Rather than building another smart water bottle for a saturated market, a Tampa-based sports tech startup developed a universal sleeve that tracks athlete hydration by syncing with a mobile app.
The inspiration for syp, however, didn’t begin in a boardroom. It started with a medical cart on a soccer pitch.
Mathis Fürst Haugen arrived at the University of South Florida in 2022 to play soccer. Accustomed to the mild climate of his native Norway, the intense Florida heat took a silent toll on his body.
Midway through his freshman year, Haugen was carried off the field with a season-ending injury. Doctors later traced the injury to chronic dehydration.
“The hydration habits that I lived by for almost 20 years in Norway weren’t sufficient enough when I changed intensity and the climate,” Haugen said.
That painful lesson became the foundation for syp, a burgeoning Tampa-based sports tech. Haugen, an engineering major, realized that staff tracked sleep, training load and recovery, but fluid intake remained invisible.
Haugen eventually teamed up with Rima El Brouzi, who is now pursuing a master’s degree in computer science and served as student manager for the men’s soccer team. They later identified a critical missing link.
El Brouzi and Haugen were international students facing visa limitations and a crushing schedule. They enlisted former teammate and captain Nicolas Scargle as a managing partner to help launch the company and ease the operational burden.
Scargle, Haugen’s roommate for four years, also played professional soccer. He was a natural fit to oversee athlete programs and partnerships.
“They’re some of the hardest working people I know … so if they’re asking for my help, I knew this was very important to them,” Scargle said of the cofounders. “Now we’re trying to make something into a reality and fix a $10 million problem.”
The friends initially planned to create a proprietary smart water bottle, but quickly identified fatal flaws in that business model. Engineering bottles to satisfy diverse consumer aesthetic preferences was cost-prohibitive in a market already flooded with competing brands.
A solution
“We would have to force user behavior because people would have to go out of their way to stop using their favorite bottle and get ours,” El Brouzi said. “What if everybody gets to keep their own water bottle and we just make a device that attaches to the ones that already exist?”
The answer was an intelligent accessory: a universal, silicon smart sleeve that attaches to the base of any bottle. That would also avoid friction with collegiate sponsorships that mandate the exclusive use of branded bottles, Haugen noted.
After some prototyping trial and error, the entrepreneurs reverse-engineered the sleeve concept popularized by modern drinkware brands. They then condensed their 3D-printed scale technology into a sleek, attachable device.
While the hardware serves as the data collection point, syp’s core technological value lies in its software algorithms. The sleeve sensor measures liquid consumption by weight and syncs with an accompanying app.
By aggregating water intake data with physiological metrics, sleep patterns, local temperatures and workout intensity, the platform calculates a hydration baseline, El Brouzi explained. “We know where you live, we know what temperature you’re exposed to for how long, we know how you’re sleeping,” she said.
“So, we’re getting all of these other features that allow us to tell you if your need and hydration are going to increase or decrease.”
El Brouzi said the app, currently in beta testing, can also sync to popular wearable fitness devices. Coaches and trainers can access the platform’s dashboard and “get a breakdown of every single athlete.”
What’s next?
The trio credits Tampa Bay’s robust startup infrastructure for accelerating their growth. Support from the USF Nault Center for Entrepreneurship and Embarc collective has enabled them to position syp as a viable tech venture.
To date, syp has raised approximately $30,000 from local angel investors and $25,000 from non-dilutive pitch competitions. USF student-athletes are leading a pilot program.
“We have founding athletes already in place – they’re already onboarded with the app, giving us feedback,” Scargle said. “We have teams in place as well, like UCF men’s tennis”
Haugen hopes to raise over $500,000 through an upcoming Kickstarter campaign that syp plans to launch in early 2027. He also believes a cultural shift toward proactive hydration tracking is inevitable.
“We like to say that 10 years ago, nobody was tracking their sleep,” Haugen said. “Nobody is tracking their hydration, but in 10 years, everybody will be. I think we’re a little ahead of the curve.”
