool to study at LJMU, drawn in part by the city’s gaming heritage.
Liverpool-founded studios have long attracted global acquirers: Bizarre Creations, the Project Gotham Racing developer, was acquired by Activision in 2007; Firesprite was acquired by Sony in 2021; and Lucid Games was acquired by Tencent’s LightSpeed Studios in 2023.
He was also drawn by Baltic Ventures, the Baltic Triangle’s early-stage accelerator.
While still writing his dissertation and preparing to graduate, he began pitching SkinScanner.gg for a place on the accelerator programme, going on to raise an initial £30,000 from Baltic Ventures in July 2025.
Sinclair and his co-founder, Engolodoe, later raised a further £20,000 from angel investors, before this year’s £300,000 pre-seed round, backed by investors from the Liverpool City Region and the Isle of Man, took the company’s total funding past £350,000 in its first year of trading.
Through the Baltic Ventures accelerator, Sinclair connected with Graeme Ankers, co-founder and managing director of Liverpool games studio Firesprite, which was acquired by Sony in 2021 and now operates as part of PlayStation Studios.
Ankers went on to become a mentor to the SkinScanner.gg team and is now a strategic lead investor in its pre-seed round, alongside other lead investors Craig Osborne, Jennifer Houghton MBE and the Baltic Ventures Angel Syndicate.
Since launch, SkinScanner.gg has built:
● 23,000+ Discord members, grown entirely organically
● £3 million+ in monthly referred traffic to CS2 marketplaces
● 40,000+ monthly active users
● 10 partnerships with major CS2 marketplaces
● £350,000+ raised in its first 12 months
Sinclair said: “We were deliberate about bringing the right investors into the business. This round gives us access to the capital, experience and networks that can help us become the leading discovery platform in the multi-billion-pound global Counter-Strike skins market.”