About · Ricky Ybarra, founder
I built the tool I wish my family had.
Top-tier club soccer in ECNL, the regional team through ODP — the Olympic Development Program — then a Developmental Academy, an MLS Academy, and Division I. Recruiting is the messiest process my family ever went through. Startline is the rebuild — a start line for the families who never got one.
My path · four chapters, in the order they happened
- 01The club yearsECNL
Club soccer — where the climb started
ODPalongsideState Team → Region Team · named all-region at the inter-regional
- 02The academy yearsDevelopmental Academy
The real next level up from club
MLS AcademyThe pro-pathway years
- 03College · the degreeD1 Soccer
College — the level this product aims at
Industrial engineeringThe degree that treats broken processes as fixable
- 04NowStartline
Building the tool my family needed
The path this product was built to shorten
01 · The problem
Recruiting wasguesswork.
My family did the recruiting mostly in the dark. We didn’t know which schools were realistic, which had room at my position, or which camps were worth the drive. We got “get exposure” — and a pitch from a service that wanted thousands of dollars to hand us a spreadsheet.
02 · The experience
Which schoolswere realistic?
We figured it out the slow way, one email at a time. And I kept thinking about the families without a former player in the house to translate — the ones paying for hope.
03 · The insight
The answer wason the rosters.
Every program publishes its roster. Who graduates at a position, how deep a squad is, where they recruit from, whether freshmen play — it was all there, for all 2,215 programs. Nobody had read it for a family.
04 · The build
Engineering,on the data.
An industrial engineering degree is a fancy way of saying I take messy processes apart and rebuild them. So: read every roster, every admissions range, every staff page — 65,486 roster spots, 5,646 coach addresses — and score the fit, honestly, with the reason shown.
“Pick the school you’d love before you pick the team. Be happy there whether or not you make the roster.”
05 · Startline
The engineering version of the advice I’d give at my kitchen table.
Startline scores where a player really fits, shows where there’s real room on a roster, and keeps every coach conversation from going cold. Nobody could tell my family which schools were realistic. It answers that question in an evening, for nothing.
