ELV8 Inc

Cover Block

PUBLIC

Field	Value
Name	ELV8 Inc (operating as Scout)
Tagline	Interactive learning platform for business and finance; investment advisory and financial planning tools as Scout
Headquarters	New York City Metropolitan Area
Stage	Seed
Business Model	SaaS / SEC-registered investment adviser
Industry	Fintech
Technology	Software (Non-AI)
Geography	North America
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founders	Michael Haddix, Cindy Zeng
Funding Label	Seed (total disclosed approximately $2.6M)

Links

PUBLIC

• Website: https://www.scout-financial.com/
• App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scout-athlete-family-office/id1588111197

Executive Summary

PUBLIC

ELV8 Inc, doing business as Scout, is a New York-based fintech that has built an SEC-registered investment advisory and financial planning product aimed initially at college and professional athletes managing name, image, and likeness (NIL) earnings, sponsorship income, and longer-tail wealth questions [Business Insider, 2021] [Scout]. The company sits at an unusual intersection: it is described in one set of public sources as an interactive learning platform for business and finance [VC DATALAB], and in another as a thematic investing app for Gen Z that lets users buy baskets organized around cars, food, and video games [TechCrunch, 2022]. That dual framing reflects a product that began as consumer-themed investing and has since concentrated on the athlete family-office niche, where founder Michael Haddix Jr. has direct prior experience advising clients including Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, Devin Booker, and Aly Raisman through earlier roles at Goldman Sachs and Octagon [TechCrunch, 2022] [Entrepreneur, 2024]. Scout completed Techstars '23 and has raised approximately $2.6M in seed capital from Chingona Ventures, Reach Capital, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, and OnDeck [ZoomInfo] [PRNewswire]. The business model combines an investment adviser registration with consumer-facing financial planning tools, which gives Scout a regulated wedge into a customer base, college athletes, that most retail brokerages have not built distribution for. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the items most worth tracking are assets under management or advisement disclosures, retention among graduating athletes who transition to professional contracts, and any expansion of the thematic investing surface area beyond the athlete vertical.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Confirmed by TechCrunch, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and the company website; founding year and AUM are not publicly disclosed.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Value
Stage	Seed
Business Model	SaaS / Registered Investment Adviser
Industry / Vertical	Fintech, athlete wealth management, financial education
Technology Type	Software (Non-AI)
Geography	North America
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Funding	Approximately $2.6M disclosed seed

Company Overview

PUBLIC

ELV8 Inc was founded by Michael Haddix Jr. and Cindy Zeng and operates publicly under the consumer brand Scout [ZoomInfo] [Crunchbase]. The legal entity, ELV8 Inc, is the SEC-registered investment adviser of record, and the Scout brand is used for both the investment management and the financial planning surfaces of the product [Scout]. The company is headquartered in the New York City metropolitan area and went through the Techstars '23 cohort [ZoomInfo].

The founding story is closely tied to Haddix's own trajectory. A former Division I basketball player at Siena College, he moved into finance after graduation, working as an investment banker at Lazard on mergers and acquisitions and later as an athlete-focused financial advisor at Octagon, where his client list included Derrick White, Devin Booker, and Aly Raisman [Medium] [Entrepreneur, 2024]. Before launching Scout, Haddix founded Empower3d, a consultancy and finance education program for collegiate athletes [Times Union, 2022]. Scout productized that thesis: rather than advising one athlete at a time, the company built software to serve the broader cohort of NCAA athletes who, after the 2021 NIL rule change, suddenly had taxable income and no advisory infrastructure designed for them [Business Insider, 2021].

The earliest public version of Scout, covered by TechCrunch in September 2022, framed the product as a Gen Z thematic investing app that let users buy curated portfolios around interests like cars, food, and video games [TechCrunch, 2022]. By 2024, press coverage had shifted decisively toward the athlete family-office positioning, suggesting the company concentrated its resources on the niche where Haddix had the deepest distribution and trust [Entrepreneur, 2024] [Times Union, 2024]. The Scout iOS app is now listed as "Scout: Athlete Family Office" [App Store].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Confirmed by TechCrunch, Business Insider, Times Union, and the App Store listing; founding year and entity formation date are not publicly disclosed.

