Print edition · Athlete Narrative
Athlete Narrative
$2.5M to remove the price and prove the model that replaces it.
Sports quietly builds America's leaders — and we're about to lock most kids out of that door. Athlete Narrative reopens it.
Financials through July 2026. Outcomes as of August 2026. NFHS 2024-25 survey; NCAA portal data 2025-26 cycles. Confidential and prepared for the recipient only. Unaudited management accounts; forward-looking figures are projections, not commitments.
Why now
Recruiting has been broken for a long time, which is not on its own an argument for funding it now. Six things changed recently, and together they are why this is buildable in 2026 and was not in 2019.
2021 → NIL made athlete identity an asset
Name, image and likeness rights arrived in 2021 for college athletes and have since extended to high school in most states. An athlete's profile stopped being a scouting document and became something with commercial value attached to it.
The reason a family will build and maintain a real profile is now economic, not just aspirational. That is what makes a free product with an attention layer coherent.
2024 → Unlimited transfers turned rosters into a live market
The NCAA removed limits on how many times an eligible athlete can transfer, and in 2026 moved to a five-year continuous eligibility clock. Roughly 27,000 Division I athletes now enter the portal each offseason.
Recruiting stopped being a once-per-athlete event and became continuous. A platform that matches athletes to open roster spots has a market that refills every single year.
2025 → Roster limits are squeezing high school scholarships
Programs are shrinking incoming high school classes from five or six signees to one to three, holding the remaining slots for proven transfers. The 'vanishing freshman scholarship' is a documented consequence of the portal era.
The high school athlete needs far better information than they used to, because there are fewer doors and more competition for each one. The pain we solve is getting sharper, not softer.
2023 → AI made per-athlete matching economically possible
Ranking one athlete against 1,600 programs, drafting outreach, and tracking every response used to require a paid human advisor. That is the entire reason the service cost thousands of dollars.
The cost structure that justified the incumbents' pricing collapsed. Free is not a subsidy we are choosing to absorb — it is what the technology now permits.
2024 → Private equity is consolidating youth sports
Capital has moved into leagues, tournaments, facilities, and registration software, and the monetisation of the household has intensified with it.
Family fatigue with being monetised is at its highest point, which is precisely when a free, family-first position lands hardest. It also means the category is consolidating — and consolidating categories produce acquirers.
2026 → Paid acquisition costs are rising for everyone else
Meta CPMs rose roughly 20% year over year. Every competitor that buys its users is paying more for them each cycle.
Owned distribution through sport VPs and partner organisations gets relatively more valuable every quarter. Our cost of a user does not reprice with the auction.
The problem, and what we have done about it
America has built a toll booth on youth sports. Rising costs price out families of modest means, and an unregulated recruiting process punishes talented athletes who lack financial resources. Families sort through 1,000–1,600 colleges per sport with almost no guidance on program quality, coach performance, or fit.
Sports access creates a divide between privileged families and everyone else. The thing deciding it is a bank account, not a stopwatch.
The outcome funnel
| Stage | Total | Per offer | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outbound messages to coaches | 150,000 | 100 | — |
| Coach replies | 15,000 | 10 | 10% |
| Scholarship offers | 1,500 | 1 | 1% of messages |
About one message in ten earns a reply from a college coach. That reply is both the outcome and the label the matching model trains against — a directory tells you a program exists; only observed outreach tells you which programs answer, at which positions, at which point in the cycle.
What sixteen months taught us
Outreach. Volume is not the problem. Families send messages into a void and have no way to tell which of them landed. We built outreach into the product rather than around it. HOPE drafts, sends, and tracks every message, then reads the response pattern back into the school ranking.
Family Awareness. Most families do not understand the recruiting process. The gatekeepers win when everyone is ignorant but them. Education comes before the transaction. Rules, timelines, and eligibility are free and up front, not gated behind an advisory call.
Equity Gap. Sports access divides privileged families from everyone else. It is another case of haves and have-nots, decided by a bank account rather than a stopwatch. The pivot to free, and a nonprofit arm underwriting access for low-income families so cost never decides who gets seen.
