How the first-year Virginia men’s soccer player is balancing Division I athletics, academics and four tech startups
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
When Emiliano Mercenari arrived on Grounds a mere two months ago, he brought three very different identities with him — student, athlete and established entrepreneur.
At the University, these identities have converged. Mercenari is a first-year College student, an attacker and midfielder for the Virginia men’s soccer team and the founder and current operator of four startups — one of which he says currently sits at a $2 million valuation.
Between high school and his arrival in Charlottesville, Mercenari spent a gap year playing with Inter Miami CF, where he captained the CF U20 team, continuing his development within the club’s system. During his time there, he trained alongside soccer icon Lionel Messi, and said he even earned the nickname “Mexican Messi” for his reputation as a prolific goal scorer and assister.
But the soccer field was not the only place Mercenari was making a name for himself.
Demonstrating a vivacious entrepreneurial spirit from a young age, Mercenari’s first business venture began when he was just 11 years old. While he became completely enamored by a magician who visited his school, he noticed that his classmates seemed largely unimpressed. But where others saw a forgettable school performance, Mercenari saw a business opportunity.
“I was like, ‘Look, I think you’re a fantastic magician, but nobody gives a s–t about who you are,’” Mercenari said. “And so I told him, ‘Look, I’ll be your manager. I’ll get people to come watch you. I’ll post on social media for you, and I’ll grow your brand.’ And he paid me $40 a week. It was my first paycheck.”
Although he did not know it at the time, that first paycheck would mark the beginning of a lifelong passion for entrepreneurship for Mercenari.
He said that he believes the key to entrepreneurship lies in identifying problems — and then taking action to solve them.
“It’s [about] seeing what’s wrong with the world and how you can fix it. I have a million ideas a day,” Mercenari said. “[It] doesn’t mean I’m going to pursue all of them, but [I’ll] have an idea, and then realize, ‘Okay, I could fix this. I could make a better solution to it.’ And then it’s just about acting on it.”
And act on it he has.
Last March, he founded Mercenari Works, an app development studio made to help influencers monetize their audiences. Rather than relying solely on brand deals, influencers can use Mercenari Works to build apps around their individual niches, generating revenue directly from their audiences through a subscription-based model. Mercenari has also used the studio as a launching pad for his own ideas.
One of them is Buo, an AI-powered fitness platform tailored for college students that creates personalized meal plans and exercise regimens based on a user’s dining hall options, schedule, access to equipment and experience level. With Buo, Mercenari raised $50,000 at a $2 million valuation, garnered a waitlist of over 150 eager users and assembled a team of eight employees.
Aside from Buo, Mercenari has several other startups — Awaken, a faith-based alarm app, Betterself, a male-focused fitness app, and Cohort, a networking app.
These four different companies, each with its own purpose, now compete for the same finite resource — Mercenari’s time. And his time is already divided between practices, games, classes, studying, socializing and the responsibilities that come with being a first-year undergraduate student.
While he acknowledges the difficulty that accompanies juggling his responsibilities, Mercenari said that he sees each pursuit as fueling the other. He said he uses the lessons he learns on the soccer field to navigate the demands of college life and entrepreneurship.
“It’s hard to balance. Before this, I was at Inter Miami, playing with Messi, the greatest soccer player of all time,” Mercenari said. “And then on top of that, running four companies with employees who depend on you for food and for money. It’s rough to keep that balance, but I feel like soccer has always kept me very disciplined. I feel like that’s taught me to be who I am today.”
For Mercenari, striking this balance is not just a professional pursuit. He said he makes a conscious effort to make time for the people in his life, recognizing that success means little if it comes at the expense of the relationships that matter most.
“Even if you were to work your a– off, if you lose [your relationships] in the process, it would be for nothing,” Mercenari said. “Try to find that balance and make time for the important people in your life because without them, you’re nothing.”
That emphasis on people is central to how Mercenari approaches his life — on personal, entrepreneurial and athletic fronts.
For all of his ideas, he knows he cannot bring them to life alone — an approach shaped by his first job as an 11-year-old manager. Mercenari may have been the one who saw the magician’s potential, but he realized that he needed someone to perform, an audience to watch and a team to make the operation work.
He said that his role as the owner and operator of multiple startups is not necessarily to know everything — it is to recognize what he does not know and find the people who do. With the help of several angel investors, as well as a talented team of individuals whose experience fills the gaps in his own, Mercenari has been able to turn his ideas into action.
He has carried that philosophy all the way from Miami to Charlottesville, where he hopes to build a similar network of people who can challenge his ideas, contribute their own expertise and help turn his many visions into reality.
“That’s also one of the reasons I picked U.Va. — the people here are so intelligent,” Mercenari said. “And so I hope to find those people soon and network and continue growing my business with them. And I’m also looking forward to winning a national championship with the U.Va. men’s soccer team.”
