Sergiu Celebidachi (MBA ’25), has been recognized as one of six Inno Under 25 honorees for 2025. The annual St. Louis Inno awards program for young entrepreneurs celebrates people early in their careers in innovation and entrepreneurship. Celebidachi’s startup, SPARC Sports, aims to democratize mental performance training by building a solution that is scalable, affordable, and available to every athlete. Last spring, SPARC won Disruptor Funding through the Skandalaris Venture Competition, then spent his summer working on the startup through the Skandalaris Launchpad accelerator program.
The following article was written by Samir Knox and published in St. Louis Inno on August 28, 2025.
Sergiu Celebidachi knows how hard it is for athletes to train their minds, alongside their commitment to training their bodies. He started developing a platform last year that’s intended to “democratize access to mental performance training by building a solution that is scalable, affordable, and available to every athlete.”
That’s what led him to start SPARC Sports, a firm that provides training modules for athletes to address the mental side of training.
“I got interested in this venture because I lived the problem firsthand. As a tennis player, I struggled immensely with the mental side of sport. The resources that could have helped me were often expensive, inaccessible, or stigmatized,” he said.
Celebidachi said in the next year, the firm is looking to take its accessible platform to more than 100 schools, starting with 20 this September. The firm’s website says it offers guided courses with videos, exercises and prompts developed by sports psychologists.
The technology is now launching with National Collegiate Athletics Association teams. SPARC has five employees and has raised $50,000 Celebidachi said.
What are some of your biggest accomplishments to date? Earning a scholarship to the MBA program at WashU. Building our first MVP (minimum viable product) and securing pilots with 20 teams across 15 schools. Winning the SVC Disruptor Award and placing 2nd in Poets & Quants’ Big IdeaBounce, amongst other competitions, to fund our MVP.
What are your plans for this business in the next year and onward? Our immediate goal is to launch our MVP this September with 20 universities, high schools, and academies. We’ll continue refining the product based on customer feedback to maximize utility for athletes and coaches. In 2026, we plan to scale to over 100 schools and academies and begin expanding into additional sports, since the mental performance challenges we’re solving are universal across athletics.
How do you feel about the broader startup community in STL? As founder and CEO, I’ve been taken aback by how supportive the St. Louis startup community has been. I’ve been fortunate to have the backing of the Skandalaris Center and WashU, and I’ve met wonderful founders — from AI to medtech —who have taken me under their wing.
Because St. Louis has a smaller entrepreneurship community compared to major cities, founders here go out of their way to connect with and support younger entrepreneurs like myself, and I plan to keep leaning on that community for advice as we grow.
What advice do you have for other young entrepreneurs? Start by looking at your own life and the problems you face, then think about solutions you’d be passionate about building. Talk to as many people as you can to validate whether others face the same problem. Customer discovery not only clarifies the problem but often guides you to the right solution. Test your hypotheses with low-fidelity prototypes, listen closely to your users, and let their feedback shape the product. Also, take the leap. We live in a unique time where advances in AI and digital tools allow one person to do the work of ten. It has never been easier to test ideas and build scrappy prototypes to see if your business is viable.
How has your experience as a student athlete informed your outlook as a businessperson? Is there anything people can learn from your experience as an athlete that you think translates to strong business leadership? My experience as a student-athlete has been the foundation of how I approach business. Competing in college tennis taught me discipline, resilience, and the ability to perform under pressure, skills that directly translate into entrepreneurship.
In sports, you learn quickly that talent alone isn’t enough; it’s about preparation, adapting to setbacks, and staying consistent even when results don’t come right away. In business, ideas are a dime a dozen; it’s all a matter of execution. That’s the exact same mindset needed to build a startup, where persistence and steady execution matter more than any single win or loss.
What people can learn from athletics is the value of embracing failure as feedback, the importance of routines in driving consistent performance, and the necessity of teamwork. Ultimately, the athlete’s mentality, resilience, focus, and commitment to long-term growth, is what I carry into every business challenge. I think business is the most competitive sport in the world.
Age: 24