Why Building a Sports Tech Company Requires the Same Grit as Division I Athletics

A founder is still awake at 1:17 a.m., staring at a product issue that should have been fixed six hours ago.

The demo is tomorrow. The customer wants a cleaner answer. The team is tired. The idea still makes sense, but the product is fighting back.

I’m Cassandra Toroian. I’ve spent 25 years in technology and entrepreneurship, so I know that moment from the inside. It feels less like a pitch deck and more like a fourth-quarter possession when your legs are gone and the game is still asking for one more clean decision.

Most people think building a sports tech company is about spotting the future early.

That’s not the hard part.

It’s about staying with the work long enough for the future to become usable.

Talent gets you noticed. Repetition gets you built.

Division I athletes don’t get there by liking the sport. They get there by repeating the unglamorous parts until those parts become automatic. Lifting when no one claps. Studying film when the highlight is already over. Getting treatment. Traveling. Losing. Practicing again. Sitting with a coach who’s right about the thing they didn’t want to hear.

That’s what building a sports tech company feels like once the novelty wears off.

The first idea is exciting. The first mockup feels clean. The first person who says “I’d use this” gives the whole thing oxygen. Then the real season starts.

The product breaks. The market gives mixed signals. A coach likes it, but the athletic director needs another approval. A club owner wants it, but only if it works inside the system they already use. A league wants innovation, but not disruption during tournament week. An athlete loves the concept, then never opens the app again.

That isn’t failure. That’s film. You watch it. You learn from it. You go back.

Sports tech has a harder customer than people think

Sports looks emotional from the outside. It is. But sports buyers can be deeply practical. They don’t want technology because the technology is clever. They want it because it makes something better, faster, clearer, safer, more measurable, more watchable, or easier to run.

That difference matters. A team doesn’t need another dashboard unless the dashboard changes a decision. A coach doesn’t need another app unless it saves time or reveals something useful. A club doesn’t need another system unless members actually use it. A player doesn’t need another wearable unless the feedback makes sense under pressure.

The market is growing — that part is real. The global sports technology market was valued at $32.47 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $39.64 billion in 2026, according to Fortune Business Insights. SportsTechX reported $12.5 billion in disclosed sports tech deal flow through October 2025.

Big numbers attract founders. They don’t protect them. A growing market can still reject a weak product.

Division I grit is not motivational-poster grit

The word “grit” gets softened too often. People use it like it means enthusiasm with better shoes. It doesn’t.

Angela Duckworth’s original research defined grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. That definition matters, because the hard part isn’t one burst of effort — it’s staying attached to the mission after the easy reasons have disappeared.

Division I athletics trains that kind of endurance. Not perfectly. Not romantically. But relentlessly. Athletes learn that the body doesn’t always feel ready. Coaches don’t always say the nice thing. The schedule doesn’t care about mood. The scoreboard doesn’t reward intent. You either execute or you learn why you didn’t.

Sports tech founders need that same relationship with reality. The market doesn’t care that the idea sounded good in a meeting. The user doesn’t care how elegant the architecture is if the product is hard to use. The investor doesn’t care how much time went into the prototype if the customer story isn’t sharp. The athlete doesn’t care that the algorithm is advanced if the answer arrives too late.

Reality gives feedback. Founders have to take it.

The game is longer than the launch

A launch feels like a finish line from far away. It isn’t. It’s the first public test.

That’s where the Division I comparison gets useful. An athlete can have a great preseason and still get exposed in conference play. A founder can have a strong launch and still find out the product isn’t durable, the onboarding is too hard, the buyer isn’t the user, or the sales cycle is longer than the cash runway.

That’s why grit has to be operational, not emotional. A gritty founder doesn’t just “believe harder.” A gritty founder changes the onboarding flow, makes the demo clearer, rewrites the customer language, fixes the pricing, cuts the feature that’s distracting everyone, and calls the customer again after the first answer was no.

