By Madelaine B. Landry
The proverb “necessity is the mother of invention” means that a challenging problem is often the primary driving force behind new and creative solutions. When SWLA residents Brandon and Morgan Miller were first asked to live stream travel ball games, they faced a dilemma. Phones overheated and shut off as they were videoing the games. Brandon was motivated to create something novel to solve the issue. 
The Millers have recently been notified by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that the utility patent for their business Nexus Mount has been granted.
With the help of intellectual property attorneys, the Millers began the process of compiling the patent application. After several months of work, they were able to submit their application in November 2023. The three designs covered under the patent are the OG Mount, Solo Mount and Big Apple Mount.
“Even though there were other mounting options on the market, South Louisiana’s heat was always an issue with any that we tried when we started recording videos in 2021,” recalls Morgan. “Brandon, who is a professional pipe designer, started thinking about how best to solve this problem. He began by constructing different style mounts out of cardboard and 3D printing them to continue testing. On his lunch break, he would go to different baseball fields in Sulphur to test the prototypes out on actual backstops.”
“We officially launched our business in the beginning of 2023. It started off with a great response, selling well in small batches. At the time, we were only advertising on Facebook. On March 23 of that year, I posted our first TikTok video, which went viral in less than 12 hours. Things just exploded from there. Brandon’s goal for the year was to sell 100 mounts; we ended up selling over 2,000 of them.”
Looking back to 2021, when the Millers were first asked to provide live streaming, GameChanger was the most popular app available for tracking travel ball teams. The app allowed users to follow play-by-play of a game live, as the user tracked it.
THE MONOBASE
SIMPL
TO REPLACE THE BULKY TRIPOD
WORKS WITH ALL NEXUS MOUNT KITS
“At first, it was just a graphic and it would depict players with an icon,” Morgan explains. “During the 2021 season, this app launched the ability to live stream a video along with the play tracking. Now parents, friends and other family members could follow along with a game whenever they couldn’t be there. I remember opening the e-mail and being excited about the new feature. Prior to this, you could stream the video on Facebook live, but it was hard to keep track of the game that way.
“Why does this matter? Sometimes grandparents can’t travel to distant tournaments. Parents may have to work shift work to pay for travel ball, or parents are split up because their kids have to be in other places. We understand because we have three children involved in sports. There are weekends when all of them have to go in different directions.
“In 2024, our sales doubled, which forced production to increase. We had to locate manufacturers that could produce our products to the scale needed to keep up with demand. In 2025, with the economic downturn, the U.S. tariff instability has created significant challenges for our small business. We’ve had a lot of conversations with small business owners that are facing the same situation. We’ve tried to find U.S. manufacturers, but several of our products cannot be made here.”
“Brandon still works his day job as a mechanical piping designer, and I run the business full time out of what was previously our dining room. We don’t have any employees, except when we can recruit our kids to help out with tasks.”
THE OG
livestream complete games without the worry of devices overheating; works on fence, net, and tripod
“We started out with the OG Mount,” notes Brandon. “At that time, it was just The Nexus Mount. We didn’t name it then because we did not plan on making other models. Little did we know that the demand for this type of product would increase so dramatically. And because of that demand, we soon realized we needed to create a few other mounts specifically designed for different athletic applications.
“The original OG Mount is equipped with a cover that protects your device from direct sunlight to prevent overheating. The cover can be easily removed for shaded or night games. The kit securely holds a smartphone, GoPro or Mevo Start plus a battery pack — perfect for uninterrupted, full-game streaming. The Solo Mount is designed for individual filming when players are in a batting cage and want to video batting practice or throwing a bullpen. The Maverick Mount is designed for hockey games; it has suction cups so that it can be attached to the glass.
“The Big Apple mount is designed to hold an iPad. This particular mount was personally designed for a Yankees pitching coach; that’s how we landed on that name. It’s for Apple products, but we also wanted a nod to New York City. We worked with this coach for about a year. As he traveled throughout the season, he tested prototypes in the different MLB bullpen settings. It was crazy to watch MLB games on tv and see our product being used in the bullpen.”
THE SOLO
Record your training sessions and improve your skills; works on fence, net, and tripod
The Millers ship their products internationally. They have customers in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden, Canada and the Dominican Republic, to name a few.
The family’s athletic life has not slowed down, even with the additional work from their business venture.
“Our older son is still playing baseball. He’s now in 14U playing on Prospects. This is the last year of ‘travel ball’ before he starts high school. It’s wild to think about it being his last year, because travel ball is what started it all. Our youngest son is now also playing travel baseball. Our daughter plays volleyball and is on a swim team. So, many weekends we are at different complexes or in different cities with one kid, watching the livestream of the other one’s game.”
Additional information is available at thenexusmount.com.
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