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From Basketball Playbooks to Military Readiness: How Ethos Is Revolutionizing Training

Every entrepreneur has an origin story. But few begin with a basketball playbook and end up saving the Department of Defense millions of dollars.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Sasha Seymore, Co-Founder of Ethos, shared how his company transformed from a sports training tool into a defense technology powerhouse with over $34 million in funding. Their journey reveals valuable lessons for founders about recognizing opportunity across seemingly disconnected markets.

The Unexpected Spark

Great companies often begin by solving personal problems. For Sasha, that problem appeared in the form of a massive playbook when he walked onto the University of North Carolina basketball team.

“I got handed this kind of giant three-ring notebook and told like, ‘hey, go study and memorize this thing. This is going to be your playbook,'” Sasha recalls.

Rather than accepting the status quo, Sasha showed the notebook to his roommate Andrew, who was experimenting with active learning models as student body president. The two asked a pivotal question: What if they applied these more effective educational approaches to athletic training?

“Andrew and I said, ‘Well, what if we took that type of style of learning, built it into a software platform, and applied it to sort of my particular use case of learning a playbook in the athletics world?'” Sasha explains.

This question sparked what would become Ethos, an adaptive readiness platform that converts passive learning materials into interactive, engaging lessons with built-in analytics.

Finding Product-Market Fit in Unexpected Places

Starting with athletics, the platform quickly gained traction, expanding to approximately 50 programs including Michigan football and other elite teams. But the founders soon realized their solution could extend far beyond sports.

The key transition came through an unexpected personal connection: Sasha’s military service.

“Right around the same time that we started the company, I got a direct commission to do intelligence work for the Navy,” Sasha shares. “I kept just seeing different areas where a platform like ours could really be applied within the Department of Defense.”

This insight led them to Stanford’s “Hacking for Defense” course, where they were paired with Air Force representatives looking to revolutionize pilot training. This strategic decision accelerated their entry into the defense sector.

“Got to interview a hundred different folks across the Air Force on their biggest challenges [in] pilot training, and then basically reshifted the platform to fit what they were looking for,” says Sasha. “Went basically a month after the class ended, signed our first contract with the Air Force and then grew from there.”

When Success Doesn’t Equal Expansion

Many founders assume that proven results automatically lead to growth. Ethos discovered otherwise in the complex world of defense procurement.

In one particularly striking example, Ethos delivered exceptional results for a military training facility: “Within six months we had cut their failure rate at the schoolhouse in half and saved them over $2 million. Like Direct, they calculated $2 million in savings.”

Yet surprisingly, this success didn’t translate into immediate expansion.

“You’re like phenomenal, like clear $2 million. Of course they’re going to expand it from there,” Sasha remarks. “But we just didn’t understand what the ecosystem looked like to be able to actually grow and expand that contract.”

The Critical Discovery: Market-Specific Expertise

This challenge revealed a crucial insight that many venture-backed founders miss: technical innovation alone isn’t enough to succeed in complex markets. You need guides who understand the terrain.

“Probably one of the most successful things that we did was we found basically retired generals from those particular areas who said, ‘hey, I understand this ecosystem,'” Sasha explains. These advisors provided invaluable guidance: “‘Here’s the ecosystem, here’s who works in it, here’s the folks you need to talk to, and here’s the little quirks that you’re not going to understand that this is how you actually navigate it.'”

This strategy contrasted sharply with standard Silicon Valley approaches.

“Some folks come in with the thought of like, ‘oh, this is like the commercial space. So I will market to it in the same way that I might market to the commercial ecosystem,'” Sasha notes. “But like you can’t link to an ad a three star general, like that’s not going to work.”

Bridging Multiple Markets

Today, Ethos maintains a 70% Department of Defense and 30% commercial revenue split, with clients spanning from elite athletic programs to defense agencies to life sciences companies.

This multi-market presence provides stability and diverse growth opportunities, but Sasha emphasizes that each sector requires its own approach. Despite impressive credentials with championship sports teams and military training, commercial customers primarily want industry-specific validation.

“As much as it’s cool and interesting for your Novartis to hear about how cool and interesting it is, the work that you do with an NFL team or with the US Navy, ultimately the case study that resonates the most is like, ‘What are you doing with AbbVie? What are you doing with Regeneron?'” Sasha explains.

The Future Vision: Comprehensive Readiness Mapping

Looking forward, Ethos aims to build “the adaptive readiness platform of the future,” focused initially on the Department of Defense but with applications across sectors.

Sasha envisions a system that maps both required knowledge for specific roles and individual training status, automatically identifying and addressing gaps. He cites the Fitzgerald-McCain collision as an example where better training could have prevented disaster.

“There had been a change in the throttle, and they hadn’t been trained properly on how this throttle works,” Sasha recalls. “With Ethos, our vision is that you would have basically a knowledge map of what are all the skills and capabilities needed to be able to be the person who’s going to be able to run this particular ship… It would automatically be able to recognize that, build and create the training that’s needed, immediately send it to that person, and they would be automatically upskilled.”

Lessons for B2B Founders

Ethos’ journey offers several key lessons for founders building category-defining B2B companies:

See beyond obvious applications: The principles that make a solution effective in one domain often translate to others when properly adapted.

Leverage institutional programs: Educational partnerships like Stanford’s “Hacking for Defense” can provide direct access to potential customers and accelerate market entry.

Recognize when traditional marketing fails: Different markets require fundamentally different go-to-market approaches. In specialized sectors, credibility comes through demonstrated excellence and trusted intermediaries.

Balance innovation with inside knowledge: Breakthrough technology paired with domain expertise creates a powerful combination for navigating complex markets.

Maintain clear quantifiable impact: Ethos’ ability to demonstrate 50% reduction in failure rates and specific dollar savings provided concrete proof points that drove adoption.

As technology increasingly crosses industry boundaries, Ethos shows how founders can successfully navigate the transition between markets by adapting not just their product, but their entire approach to customer acquisition and expansion.