July 24, 2025
Meet Nyla Pollard, former college athlete and founder & CEO of the game-changing AI platform, Ballin AI.
A former college athlete-turned-entrepreneur is celebrating the $500,000 angel round she recently closed for her groundbreaking sports tech company.
On July 23, Nyla Pollard, a College of William & Mary alum and former standout defender on the women’s basketball team, announced on LinkedIn that she officially closed a $500K angel round for her AI-powered sports platform, Ballin AI. The startup utilizes artificial intelligence to help players and coaches refine their skills and enhance team performance, ultimately transforming how athletes train, play, and get recruited.
“We’re backed by an incredible group of early believers fueling our mission: to make recruiting faster, smarter, and data-driven for both athletes and coaches,” Pollard wrote.
Pollard developed the concept for Ballin AI after graduation, drawing inspiration from her own college recruitment journey, which sparked the idea.
“I remember reflecting on my own recruiting process and thinking, ‘Oh, this could be better,’” she told her alma mater in January. “But I didn’t really start working on it until November of 2022, and we formally incorporated our company in 2023.”
“Really, it came from having that firsthand experience as an athlete,” she added. “My initial idea was to focus on the recruiting process and how to make that better for coaches and players. Then, when we dove into customer discovery and market research, we really landed on the right solution for right now.”
Launched earlier this year, Ballin AI automates game film analysis for coaches and players at every level. Users simply upload their footage, and the platform generates detailed reports tailored to their needs.
Coaches can use it for recruiting, player evaluation, and scouting opponents, while players get insights to sharpen their skills and boost their visibility to recruiters and scouts. Now with a staff of 13, including former William & Mary Tribe players, Bianca Boggs and Dani McTeer, Ballin AI is looking to transform the future of sports recruiting.
“Because we are an AI-powered platform, it allows us to deliver with unprecedented speed,” Pollard said. “When you think about it, we’re adding automation to processes that were formerly manual and laborious.”
Besides breaking barriers as a Black woman in sports tech, Pollard is also making waves as a college athlete turned entrepreneur. Last December, she spoke to current student-athletes at her alma mater, inspiring them with her journey and passion for innovating the sports industry.
“In my experience as a student athlete, we would have post-graduate conversations, and the presented options were always Corporate America, grad school or playing overseas,” she said. “Entrepreneurship was never discussed as a viable career path. I never even considered doing that.”
Pollard continued. “Athletes have such a unique yet untapped perspective in the world of sports innovation. Former athlete founders do exist, but I think there should be more because no one knows the space like we do. Even after we started Ballin, I got the question so many times: ‘Why doesn’t this exist already?’”
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