Jordan Fliegel

Jordan Fliegel (born 1986, Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an American-Israeli entrepreneur and early-stage investor. He grew up in Cambridge, attended Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, and graduated from Bowdoin College with a double major in Government & Legal Studies and Philosophy, where he was a three-year starter and co-captain of the basketball team. He later earned an MBA from Tel Aviv University and played professional basketball in Israel for Hapoel Migdal Jerusalem and Hapoel Kfar Saba. He is the grandson of former professional basketball player Bernie Fliegel.

Fliegel is best known as the founder and CEO of CoachUp, a Boston-based platform connecting athletes with private coaches that raised roughly $14M in venture capital and counts NBA star Stephen Curry as a partner/investor; Fliegel remains its chairman. He was also co-CEO of Draft.com (DRAFT), a venture-backed daily fantasy sports company he helped build in New York, which was acquired by Paddy Power Betfair for $48M in 2017. Both companies went through Techstars Boston (Draft in 2010, CoachUp in 2012). He authored *Coaching Up! Inspiring Peak Performance When It Matters Most* (Wiley, 2016), with a foreword by Shane Battier.

On the investing side, Fliegel co-founded Founders First, a vertical-agnostic early-stage angel fund and syndicate, with Jeremy Levine. Through it he has backed 250–300+ startups since ~2013, including early positions in now-unicorns Carta and Ramp. From 2019 to 2024 he served as Managing Director of the Techstars Sports Accelerator (which he launched in Indianapolis in 2019) and the Techstars NYC Accelerator, running eight accelerator cohorts and making roughly 90+ additional investments during that period. He is currently CEO of Acquisition Lab, an investment firm that helps "acquisition entrepreneurs" buy small and mid-sized businesses, and has served on the board of Oyster Enterprises II Acquisition Corp (a Nasdaq-listed SPAC) and the Entrepreneurs Council of the Center for American Entrepreneurship.

His recognitions include Forbes and Inc. "30 Under 30," BBJ "40 Under 40," Inc. 5000, EY New England Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, and Sports Business Journal SportsTech Power Player.

• Founder-first, theme-agnostic: Describes his approach as "vertical agnostic and anti-thematic," prioritizing founder quality and partnership over any particular sector.
• In his own words: "I believe that entrepreneurship has proven to be [the] best way for ambitious people to create massive value for the world, at scale. And so, it's a great honor to be able to support founders along their journey."
• Stage: Pre-seed, seed, and Series A — comfortable coming in very early.
• Check size: Typically ~$25K–$100K initial angel checks, occasionally as low as ~$10K in oversubscribed rounds; larger via syndicate or accelerator vehicles.
• Sector strengths: Consumer internet, fintech, sports/entertainment tech, DTC/e-commerce, marketplaces, food & beverage, and wellness/fitness — though he explicitly bets on people across verticals.
• Value-add: Positions himself as a hands-on, "founder-first" partner leveraging his own operating experience as a two-time venture-backed founder with an exit.