Across the country, strength coaches run elite programs using clipboards, whiteboards, and paper logs, leaving valuable performance data fragmented and unusable. Founded by Scott Tsangeos (BBA ’18), Olympus turns handwritten, unstructured inputs into actionable performance insights without changing how coaches work. With a $100,000 investment from the Zell Founders Fund, Olympus is looking to bring more clarity and precision to how athletes train and perform.
These unstructured formats make it nearly impossible to analyze, track, or act on at scale. In high school athletics, most strength and conditioning programs still rely on whiteboards, paper sheets, and clipboards, leaving valuable data fragmented and effectively unusable. Existing software solutions require clean, structured digital inputs, which don’t reflect how coaches actually operate, forcing them into time-consuming manual entry or leading them to abandon software altogether. As expectations around athlete monitoring, injury prevention, and program accountability continue to rise, this gap between data capture and data utilization is becoming increasingly costly and underserved.
Olympus is uniquely suited to solve this because it starts where coaches already are, not where traditional software expects them to be. By transforming handwriting and other unstructured inputs into structured performance data, Olympus bridges the gap between analog workflows and digital intelligence without adding friction. This enables programs to preserve the speed and flexibility of paper while unlocking automation, analytics, and longitudinal tracking. With early traction among high-level programs and a product built specifically for the realities of the weight room, Olympus combines technical capability with real-world validation to redefine how performance data is captured and used.
Olympus has quickly built strong validation across both elite programs and national organizations. Currently partnered with multiple high school football state championship programs, embedding the platform into some of the most competitive and performance-driven environments in the country. This on-the-ground adoption has been complemented by the work with USA Weightlifting, further demonstrating the flexibility of Olympus across different strength and performance domains. Together, these partnerships reinforce that the product is not just theoretical, but already delivering value at the highest levels of amateur sport.
Olympus is gaining meaningful visibility and credibility within both the business and athletic communities and has been featured in Forbes and Poets & Quants, highlighting both the innovation behind the platform and the strength of its founding story. Additionally, recently became a National Sponsor of the National High School Strength Coaches Association (NHSSCA), giving direct access to one of the most important networks in their target market. These milestones collectively signal strong early traction, growing brand recognition, and a clear path to scaling within a highly relationship-driven ecosystem.
The $100K will be distributed across two priorities:
1. Advancing the product’s analytics capabilities
The focus is on building robust reporting and advanced analytics that turn captured data into clear, actionable insights for coaches. This includes developing dashboards for athlete progress, workload tracking, and program effectiveness, as well as automated reports that coaches can use to communicate results to athletes, parents, and administrators. By elevating Olympus from a data capture tool to a true decision-making platform, daily engagement, retention, and overall program value is increased.
2. Investing in targeted go-to-market initiatives that drive adoption within high school athletics
There will be a launch of a coaching ambassador program to recruit influential strength coaches who can champion Olympus within their networks, provide product feedback, and generate organic demand. In parallel, they will pursue strategic partnerships with organizations such as the National High School Strength Coaches Association to build credibility, reach concentrated audiences of target customers, and create scalable distribution channels. Together, these efforts will pair a more compelling, insight-driven product with trusted distribution, accelerating both awareness and conversion in a highly relationship-driven market.
The Zell Founders Fund invests in exceptional recent alumni entrepreneurs, supporting them as they take critical steps to advance their ventures. University of Michigan alumni founders working full-time on their startups are eligible to apply beginning in their final semester and up to one year post-graduation. Investment amounts vary based on each company’s stage and needs. Click here to learn more about the program.