How did you get started on your current business? (Longer answers welcome.)

CoachUp solves a pain point that I experienced first hand. When I was younger, I played sports that neither one of my parents knew much about (sailing and skiing). When I wanted to get serious and really start competing, it was obvious that practicing on my own and with my team was not nearly enough to get me to the next level, so they opened the phone book (there was no craigslist or other services we take for granted now) and found me a private coach.

The experience of working with a private coach over the course of a couple seasons fundamentally shaped my life and was the single biggest reason I decided to compete in college. After graduating, I met up with my co-founder who had a similar story of finding a private coach by chance, which ended up fundamentally shaping his life as well. Together, we knew we could build a better way for people to find reliable sports coaches, so we set out to build CoachUp.