youth-sports
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Gary Goldberg Found His Software Company in a Pile of Jerseys
A third-generation textile entrepreneur watched a youth tournament and saw a manufacturing problem disguised as volunteer work. His answer was to make every jersey an individual order - and give coaches their time back.
Frank Tillinghast and the Five-Minute Store
A Rhode Island CPA spent decades learning the apparel trade, then helped turn one of youth sports' least glamorous chores into an online store. His career is a study in what happens when the person counting the costs has also coached the team.
Dave Marcello Put the Back Office On the Scoreboard
He once won attention with a free-kittens flyer and acquired music fans for 32 cents apiece. Now Dave Marcello is selling a less glamorous, more consequential idea: the people running youth sports deserve serious operating tools.
Chris Farrell Knows the Unsexy Work Is Where Markets Move
A career built across banking, billing and software taught Chris Farrell to look past the shiny pitch. At Raintree Systems, he is turning the stubborn machinery of therapy practice into a story people can actually use.
Mason Hale Turned Swim-Meet Chaos Into Software That Outlived the Startup Playbook
A volunteer assignment, one overworked laptop and 250 young swimmers gave Mason Hale a problem worth fifteen years. His answer became SwimTopia - a patient SaaS company built around the people who keep community sports alive.
Rocky Collis
Rocky Collis is the co-founder and CEO of Mustard, a sports technology company that uses computer vision and AI to put world-class coaching in a phone. A former Cornell pitcher drafted by the Seattle Mariners, he detoured through Georgetown Law and big-firm litigation before teaming up with legendary throwing coach Dr. Tom House, mental-performance coach Jason Goldsmith, and his brother Luke to build an app that gives any kid the kind of mechanics analysis once reserved for Tom Brady and Nolan Ryan. Mustard has raised roughly $5.45M-$6M from backers including Mark Cuban, Ronnie Lott, and Justin Rose, and has expanded from pitching into golf through a partnership with Golf Digest.
Chris O'Dowd
Chris O'Dowd is the co-founder and CEO of WIN Reality, an Austin-based virtual reality training platform for baseball and softball hitters. A former professional catcher who played six seasons in the minor leagues after starring at Dartmouth, he built WIN Reality with his father, longtime MLB executive Dan O'Dowd, to close the gap between practice speed and real game speed. The Meta Quest-based product lets players face game-speed pitching from a library of thousands of real pitchers, and is now used by youth players, more than 200 colleges, and a majority of MLB franchises. The company raised a $45M+ round led by Spectrum Equity in June 2022.
David Lokshin
David Lokshin is the co-founder and CEO of Trace, an AI sports video company that places an autonomous camera on the sideline of youth games and hands each player a personalized highlight reel. He started the company in 2011 as AlpineReplay, a side project with his father Anatole, building GPS sensors that tracked skiers and snowboarders, then pivoted the same data-and-camera engine into team sports. A Harvard applied-math graduate who began his career trading FX options at Barclays, Lokshin describes Trace as 'the creator and keeper of memories.' The company has raised roughly $71.8M through a Series C and employs around 130 people from its Austin base.