User-Friendly. Families struggle to adopt new technology for recruiting, and they are adopting it under stress, on a deadline, in the middle of a season. Five minutes from signup to recruitable. Automated weekly reports so nobody has to remember to check. Nothing that requires a training session.
Financials
| Month | Revenue | Gross margin | Marketing | Net cash flow | Total subs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 25 | $4,784 | $3,012 | $4,750 | (39,415) | 4,955 |
| Dec 25 | $7,910 | $5,967 | $3,900 | (35,419) | 5,841 |
| Jan 26 | $7,831 | $5,949 | $5,100 | (36,468) | 7,684 |
| Feb 26 | $11,355 | $9,411 | $5,100 | (32,993) | 11,416 |
| Mar 26 | $14,396 | $12,249 | $6,900 | (31,888) | 14,898 |
| Apr 26 | $17,982 | $15,263 | $8,900 | (31,014) | 17,040 |
| May 26 | $19,320 | $16,706 | $11,000 | (31,596) | 21,428 |
| Jun 26 | $21,351 | $18,626 | $13,200 | (31,961) | 25,006 |
| Jul 26 | $26,111 | $23,301 | $13,200 | (32,301) | 29,287 |
Capital raised to date
| Source | Amount | Share | Against ARR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Institutional | $350K | 19% | |
| Friends, family, personal | $1.5M | 81% | |
| Total | $1.85M | 100% | 5.9× |
Both efficiency figures are shown deliberately. Burn across the nine closed months is 0.97× ARR, which is genuine operating discipline. Against all capital ever raised the figure is 5.9×, and that is the number an investor computes unprompted.
Growth and operating KPIs
Acquisition cost is the constraint
| Blended cost per user | Users bought | Total base | Clears 100K? |
|---|---|---|---|
| $18 | 50K | 79.3K | No |
| $12 | 75K | 104K | Yes |
| $8 | 113K | 142K | Yes |
| $5 | 180K | 209K | Yes |
At today’s $18 the round’s marketing budget lands short of the December target. The plan requires cost per user to fall to roughly $12, and removing the $15 price is the single largest lever available on that number.
Opportunity
8.26M US high school athletes competed in 2024-25, a record and a third consecutive annual increase. We have 0.35% of them.
| Tier | Size | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Where we are winning today | 29.3K | The current base, July 2026. 0.35% of US high school athletes. |
| US high school athletes in the recruiting window | 4.13M | Juniors and seniors, roughly half the NFHS participation base. |
| All US high school athletes | 8.26M | NFHS 2024-25 survey. Record high, third consecutive annual increase. |
| Adding middle school | 16M | With the 7th-grade freemium expansion. Company estimate. |
| Youth and amateur athletes worldwide | 260M | Company estimate across 24 live countries and beyond. Directional. |
Where the athletes are
| Sport | US participants | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Track & Field | 1,158,043 | 14.0% |
| Football | 1,099,886 | 13.3% |
| Basketball | 896,944 | 10.9% |
| Soccer | 877,956 | 10.6% |
| Baseball / Softball | 803,904 | 9.7% |
| Volleyball | 588,771 | 7.1% |
| Cross Country | 427,945 | 5.2% |
| Wrestling | 374,278 | 4.5% |
The transfer portal
Around 27K Division I athletes enter the portal each offseason and roughly 33% never appear at another Division I programme — close to 8.9K stranded athletes a year. They need exactly what we built, inside a fifteen-day window, and because they are eighteen to twenty-two the compliance ceiling that constrains a high-school base does not apply to them at all.