That’s the work.

Sports teaches this because every game creates proof. You can’t hide behind intention for long. The shot went in or it didn’t. The assignment was handled or it wasn’t. The recovery was clean or it wasn’t. Startups need the same honesty.

Coaching still matters

The myth of the lone founder is exhausting. It’s also not how sports works.

No Division I athlete develops alone. There are position coaches, strength coaches, trainers, nutrition staff, teammates, analysts, academic support, and people who know when to push and when to pull back.

Sports tech founders need their own version of that: technical people who’ll tell the truth, operators who understand the buyer, athletes who’ll use the product in messy conditions, advisors who know the difference between a real market signal and polite encouragement, and customers who’ll say what’s broken without trying to make the founder feel better.

I taught myself to code during COVID through a Python bootcamp, and that experience changed how I think about feedback. The code didn’t care how determined I was. It either worked or it didn’t. That sounds harsh until it becomes freeing.

Clear feedback saves time. Vague encouragement burns it.

The best founders can be coached

This is where sports and startups meet almost perfectly. The athlete who can’t be coached has a ceiling. So does the founder.

A sports tech company sits between worlds — sport, software, hardware, data, media, coaching, operations, facilities, safety, performance, fan experience, and sometimes governing bodies. Nobody knows all of that alone. So a founder has to hold conviction without becoming uncoachable, which is harder than it sounds. Too much flexibility, and the company drifts. Too much ego, and the company stops learning. The best founders know which part of the vision is nonnegotiable and which parts are just early guesses wearing fancy clothes.

Division I athletes learn this under pressure. A coach may change the role. The game plan may change. A player may need to become useful in a different way than expected. The athlete who survives that shift isn’t the one who clings to the old version of themselves. It’s the one who adapts without losing the competitive center.

Founders need that. Every week.

Sports tech has to earn the locker room

A lot of technology dies before it becomes part of behavior, and that’s especially true in sports. Athletes and coaches can smell fake utility fast. If the product interrupts practice, slows a workflow, adds work without giving value back, or feels like someone built it from a conference panel instead of a sideline, it gets ignored.

The locker room is honest. The court is honest. The training room is honest. A product has to survive all three.

That’s why I think sports tech requires a different kind of grit than ordinary software. The product isn’t only being tested by users. It’s being tested by rhythm, pressure, ego, fatigue, competition, tradition, and the strange little rituals that make sports feel like sports.

You can’t bulldoze that. You have to respect it. Then build inside it.

Winning takes longer than looking smart

The early stage of a sports tech company can reward sounding smart. The later stage rewards being useful. That’s the humbling part.

The market doesn’t need another founder who can describe AI, computer vision, athlete data, smart venues, fan engagement, injury prevention, or performance analytics in clean language. It needs products that hold up when a coach has eight minutes, a club has one staffer at the desk, a player is tired, a parent is confused, or a facility manager is juggling a schedule that already changed three times.

That’s where grit becomes concrete. Answer the support ticket. Watch the user fail. Fix the workflow. Simplify the feature. Make the hard thing easier. Come back after the no. Do the boring rep. Then do it again.

Division I athletes understand that rhythm because they live inside it. The public sees the game. The athlete knows the week. Founders should know the week too.

The company is built in the reps nobody sees

Sports tech is having a serious moment. AI is moving deeper into sport. Data is shaping player development. Smart venues are becoming normal. Video, rules intelligence, fan tools, wearable inputs, and performance platforms are all pushing the industry forward.

That doesn’t make the founder’s job easier. It raises the bar. The next sports tech company worth building won’t win because it used the newest language. It’ll win because it understood the real job to be done and kept showing up when the first version wasn’t good enough.

That’s the Division I lesson. You don’t become competitive because you wanted it badly one day. You become competitive because you built a life around getting better under pressure. A sports tech company has to do the same.

If you’re building in sports, are you chasing the highlight — or are you willing to live through the practices that make the product real?