Product and Technology

MIXED

Scout's product, as described on the company website and in press, has two layers. The first is investment management and advisory, delivered through ELV8 Inc as an SEC-registered investment adviser; per the website disclosure, "investment management and advisory services, which are not FDIC insured, are provided by ELV8 Inc. ('Scout'), an SEC-registered investment adviser" [PUBLIC] [Scout]. The second layer is financial planning tools, also provided by the same legal entity [PUBLIC] [Scout]. The consumer surface is a mobile application listed in the Apple App Store as "Scout: Athlete Family Office" [PUBLIC] [App Store].

The original product wedge, as described in 2022 press, was thematic investing: Gen Z users could allocate capital to baskets organized around consumer interests rather than traditional sectors [PUBLIC] [TechCrunch, 2022]. Coverage in Business Insider in late 2021 described the platform as catering to "college athletes looking for help managing the money they make off sponsorship deals," with personal finance tooling specifically designed around NIL income, including bookkeeping, tax preparation prompts, and investing [PUBLIC] [Business Insider, 2021]. Subsequent press in 2024 reinforces that the athlete vertical is now the dominant go-to-market motion [PUBLIC] [Entrepreneur, 2024].

On the technology side, the company is categorized as "Software (Non-AI)" in the structured facts, and there is no public disclosure of the underlying stack, model usage, or proprietary data assets. The product is delivered through native mobile (iOS confirmed via the App Store listing) and a marketing/onboarding website at scout-financial.com [PUBLIC] [Scout] [App Store]. Because Scout is a regulated investment adviser, a meaningful portion of the engineering surface likely concerns custodial integrations, KYC/AML, and compliant recordkeeping (inferred from the SEC registration, not from job postings, which were not surfaced in the available research).

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Confirmed by the company website, App Store, TechCrunch, and Business Insider; technical architecture is not publicly disclosed.

Market Research and Opportunity

PUBLIC

Scout is operating in a market that effectively did not exist before July 2021, when the NCAA's interim NIL policy allowed college athletes to earn money from their name, image, and likeness for the first time. The relevant question for an investor is whether that policy change opened a durable financial-services category or a one-time gold rush.

The direct addressable population is well defined. The NCAA reports approximately 520,000 student-athletes across its three divisions, and a meaningful subset, concentrated in football, men's and women's basketball, and a handful of revenue-adjacent sports, are now generating NIL income that requires bookkeeping, tax planning, and (for the top tier) investment management. InvestmentNews has documented that traditional financial services firms are now actively building recruiting playbooks aimed at college athletics programs, signaling that incumbents view the category as worth pursuing [InvestmentNews]. Business Insider's 2021 coverage framed Scout as one of the earliest fintech entrants purpose-built for this cohort [Business Insider, 2021].

The adjacent and substitute markets are larger and better understood. Professional athlete wealth management is a long-established niche dominated by specialty arms of major banks and independent registered investment advisers; the Gen Z retail investing market, where Robinhood, Public, and SoFi compete, is the substitute on the consumer side. Scout's thematic investing origin [TechCrunch, 2022] sits in the Gen Z retail bucket, while its current athlete family-office positioning [App Store] [Entrepreneur, 2024] sits at the entry rung of a wealth-management ladder that historically begins only when an athlete signs a professional contract.

Regulatory and macro forces cut both ways. The continued evolution of NIL rules, including state-level legislation and the prospect of a federal framework, expands the pool of athletes who can transact and increases the complexity, which favors a software-led adviser. Conversely, any tightening of rules around minors, endorsement disclosures, or adviser marketing to college campuses would create friction. The SEC registration that ELV8 Inc already holds is a meaningful regulatory asset in that environment.

Cited Market Signal	Source
Financial services firms are building recruiting playbooks for college athletics	[InvestmentNews]
Scout positioned as early fintech entrant for college-athlete sponsorship income	[Business Insider, 2021]
Thematic investing originally framed as Gen Z product surface	[TechCrunch, 2022]

Analyst takeaway: the cited evidence supports the existence of a real, growing demand pocket created by NIL, but no third-party report in the surfaced research puts a dollar TAM on it; investors should treat the opportunity as directionally attractive and quantitatively unproven.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Confirmed by Business Insider, InvestmentNews, and TechCrunch; no named third-party TAM report is available.