Competition
| Company | Backing | How they charge | Exposure to free |
|---|---|---|---|
| NCSA | Endeavor / IMG Academy | Direct-to-family paid packages | 5/5 |
| SportsRecruits | Independent | Club and school subscriptions, plus family plans | 3/5 |
| FieldLevel | Independent | Freemium with paid athlete upgrades | 2/5 |
| Hudl | Independent (Bain Capital backed) | Team and athlete subscriptions | 2/5 |
| Stack Sports / CaptainU | Stack Sports | Bundled into league and club registration software | 3/5 |
Strengths
Operating discipline that is hard to argue with. $303K burned across the nine closed months against $313K of ARR, with burn flat every one of those months while revenue grew 5.5×. Against all capital ever raised the ratio is less flattering, but the run-rate discipline is real.
Outcomes, not just a funnel. 1,500 scholarships earned and 15,000 coach conversations opened. Almost nobody in this category can point at results rather than sign-ups.
Distribution that does not reprice. Four sport verticals owned by equity-holding operators with their own audiences. No social payroll, and no exposure to ad auction inflation.
A pricing position incumbents cannot copy. Free is structurally unavailable to a competitor whose entire P&L is the family fee.
Weaknesses
$1.85M has already gone in. Capital raised to ARR is 5.9×, and 81% of that capital came from friends, family, and personal savings rather than institutions. A first institutional lead will price against the full history, not the last nine months.
Revenue is small and about to be switched off. $313K ARR, and the pivot removes most of it. Everything rests on a replacement model that has no signed revenue yet.
Engagement is thin against the headline. 6,874 monthly active against 29,287 registered — 23%. The number a brand or a college would underwrite is the smaller one.
No named technical owner. The core asset is an AI product and the deck does not identify who builds it. Model cost per user does not appear in the P&L at all.
Two workbooks disagree on revenue. A 1.64× gap across nine overlapping months. Until it is reconciled, every financial figure is a question.
Opportunities
The other side of the marketplace. College programs have recruiting budgets, are not minors, and carry no COPPA exposure. Charging institutions instead of families is on-mission and higher-margin.
Club and school licensing. One organisation delivers 150–350 athletes at near-zero acquisition cost. This is the only realistic path to a base measured in millions.
Middle school, early. Extending to 7th grade moves the US addressable base from roughly 4M in-window athletes to 16M, and builds the habit years before the deadline.
International, which nobody else is doing. 24 countries live already. No US competitor treats this category as global.
Threats
A defensive free tier from a funded incumbent. Endeavor-backed NCSA could launch free as a loss-leader and absorb the damage for longer than we could survive it.
Advertising to minors is legally constrained. COPPA and state design codes limit what can ever be sold against an under-18 base — and the 7th-grade expansion makes that worse, not better.
The registration layer bundles it away. If Stack Sports or an equivalent makes competent recruiting a free feature inside software clubs already buy, our wedge narrows sharply.
This round does not reach the plan. $2.5M funds proof, not scale. If the Series A market is closed when we get there, the free model has no second source of fuel.
Use of funds and runway
| Allocation | Share | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operational expenses | 45% | $1.13M | Staffing, technology upkeep, day-to-day necessities. |
| Marketing | 36% | $900K | Influencer layer plus paid amplification. |
| Hiring | 10% | $250K | Moving contractors to full-time; Enterprise and online verticals. |
| Partnership marketing | 5% | $125K | Targeted support and materials for distribution partners. |
| Product development | 4% | $100K | App 2.0 is shipped; remaining spend is tweaks. |
What $2.5M buys, four ways
| Scenario | Marketing + hiring / mo | Revenue / mo | Net burn / mo | Runway |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stay paid | $13K | $26K | $29K | 85 mo |
| Go free, hold spend | $13K | — | $56K | 45 mo |
| Plan case | $48K | — | $90K | 28 mo |
| Accelerated | $64K | — | $106K | 24 mo |
Base case is 28 months with zero subscription revenue. Going free removes $26K of monthly revenue and the revenue share against it — that is the real cost of the pivot, and it belongs in the runway before any marketing ramp does.
Returns
How you do not lose money, first
Non-marketing operating expenses are fixed and small, and marketing is discretionary and can be switched off in a week. At 89% gross margin every dollar of revenue above the fixed base is close to a dollar of cash. The subscription is a decision, not a one-way door — billing, price point, and the accounts that already paid all still exist. And underneath the equity sits 29.3K families, 15K observed coach replies, and sixteen months of behavioural history, which is not a zero.
