Geoff Cottrill
Founder & CEO • U.S. Army Veteran • Auburn University
Before Geoff built software, he led soldiers. As a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant and Senior Squad Leader, he commanded an 11-member infantry squad conducting complex urban operations with Stryker combat vehicles — earning three promotions ahead of his peers in a four-year span. He was directly responsible for the operational readiness and accountability of over $4.5 million in military assets, while fostering the health, welfare, discipline, and professional development of every soldier under his command. The Army taught him how to build systems that work under pressure, lead teams that trust each other, and execute when the stakes are real.
After his military service, Geoff transitioned into finance and operations leadership. He served as Vice President of Operations, directing daily operations and strategic initiatives for a diverse asset portfolio — leading cross-functional teams, implementing process improvements, and ensuring regulatory compliance across complex business units. He went on to found and lead his own firm in the life settlement industry, where he facilitated transactions totaling over $700 million in policy value and generated more than $2 million in revenue through targeted strategic initiatives. He also served as Chief Operating Officer of a financial services firm, where he advised senior leadership on financial planning, budgeting, investment guidance, and organizational performance frameworks. Across every role, the through line has been the same: take a complex operation, build the systems, and make it run.
Today, Geoff is the Founder and Managing Director of Nolensville Youth Football, Inc. — a Tennessee 501(c)(3) — and President of Nolensville Youth Athletics, a 1,300+ athlete, 4-program, NFL FLAG partner league in Williamson County, Tennessee. He built the organization’s governance structure from the ground up, achieving 17 out of 17 governance best practices. He designed its sponsorship program, recruited and trained its coaching staff, and ran operations for 90 teams across 6 age divisions. When he saw that no technology existed to match the operational complexity of running a league at that scale, he built it himself.
That’s how NOVA Labs was born. Geoff created the NOVA-STARS™ analytics system — a 23,000-formula predictive engine powering live power rankings, Elo ratings, playoff projections, Monte Carlo simulations, and competitive balance analysis. He built NOVA Score, a real-time game-day scoreboard that lets parents follow every game from their phone while refs enter scores from the field. He built the NOVA Dashboard, giving league administrators live standings, seeding projections, and playoff bracket management in one place. He built ProScout AI for digital player evaluations and AI-balanced drafting. Seven products in total — every one of them conceived, designed, and deployed by Geoff, self-funded, with zero outside capital.
The discipline comes from the Army. The business acumen comes from a decade in finance. The product instinct comes from being the customer. Geoff doesn’t build for youth sports from the outside — he builds from the sideline, every Saturday, with 1,300 kids counting on the systems he created.
