Built in the water.Designed for the deck.

Mark Spits grew up with chlorine in his hair and a pace clock in his head. By high school he was chasing cuts. His next stop was Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina (UNC), where he swam for the Tar Heels and finished as one of the top performers on the team, logging early mornings, double practices, and the quiet math of tenths of a second.

In the classroom he was just as disciplined. Mark earned a degree in finance from UNC, learning how money, risk, and clean books actually work. That mix of pool-deck grit and financial training later shaped how SwimFlow prices products, handles payouts, and keeps instructors in control of their revenue.

After college he competed as a professional freestyler and earned a real shot at the Olympics. He was training for Trials with the kind of focus that empties a life of everything except the next interval when a serious shoulder injury stopped him cold. Surgery, months of rehab, and the slow realization that the Olympic deck would not be his. The dream did not fade for lack of will. It ended because the body that carried him through UNC and the pro circuit finally said no.

That loss reshaped him. Standing on the other side of the injury, Mark learned what every elite athlete eventually learns: the difference between a dream and a podium is often measured in preparation, luck, and health you cannot control. He left the Olympic path without a Team USA berth, but with something else: deep respect for the coaches who build athletes when the cameras are not rolling, and for the fragile window every competitor is given.

With a finance degree in hand and a competitor's work ethic still intact, Mark took the markets next. He joined Goldman Sachs and rose as a hedge fund manager, living in the language of risk, discipline, and long-horizon bets. On the trading floor he learned how systems scale, how capital compounds, and how the best operators remove friction before it costs a client time or trust. Those years did not replace the pool. They taught him how to build something that could survive growth.

Even while markets filled his days, Mark never fully left coaching. Private lessons. Small groups. Weekend clinics. The pool still felt like home. The business did not. Parents texted at midnight. Spreadsheets broke. Payments vanished into Venmo threads. Double bookings happened on the one afternoon he finally had free. Great coaches were losing hours every week to busywork that had nothing to do with teaching a child to float, a junior to hold a line, or a student to hit a clean ball.

SwimFlow is Mark's answer for the water: software that feels native to swim instruction, clear booking links, fair packages, digital waivers, calendars that respect buffer time, and payouts that land without chasing people down. Custom work from his in-house programming team is included in the fixed monthly fee, because he knows real schools do not all run the same way.

The same chaos shows up on fairways and courts. Pros and academy coaches in other sports were drowning in the same texts, no-shows, and payment gaps. So Mark expanded the mission. Alongside SwimFlow he has built companion apps for golf and tennis, purpose-built for lesson booking, packages, and coach calendars in those worlds. The playbook is the same: keep the coach in the lesson, not in the inbox.

And he is not stopping at three sports. Mark and the team are already planning additional sports apps, using the same core platform so instructors in baseball, soccer, fitness, and beyond can get the same clean booking experience. One founder story. One engineering team. A growing family of products for people who teach for a living.

“The injury took the Olympics. Goldman taught me how systems scale. SwimFlow, golf, and tennis are how I give coaches their time back, and more sports are next.”

Mark Spits, Founder