Protections available and not yet agreed: a 1× non-participating liquidation preference, pro-rata rights, and monthly information rights against the three milestone metrics.
Three modelled outcomes
| Case | Revenue at exit | Multiple | Enterprise value | Gross | IRR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Downside | $4M | 3× | $12M | 0.3× | -20.4% |
| Base case | $20M | 6× | $120M | 3.2× | 21.4% |
| Upside | $44M | 9× | $396M | 10.6× | 40.0% |
Assumes 40% dilution between this round and exit. The downside case returns less than the money invested and is shown deliberately. $20M pre-money is 64× current ARR, which is above the seed range for software; our position is that the multiple should be read against the audience and the efficiency that built it rather than the subscription line.
Who buys this
Sports data and media platforms (Hudl, Endeavor, Genius Sports, Stack Sports). We hold the decision layer they lack. Film, registration, and scheduling companies all own workflow without owning the matching intelligence that sits on top of it.
Education and enrolment technology (Enrolment marketing platforms, student-search providers). Athletic recruiting is a student-acquisition channel colleges already spend heavily on. A verified pipeline of matched, interested athletes is directly adjacent to what these businesses sell.
Consumer sports brands (Apparel, equipment, nutrition). Direct access to a household in its highest-spend athletic years, with permission and context that paid media cannot buy.
Private equity roll-up (Youth sports platform consolidators). The category is actively consolidating. A profitable, high-margin, low-churn asset with a national footprint is standard roll-up material.
Risks
| Risk | Detail | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| The pivot removes revenue before it creates any | Going free retires the subscription line. Brand revenue is unproven and has no signed pipeline yet. | The round is sized so the base case survives 27 months with zero subscription revenue. Free access can also be staged by cohort rather than switched on at once. |
| Advertising to minors is legally constrained | Attention monetisation aimed at under-13s runs into COPPA, and the 7th-grade expansion puts twelve-year-olds in the base. Several state privacy laws go further. | Parent-held accounts, contextual rather than behavioural targeting, and age-gated inventory. Needs counsel sign-off before the model is presented as revenue. |
| This round does not fund the 2028 plan | Reaching two million users needs materially more capital than is being raised here. This is a bridge to a Series A, not the whole journey. | Milestones are set against what a Series A buyer needs to see: falling acquisition cost, engagement holding through the free transition, and first brand revenue. |
| Acquisition cost has to fall for the plan to work | At today's cost per user, the marketing budget lands short of the December target. | Removing the price point is itself the primary lever on conversion, and the funnel already converts at over two percent with a price in the way. |
| Incumbents have scale, capital, and film | The category leader is Endeavor-backed. Others sit inside the club registration layer families already use. | None of them can match free without dismantling the revenue that funds them. That is the entire strategic bet and it should be stated as a bet. |
| Key-person concentration | Leadership, investor relationships, and product direction sit with a small core, and the sport VPs are audience partners rather than full-time operators. | Hiring allocation converts contractor relationships to employed roles, and the ESOP structure is designed to keep the VPs economically attached. |
Team and terms
| Name | Role | What it de-risks |
|---|---|---|
| Andrew Fullmer | Chairman | A named chair is the difference between a founder-run company and a governed one. Investors underwriting a first institutional round want to know who holds management accountable between board meetings. |
| Matt Carter | Founder & Chief Executive | Capital efficiency is the single strongest number in this deck, and it is a direct reflection of how this company has been run. Sub-1.0× lifetime burn to ARR is not luck. |
| Big Bucket Tony | VP of Baseball | Baseball has one of the most entrenched showcase economies in youth sports. A credible insider is how you enter it without buying your way in. |
| Braxton Picou | VP of Basketball | Basketball recruiting runs on trust networks that cannot be bought with marketing spend. This is distribution that a competitor's budget does not replicate. |
| Adam Botkin | VP of Socials | Roughly $80K a year of avoided headcount, and an owned channel that does not reprice when ad auctions do. |
| Hunter Reynolds | VP of Football | Football is the highest-volume vertical and the one where recruiting spend per family is heaviest. Owning it credibly is the largest single addressable slice. |
| VP of Soccer | Selected, activates on close | The seat is filled the week the round closes, not months later while a search runs. |
| Parent Education Lead | Selected, activates on close | Education is the product's actual wedge. Nobody owns it internally today, and this round fixes that. |
Round mechanics
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Instrument | To be confirmed — priced equity or SAFE |
| Pre-money | $20,000,000 |
| Raise | $2,500,000 |
| Post-money | $22,500,000 |
| New-investor ownership | 11.11% |
| Option pool treatment | To be confirmed — pre or post money |
| Board | Chaired by Andrew Fullmer |
Ways to participate
Traditional investment. Participate in the growth and the freemium expansion model — a transformative outcome that redefines youth sports recruitment for families everywhere.