Competitive Landscape

MIXED

Scout's competitive position is best understood not against a single named rival but against three concentric rings of alternatives, none of which were named explicitly in the available structured facts.

The first ring is the established athlete-advisory practices inside major wealth managers and sports agencies, the world Haddix himself came from at Octagon [PUBLIC] [Entrepreneur, 2024]. These competitors have deep relationships with professional athletes but historically have not served college athletes, because there was no income to manage; the InvestmentNews reporting indicates that is now changing as incumbents build college recruiting playbooks [PUBLIC] [InvestmentNews]. The second ring is consumer fintech: Robinhood, Public, SoFi, Acorns, and Step, several of which already target Gen Z and several of which offer custodial or teen accounts. The third ring is NIL-specific tooling, including platforms that handle deal marketplaces, contract management, and disbursement; these are adjacent rather than directly competitive but could expand into financial planning.

Where Scout has a defensible edge today, the founder's distribution and credibility inside the college and professional athlete community is the clearest asset. Haddix is a former Division I player who has personally advised Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, Devin Booker, and Aly Raisman [PUBLIC] [TechCrunch, 2022] [Entrepreneur, 2024], and his prior consultancy Empower3d ran finance education programs directly with collegiate teams [PUBLIC] [Times Union, 2022]. That kind of trust is hard for a generalist consumer fintech to manufacture, and it is the reason a sub-scale entrant can plausibly out-recruit an incumbent in the early innings. The SEC registration held by ELV8 Inc is a second, regulatory edge: it allows Scout to deliver advice, not just brokerage, which most Gen Z retail apps cannot legally do.

Where Scout is most exposed, the same incumbents that have been slow to chase college athletes have effectively unlimited capital and existing professional-athlete books of business that act as natural funnels. If a Morgan Stanley Sports & Entertainment, a UBS, or a major sports agency builds even a modest digital onboarding flow for college athletes, Scout's distribution advantage shrinks. On the consumer side, if Robinhood or Public ship a credible NIL income module, the thematic-investing surface that Scout debuted in 2022 [PUBLIC] [TechCrunch, 2022] becomes commoditized. Scout does not own a payments rail, a deal marketplace, or a custody license, all of which are channels a larger competitor could attack from.

The most plausible 18-month scenario: Scout wins if it converts its current college-athlete user base into a multi-year relationship that follows the top decile into professional contracts, locking in a recurring advisory fee on rising AUM. Scout loses if a major incumbent or a well-funded NIL marketplace bundles a free or low-cost financial planning surface and uses an existing athlete-services relationship to displace Scout before AUM compounds.

Data Accuracy: ORANGE -- No named competitors were surfaced in the structured facts; competitive analysis is constructed from category-level reporting in InvestmentNews, TechCrunch, and Business Insider.

Opportunity

PUBLIC

If Scout executes, the prize is becoming the default financial operating system for the generation of athletes who entered the NIL economy as teenagers and stay with the platform into their professional careers.

The headline opportunity. The single largest plausible outcome for Scout is to become the category-defining wealth platform for athletes, capturing them at the college NIL stage, when no incumbent is structurally set up to serve them, and retaining them as they graduate into professional contracts where lifetime advisory fees per client can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cited evidence makes that outcome reachable rather than aspirational for two reasons. First, the founder has personally advised a roster of top professional athletes including Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, Devin Booker, and Aly Raisman [TechCrunch, 2022] [Entrepreneur, 2024], which means the warm-introduction graph from college users into the professional tier already exists. Second, traditional financial-services firms are only now beginning to build college-athletics recruiting motions [InvestmentNews], leaving Scout a finite but real window to entrench itself before incumbents arrive at scale.

Growth scenarios.

