Cerebro Sports
Setting the Scene
For every NBA star drafted late, there’s a top-10 pick who never lives up to expectations.
Talent evaluation in basketball remains more art than science with fragmented stats and low visibility leading to busted picks and overlooked gems.
Coaches and recruiters juggle box scores, game film, and hearsay just to piece together a partial view of player potential.
This week’s company is building is building basketball’s global database, making talent evaluation faster, fairer, and accessible at every level of the game.
In a Sentence
Cerebro Sports is a basketball data platform that aggregates player stats, giving athletes a verified way to get discovered and providing coaches with a tool to make recruiting decisions.
Aggregates: Cerebro pulls stats from thousands of games and events into one centralized hub.
Discovery: Players create verified profiles that highlight their achievements and increase their chances of recruitment.
Bulleted Version:
- Similar to how the Moneyball approach transformed baseball scouting with standardized metrics, Cerebro Sports is doing the same for basketball, turning scattered stats into a platform recruiters can trust.
The Basics
- Headquarters: Dallas, TX
- Employee Count: 8
- Investors:
- Funding amount: ~$3M
- Business model: B2B subscriptions for teams and event operators, expanding into youth player (consumer) subscriptions
- Early traction: : Used in some capacity by all 30 NBA teams, over 1,000 college and professional coaches, and ~20,000 players pre-registered for athlete accounts
Due Diligence
WHAT WE LIKE
Market Opportunity: Basketball is one of the most played team sport in the U.S. and a rapidly expanding global industry, yet there is no universal infrastructure for player evaluation.
Data-Driven Decisions: While most Fortune 500 companies rely on data to guide key decisions, basketball recruiting still runs on gut and legacy scouting, and it shows, with only ~50% of lottery picks (top 14) becoming consistent NBA starters.
Dual-Sided Product Fit: By serving both athletes seeking exposure and coaches seeking clarity, Cerebro positions itself as the connective layer in basketball recruiting, widening its addressable market and building stickiness across stakeholders.
POTENTIAL RISKS
B2C Expansion Risk: While early player demand is strong, shifting from B2B to a consumer-facing product will require new acquisition tactics, pricing strategy, and UX clarity.
Data Source Vulnerability: Some input pipelines rely on external event operators or public data sources, which could introduce fragility if partnerships shift or data access becomes restricted.
Unproven Outcomes: While the company has seen some early validation, Cerebro has yet to produce a widely recognized “success story,” a player discovered through the platform who makes it big.
Founder Profile
Ryan Girardot: CEO: Previously founded ePlay Analytics.
John Cho: Chief Data Officer: Spent 20 + years as VP of Data Analytics at the Houston Rockets.
Ed Chao: COO: 3-time entrepreneur and former GM of the Dallas Flash pro pickleball team.
Comps
Synergy Sports: Leader in basketball video analytics, relying on footage and manual tagging; widely used across high schools and colleges.
Signing Day Sports: Athlete exposure platform for recruiting; raised $6M+ from Marketplace Capital and others.
MaxPreps: High school sports data aggregator with photography, ticketing, and social media content; Cerebro differentiates by incorporating more data sources and expanding beyond just high school basketball.
Why Cerebro Sports
By uniting and structuring siloed sources of basketball data, Cerebro makes overlooked talent visible, giving recruiters and coaches true court vision.
