NIL Card
An operating system for student-athletes monetising their name, image and likeness. Twenty athletes onboarded in the first forty-eight hours.
The problem
NIL rules let student-athletes earn from their own name for the first time, and left them with no infrastructure to do it. An athlete has an audience and no way to price it, no professional surface to send a brand to, and no route through the disclosure requirements their school and state impose. Brands, on the other side, have no consistent way to assess what an athlete is worth. Both sides negotiate blind.
What we built
A public athlete card on a custom URL, with a valuation engine that prices an athlete's NIL, a rate card generated from it, and a sponsor pitch generator that turns the two into outreach. Compliance is part of the flow rather than bolted on: the platform supports standard NIL disclosure and gives school and collective teams a route in. Free and paid tiers, so an athlete can establish a presence before paying for the commercial tooling.
Stack
Architecture decisions
Make the valuation engine the centre, not the profile page
A profile page is a commodity — every athlete already has social accounts. The thing neither side has is a defensible number. Pricing the audience is what turns a follower count into a negotiation, so that is the product, and the card is how it is presented.
Free tier carries a live public card
An athlete with no deals yet will not pay for deal tooling, and gating the card would leave the platform empty. Giving the presence away and charging for valuation, rate cards and outreach puts the paywall at the point where the athlete is already earning.
Build disclosure in rather than leaving it to the athlete
A platform that helps an athlete earn while leaving them exposed to an eligibility problem is worse than no platform. Supporting the disclosure flow, and giving compliance teams visibility, is what makes it usable inside a school rather than around it.
Got something similar to build?
Book a scoping call