Athlete To Athlete Raises $8M for Youth Sports Mentorship

Before a child meets a college-athlete mentor at Athlete To Athlete, a matching specialist helps the family choose whom to trust. The Santa Monica, California company is building its expansion around that personal introduction, connecting young athletes with someone currently living the college sports experience they want to understand.

Athlete To Athlete announced an $8M Series A on November 12, 2026, led by Rally Ventures with participation from Newbound VC, Scrum Ventures and UpHonest Capital. Co-founder and CEO Anthony Waller and co-founder and COO Zach Maisus plan to expand youth-sports partnerships, strengthen protections for young athletes and scale the mentorship platform. The investment brings a practical question into focus for sports and education businesses: how does a service grow while preserving the relationship a family came for?

What families are buying

The company's current program FAQ describes a process with people making choices at several points. Staff select potential mentors using the child's sport, goals, personality and development needs. Parents review those options and help choose; a particular athlete or school is subject to availability. The matching process gives the family a role before the recurring sessions begin.

Most families meet a mentor weekly for a 30-minute, one-to-one video session, according to the FAQ. Conversations can include confidence, preparation, film review, skills and the route through competitive sports. The company serves athletes aged 6 to 18, and the funding announcement describes programs lasting 12 or 24 weeks. Those defined periods give the relationship time to develop beyond an introduction.

A parent may know exactly what a child needs to hear and still have trouble getting that advice through. A current college athlete arrives with a different kind of credibility: the experience is recent, recognizable and connected to the same sport. Athlete To Athlete describes its service as a complement to existing coaches and training. Its commercial proposition rests on giving that additional relationship enough structure to become useful over repeated conversations.

Founders who started with the same experience

Waller and Maisus founded Athlete To Athlete in 2023 after meeting as lifting partners at UCLA. The company's account of its origins connects the idea to pressures they experienced as athletes, including uncertainty about performance and the path ahead. That history helps explain why the company puts a current athlete in the mentoring role. The person offering guidance is close enough to the younger athlete's ambition to make the conversation feel possible.

There is a second relationship on the other side of the screen. The FAQ says college athletes are paid for each mentorship session and receive resources to help lead the calls. Their experience becomes work they can offer in regular appointments. For a student-athlete, the useful asset can be an understanding of preparation, confidence or balancing demands, whether or not that person has the profile to attract a major endorsement.

This model places human availability inside the growth plan. Mentors have schedules and their own commitments; families need continuity and a good fit. In explaining whether mentors can take several students, the company says it tries to avoid creating scheduling conflicts. For an operator looking at the business, that small detail carries weight: expanding supply means making room for relationships that require somebody to be present again next week.

Why Rally's operating history matters

Rally Ventures' team includes people with direct experience building businesses around youth sports. Operating Partner Luke Zaientz helped build Reigning Champs, which included college-recruiting platform NCSA. Managing Director Justin Kaufenberg co-founded and ran SportsEngine. Their backgrounds bring familiarity with families, sports organizations and the commercial routes connecting them, although the announcement makes no promise about specific new partnerships.

Zaientz's account of the investment also describes an unusually concrete period of observation. In the funding announcement, he says Waller sent monthly performance updates for a year and a half before Rally invested, with the numbers improving each time. That is the investor's description of his diligence experience. It offers a view of the founders' operating consistency without disclosing the company's revenue or unit economics.

The firm's published thinking provides context for its potential contribution. In a December 2025 essay on partner ecosystems, Kaufenberg and co-author Rick Ehrman discuss reaching sports families through services embedded in existing relationships. Athlete To Athlete's stated partnership plans fit that commercial territory. An organization with established family trust can help introduce a service; the mentor still has to make the ensuing conversation worthwhile.

Where the new capital meets the service

Athlete To Athlete reports having served more than 35,000 athletes and having a college-athlete network spanning more than 300 universities. Those figures come from the company's announcement. They describe reported reach, while the experience a family renews or recommends takes place in individual sessions. Keeping those two views together matters when assessing a service delivered by people through software.

The three stated funding priorities follow that connection between distribution and delivery. Youth-sports partnerships can bring new families into the program. Investment in protections and platform capacity concerns what happens after they arrive. The company describes screening, training and support for mentors, but its public FAQ does not provide a basis for claiming an independent safety certification or a guaranteed outcome for any child.

For sports organizations considering a mentorship offering, the operating questions concern who selects the mentor, how parents stay involved, and how the relationship continues when schedules or needs change. Athlete To Athlete already describes human work at those points. As Waller and Maisus expand the platform, more families will reach the moment where a few proposed names become one person their child expects to see next week.