Coachup - a platform to connect Coaches with Athletes

May 10, 2012 - PRLog -- Cambridge, MA : May 9, 2012 – CoachUp.com is pleased to announce the launch of our platform.  CoachUp is an online platform where registered coaches can increase their client list and potential athletes can schedule one on one coaching to achieve their full potential.  People can search by city and sport to find private coaches in their area, sort the available options, and use a credit card to book their coach through CoachUp. Founded by a former professional basketball player, Jordan Filegel, and Arian Radmand, an experienced software engineer.  The platform is designed to alleviate all the headaches associated with scheduling lessons and finding the right coach and fit.   

The majority of CoachUp’s clients are kids in grade school or high school, but CoachUp also has many clients who are young professionals or older adults as well.  CoachUp private coaches are high school or assistant college coaches, or former college or professional athletes. CoachUp private coaches are people who have a wealth of experience in their sport and want to help others learn the game. People interested in becoming a private coach on CoachUp are vetted to ensure the highest level of professionalism, including phone interviews, and a reference check. Furthermore, CoachUp private coaches are continuously vetted by community-generated reviews.  CoachUp helps private coaches by giving them a professional web presence, by bringing them new clients, and by providing admin support: payment processing, easy schedule, and review generation. 

Jordan admits that his success is owed greatly to the private coaching he had in high school and college.  In turn he wanted to pass on that knowledge, stay involved with the sport and give back to kids in Boston by becoming a private coach.  After earning an M.B.A. and working at Zintro, Inc. an online marketplace in the information sourcing space, Jordan realized that a similar model could be applied to the fragmented universe of sports private coaching, where there is tremendous pain on both sides of the marketplace.

In Jordan’s words:

My experience in basketball  -- the life lessons I’ve learned on and off the court, the friends I’ve made, the academic and professional doors that the game opened – helped define me as a person, and has been a continuous source of joy in my life. I founded CoachUp from my heart, with the simple idea that the world would be a better place if every person who has an athletic dream could receive the help they need to achieve their full potential. At CoachUp, we are working hard every day to make that vision a reality.”

Why is CoachUp better than the alternatives? 

For athletes (or the parents of young athletes), it is really hard to find a good private coach in their sport, in their area, at a price they can afford, at a time that works for them. After all, most private coaches don’t have websites.  Even if you can find a coach through a referral, it is very hard to compare that coach with others, even harder to verify the accuracy of that coach’s reviews (if they have any), and impossible to know if there may have been a closer, cheaper or better matched option elsewhere. Once you find a coach, it is hard to stay on top of your training - coaches lack automated email reminders and online payment processing, and have no easy way of tracking and sharing your progress. 

For coaches, it is expensive and hard to build a website and efficiently market their services, really hard to find new clients, and even harder to manage the ongoing relationship. Collecting payments in person is stressful - often clients don’t show up with the right amount of money, or coaches have to deposit a check, which requires a separate trip to the bank. More importantly, coaches bond with their young clients during training sessions, and find it very awkward to accept payment from a parent in front of a child after the session is complete. Paying in advance through CoachUp eliminates these concerns. Furthermore, CoachUp helps its private coaches source new clients, automate email reminders, and easily generate feedback from previous sessions. 

We believe that private coaching is the best way to improve in sports, and that every kid should have access to the kind of help that can enable them to achieve their full potential in sports. We also believe that the increased skill and confidence gained in sports from private coaching will lead to a far more enjoyable life-long relationship with that sport. Furthermore, CoachUp private coaches (all of whom were, at a minimum, former college athletes) can often serve as mentors to young athletes, and the values instilled in young athletes through private coaching spill over into all other aspects of a person’s life from the classroom, to the workplace. 

Our corporate office is based at Intrepid Labs, in the heart of the Cambridge, MA growing innovation and startup community.  We have over 100 private coaches in the greater Boston area, in multiple sports, and have plans to expand across the country.  For more information please visit our site or call contact Jordan Fliegel: j@coachup.com (617) 943-8750