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst	Why it's plausible
Athlete family office at scale	Scout becomes the default RIA for current and former NCAA athletes, charging an advisory fee on growing AUM as users sign pro contracts	A multi-team or conference-level partnership with athletic departments, building on the Empower3d model	Haddix already ran finance-education programs directly with collegiate teams as Empower3d [Times Union, 2022]
NIL income operating system	Scout broadens beyond investing into bookkeeping, tax, and disbursement for NIL deals, becoming the first stop for any athlete cashing a sponsorship check	A federal NIL framework or state-level standardization that creates demand for compliant tooling	Business Insider documented the original product wedge as managing sponsorship-deal income [Business Insider, 2021]
Themed investing for Gen Z, beyond athletes	The original thematic-investing surface is revived as a consumer onramp, using the athlete brand as marketing distribution	A high-profile athlete launching a co-branded thematic portfolio	TechCrunch documented the thematic-investing product debut and the Gen Z framing [TechCrunch, 2022]

What compounding looks like. The flywheel that matters most for Scout is the college-to-pro transition. A college athlete who opens a Scout account at age 19 and gets drafted at 22 represents a step-change in AUM per user, and that step-change is essentially free customer acquisition for the firm. Layered on top is a referral graph: athletes who trust Scout introduce teammates, and the founder's existing relationships with top professionals create a credibility halo that consumer fintechs cannot easily replicate. Each cohort of NCAA athletes that adopts Scout in college becomes a future cohort of professional clients, and each professional client validates the platform for the next college cohort. Press coverage already documents the founder using his Siena alumni network to run finance sessions with current Saints players [Times Union, 2022], which is the earliest visible evidence of that loop.

The size of the win. Public peers in the registered investment adviser category trade on AUM-based revenue multiples, and the largest specialty athlete advisory practices manage billions on behalf of professional clients. No surfaced source publishes Scout's AUM or revenue, so any valuation translation is purely scenario-based. If Scout were to credibly capture a low-single-digit percentage of the eventual professional careers of the top NCAA cohorts it serves, the resulting recurring advisory revenue would, on standard wealth-management economics, support a valuation multiples larger than the current seed round (scenario, not a forecast). The honest investor framing is that the upside case rests on retention through the college-to-pro transition, and there is no public data yet to confirm or deny that retention is happening.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Confirmed by TechCrunch, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, Times Union, and InvestmentNews; AUM, revenue, and retention data are not publicly disclosed.

Sources

PUBLIC

1. [ZoomInfo] ELV8 - Overview, News & Similar companies | https://www.zoominfo.com/c/elv8-inc/562434765

2. [VC DATALAB] ELV8 Inc - VC DATALAB profile | https://kando.tech/company/elv8-inc

3. [Scout] Scout company website | https://www.scout-financial.com/

4. [ZoomInfo] Scout - Overview, News & Similar companies | https://www.zoominfo.com/c/elv8-inc/566130300

5. [ZoomInfo] ELV8: Employee Directory | https://www.zoominfo.com/pic/elv8-inc/562434765

6. [TechCrunch, September 2022] This new app is helping Gen Z invest in cars, food, video games and other 'themes' | https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/28/fintech-startup-scout-is-a-new-app-that-aims-to-give-gen-zers-a-way-to-invest-in-themes-not-memes/

7. [Business Insider, November 2021] An upstart fintech is catering to college athletes looking for help managing the money they make off sponsorship deals | https://www.businessinsider.com/fintech-college-athletes-sponsorship-deals-personal-finance-app-scout-2021-11

8. [App Store] Scout: Athlete Family Office App | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scout-athlete-family-office/id1588111197

9. [Medium] Raise your game, become Empower3d | https://medium.com/@michaelhaddixjr/raise-your-game-become-empower3d-a9f7a0125415

10. [Times Union, 2022] Siena basketball alum Michael Haddix Jr. talks stock market with Saints | https://www.timesunion.com/sports/article/Siena-basketball-alum-Michael-Haddix-Jr-talks-17502369.php

11. [Entrepreneur, 2024] He's Helping College Athletes Navigate a Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry | https://www.entrepreneur.com/money-finance/money-tip-from-founder-helping-college-athletes-manage/487315

12. [InvestmentNews] Financial services enter recruiting playbook for college athletics | https://www.investmentnews.com/ria-news/financial-services-enter-recruiting-playbook-for-college-athletics/259898

13. [Times Union, 2024] 20 things about Michael Haddix, former Siena basketball standout | https://www.timesunion.com/kristi/article/20-things-michael-haddix-former-siena-basketball-19835790.php

14. [Times Union] Siena basketball alum helps athletes grow wealth with investment startup | https://www.timesunion.com/business/article/siena-basketball-alum-helps-athletes-grow-wealth-18112388.php