Joint venture. Integrate your technology or data, expanding the platform's capabilities and ensuring all families have access to the tools they need.
Non-profit partner. Back the nonprofit arm dedicated to free app access for talented athletes from low-income families, so every child gets a fair shot at success.
Metric definitions
| Term | Definition | Formula | Open question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registered user | Any account created on the platform, paid or free, active or not. | Cumulative accounts created, net of deletions | — |
| Monthly active user | An account with at least one session in the calendar month. | Distinct accounts with ≥1 session in month | Whether a session means any open, or a meaningful action such as a message sent or a school added. |
| New customer | An account that began paying in the month. | First-payment events in month | Whether this counts first payment or first registration. The two produce very different funnels. |
| Paying account | An account with an active paid subscription at month end. | Revenue ÷ list price, as an implied figure | Not directly reported anywhere. Revenue divided by the $15 list price implies ~1,741; cumulative new customers net of attrition implies ~3,208. These need reconciling. |
| Attrition | Accounts lost during the month. | Accounts lost ÷ opening base | Whether the denominator is paying accounts or all registered users. Against registered users July reads 0.43%; against paying accounts it reads roughly 3.4%. The denominator changes the story entirely. |
| Conversion rate | New customers as a share of site visits in the month. | New customers ÷ visits | — |
| Cost of acquisition (CAC) | Marketing spend per new customer. | Marketing spend ÷ new customers | Whether this is paid media only or blended with partner and organic. July ties closely to blended ($13,200 ÷ 689 = $19.16); earlier months diverge, which suggests the definition changed. |
| Lifetime value (LTV) | Expected total revenue from a customer. | $360 per customer, applied uniformly | An assumption, not a measurement. It is exactly $360 in every month of the sheet — 24 months at the $15 price. Cohort curves would replace it with something real. |
| Gross margin | Revenue less cost of service. | (Revenue − revenue share) ÷ revenue | — |
| Net cash flow | Operating income less capitalised software development. | Operating income − $3,500 monthly capex | — |
| Burn to ARR | Cash consumed in the closed months against current annualised revenue. | Nine-month burn ÷ (latest month × 12) | Distinct from capital-to-ARR, which uses all capital ever raised. Both are shown in this deck; only the second is what an investor computes unprompted. |
| Coach conversation | A reply from a college coach to athlete outreach. | Distinct coach reply events | The most important open definition in the deck. If a conversation means a reply, the outcome funnel reconciles at 100 contacts → 10 replies → 1 offer. If it means an outbound send, the two headline stats contradict each other by a factor of ten. |
| Scholarship earned | An athlete on the platform who received a scholarship offer. | Count of reported outcomes | Whether this counts offers received, offers accepted, or athletes enrolled on athletic aid. Also whether partial and academic aid count alongside full athletic scholarships. |
Contact
Matt Carter
matt@athletenarrative.com
208-866-4335
10090 W Mren St, Boise, ID 83709
Full interactive deck: https://an.reachsmart.ai · athletenarrative.com
Total burn to date $303K. Confidential and prepared for the recipient only.