The Platform · Issue No. 04
Honest AI athlete intelligence — built for the parents legacy recruiting services have failed for two decades.
Who built this · The Founder
Marc Dorfman
Founder, Prospecta · Former D1 tennis · Top-20 USTA junior · ITF Jr. World #382
I played Division I tennis and spent 20+ years in financial services — a job that mostly came down to one question: is this actually worth what people are paying for it?
Then I became the parent of a competitive youth athlete and ran straight into the recruiting industry. It runs on selling anxious families hope: high-pressure sales calls, generic packages, and a bill that typically runs $2,000–$6,000. I talked to family after family who'd paid for it and come away with nothing they could actually use.
Prospecta is the advisor I wish I'd had — one that tells you honestly where your kid stands, what division is realistic, and exactly what to do next. No sales call. No $4,000 package. No telling you what you want to hear.
Sport-specific AI scoring against the benchmarks coaches actually use — UTR for tennis, NLF for lacrosse, Perfect Game for baseball, EYBL for basketball, JGS for golf, and position-specific combine measurables (40-time, 3-cone, vertical) for football. No generic profile. A real read on where your kid stands.
Self-serve from minute one — no 300-family-per-advisor pipeline, no $4,000 contract, no calendar invite with a closer. You stay in control of your athlete's recruiting, and the software does the heavy lifting.
Free, benchmarked reality reports — not optimistic sales pitches engineered to close a contract. If your athlete profiles D2, we'll tell you. If they're truly D1, the numbers will say so.
AI-generated personalized coach outreach, a Reach / Target / Likely school list, and a 30 / 90 / 365-day action plan — for $39/month. The same toolkit a $4,000 package delivers, without the sales call.
Scout is the AI agent inside Prospecta. It works even when you don't: watches coaching changes and roster moves at your target schools, tracks NCAA contact windows, flags follow-ups that have gone cold, and drafts the outreach email you approve and send. You can also ask it anything 24/7 — but you no longer have to. Scout drafts, you decide what sends.
Created by a former Division I athlete and current recruiting parent — not a sales rep with a script. Every feature exists because we needed it ourselves.
Re-assess every 90 days as your athlete grows. Track multiple siblings on one account. Watch the school list shift in real time as performance, grades, and goals change.
Show your work · The methodology receipt
Every Reality Report is built from the same factors below — in plain sight. No black box, no "proprietary algorithm" used as a sales prop. If the numbers say D3, the report will say D3.
Competition Tier (club / league)
Highest weight in pre-HS and underclass years
ECNL / MLS Next ≈ 90th percentile nationally · NLF / True / Crab Feast for lacrosse · Perfect Game / PBR for baseball · EYBL / Nike / UA circuits for basketball. Benchmarks set against published NCAA Division I roster origins.
Sport-specific rating
Hard ceiling on division ceiling
UTR (tennis), JGS / AJGA Stars (golf), USA Swimming time standards, NLF rankings (lacrosse), Perfect Game grade (baseball). Each tied to the cutoffs coaches at D1/D2/D3 publicly recruit against.
Position / event measurables
Heavier for football, T&F, swim; modifier elsewhere
40-yard, 3-cone, shuttle, vertical, broad jump (football) · event times and marks (track & swim) · velo and exit velo (baseball/softball). Compared to combine medians published by NFL Combine, USATF, USA Swimming, and Perfect Game.
GPA & academic profile
Unlocks academic-aid bands at D2/D3 and Ivy/NESCAC
GPA on the 4.0 scale, compared to NCAA Academic Index bands and conference-specific minimums (Ivy AI, Patriot League, NESCAC).
Grade / recruiting calendar position
Adjusts realism of every school on the list
NCAA D1 contact windows by sport. A junior with no contact yet is read very differently from a freshman with the same profile.
Geographic flexibility
Expands or compresses the school universe
Family-stated radius. Cross-referenced with the full IPEDS list of NCAA D1/D2/D3, NAIA, and NJCAA programs that field the athlete's sport.
Division goal
Sets the target band the score is read against
Self-reported (Power 4, any D1, D2 w/ scholarship, D3 / academics, undecided). The score itself doesn't change; the realism read does.
Benchmarks reviewed and resynced quarterly against published NCAA / NAIA roster data and governing-body cutoffs.
No conflicts · What we won't do
Every other recruiting service has a financial incentive to tell you what you want to hear. Here's what ours isn't.
What we do: charge $39/month for software you control, full stop.
For twenty years, families have had two real options: pay $2,000–$6,000 for a sales-driven service whose "free evaluation" doubles as the pitch, or upload a profile to a database college coaches openly say they ignore. Neither one actually answers the question every parent is asking — where does my kid honestly stand, and what do we do next?
Prospecta is the answer. We rebuilt the recruiting process from scratch around three beliefs: the assessment should be honest, the tools should be self-serve, and the price should reflect that this is software — not a sales operation.
Prospecta wasn't built by recruiting industry insiders looking to take a margin on anxious families. It was built by a former Division I athlete who became a recruiting parent, looked at what was on the market, and decided that no one should pay $4,000 to be lied to. Every feature exists because we needed it ourselves.
No sales call. No $4,000 package. No false hope.