Building the relationships, trust, and institutional memory that elite programs run on.
Think of the best coach you've ever known. Ask what decides a season. Not an extra hour of film. Not the perfect gameplan. It's the loss that lit the fire for the rest of the season. The senior who became the captain they needed. The freshman who checked on the kid who got benched. The comeback win that turned a group into a team.
"How well I'm helping them grow as players. How they're handling life. How they're feeling valued. How they're relating with their teammates. That is easily fifty percent of what's going on in my world every day. Easily. And when it's not addressed, it shows up on the field."
Elite athletics has spent decades building tech for on-field performance.
Every practice is recorded. Every step is tracked. Every opponent is analyzed, frame by frame.
The humans in sports deserve the same ingenuity for the other half.
Our AI mentor with institutional context. Private. 24/7. Built for athletics.
Sam helps student-athletes arrive at practice, competition, and the classroom more prepared, more confident, and more themselves.
"Even if Sam doesn't offer step-by-step advice, it does an incredible job putting how I feel in words."
"It feels great to take what I've been thinking and stressing about for a while, write it down, get it off my chest, and have Sam listen and give me quality feedback. It has really helped me slow down and stress less."
"The most valuable thing I've gotten from Sam has been navigating conversations with coaches."
Shared. Intelligent. The full picture, the moment you need it.
Ready to answer the questions that really matter:
How are the first year students handling the transition from high school?
How many seniors feel supported to succeed in the next phase?
Do our players know how to stay ready during winter break?
Authored by your staff. Delivered as dialogue, not a deck.
Our Studio let's coaches and staff shape the conversations that carry your program's voice. Sam delivers them as one-on-one interactions - answering questions in context, in the moments athletes need them, at a scale that allows even small teams to support all of their athletes.
"I have great conversations, but then I have to carry that by myself after the conversation. And there needs to be a way to retain that value and to start to cultivate and curate the key parts of all the conversations."
"Having to onboard them into not only the system, but the programming that we have… we have someone who is in a leadership role who is completely new to the industry as a whole. So having to kind of help them navigate the industry. That's one. But then also having to navigate the athletic department. That's two. Then having to help them navigate our area. That's three."
"At the D3 level, we didn't really have a student athlete development staff. And so there's not really that person or resource to go to if you need something… I think it would have been really nice to have like a built-in kind of support staff from like a, just someone to talk to and to get to know."
6 PM – 10 PM
Sam carries your programming into the hours athletes finally have time to process their day.
Athletes come prepared
Sam gives athletes a space to think through & find the right words, so athletes show up to meetings better prepared and ready to make the most of your time together.
48%
of athletes had a meaningful conversation with people in their program during the study. Sam led to more human conversation, not less.
Your athletes get more support. Your staff make more impact.
report higher confidence handling challenges in sport, academics, and life.
started a new habit or routine.
changed how they prepare for practice or competition.
2026 NCAA Research and Innovations Grant–funded study. Mid-study Engagers Survey, N=40. Full results will be published once data collection completes.
Dr. Elizabeth Taylor, PhD
Temple University. 60+ publications on athlete support and athletic organization culture.
NCAA Research & Innovations Grant
One of three awarded from more than a hundred applicants.
American Conference Consortium Grant
Methodological study to co-create & deploy athlete development programing through our platform.
Founded NeuroTrainer, scaled to 35K+ users including the college athletics market. Sold last year. 10 years building athlete support tools. Translational neuroscientist.
German pro soccer academy at 14. Former D1 soccer player turned technical architect. Built Sam for the athletes who are still trained to be tough and not talk through challenges.
60+ publications on athlete support and athletic organization culture. Former coach. Professor at Temple University. Leads the multi-site NCAA study across 8 institutions.
"I believe it is imperative to identify and collaborate with high-potential AI-native companies and founders that operate with integrity, empathy, and deep subject matter expertise in the relevant domain. Journai meets all three of these criteria, and they are invaluable thought partners as we navigate toward a future that will undoubtedly see artificial intelligence become central to the systems we have been tasked to design."
We are excited to transform your program, empower your athletes, and give your staff the tools they need to 10x their impact.
If half of success happens off the field, you already know what this is for.
