June 8, 2024 • 45 mins
We explore the business of golf in this episode of the Accelerate Golf podcast, with a very informative conversation with Igor Vainshtein, an entrepreneur who transitioned from the tech world to the golf industry. Igor shares his story of founding and selling 24/7 Golf to GOLFTEC and his current role as the CEO of GolfTrak, a revolutionary launch monitor app available for free on the Apple App Store.
Igor discusses his accidental entry into the golf industry, his passion for the sport, and the series of entrepreneurial ventures that led him to success. Learn about the challenges he faced, the innovations he introduced, and the lessons he learned along the way. From setting up indoor golf centers in Melbourne to expanding into the U.S. market and beyond, Igor's story is one of grit, innovation, and a love for golf.
Tune in to hear insights on the current landscape of golf, the impact of technology on the sport, and valuable advice for aspiring golf entrepreneurs. Don't miss this engaging conversation that highlights the intersection of business and passion in the world of golf.
Connect with Igor on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/igorvainshtein/
The GolfTrak app is on the Apple App Store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/golftrak/id1528710964
Previous podcast episodes https://accelerategolf.com/podcast/
The podcast is presented by QSchool Sports https://qschoolsports.com/
Intro and outro music: “Silent Night” by Infraction Music.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Golf is just such a great industry and such a great sport.
And someone said to me early on, why would you start with any other sport when
you're going to end up with golf anyway?
And that really pushed me into golf. I do love it. And I thank the people.
Music.
(00:30):
Welcome to the Accelerate Golf Podcast, where we explore player improvement
and the business of golf through conversations.
I'm your host, Bikram Kapoor, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Igor Weinstein,
a golf entrepreneur who founded and sold 24-7 golf to GolfTech and is currently the CEO of GolfTrack,
(00:54):
a launch monitor app with the accuracy of high-end launch monitors that's available
on the Apple App Store for free.
Welcome, Igor. Thank you for having me.
So right off the bat, Igor, talk to us about this deal with GolfTech,
your passion, you know, which led you to actually start 24-7 golf.
(01:18):
Sure. The story is actually a bunch of coincidences that kind of happened,
and I keep joking about at it but it's actually true
that it's basically an accident i i ended
up in golf i'm a tech guy by trade you
know i've been in texas i was very young and i just
kind of accidentally fell in love with golf uh through a friend of mine damon
(01:40):
back in melbourne australia and i the story i kind of have to go back i have
to go back quite a number of years so just hang on with me because it's gonna
go back like 15 years you know so i long story short is i didn't really play
golf i played I, you know, in college,
I was like, you know, once every three, four months, I had a friend who played golf, Matt,
and, you know, he took me out, wasn't really that interested.
(02:01):
And when I was about 30, I was consulting, had already gone through various
entrepreneurial, you know, rollercoaster rides of both, you know, boom and serious bust.
My friend, Damon, was a member at this business at this indoor golf center called
Golf Tech Australia, which is completely unrelated to Golf Tech USA.
And that's kind of the funny part of the story that how it all kind of loops back in.
(02:24):
And he said, why don't you come get some lessons? He was quite good.
He was like an 8, 9 handicap at the time. And he's like, come get some lessons.
And so I went and I got some lessons and I just got addicted.
It must have been that one shot where I just absolutely striped his sweet spot.
And, you know, it was just, that was it. I was hooked.
And kind of turning a long story a little bit shorter.
(02:44):
We ended up buying that business at Golf Tech Australia and moving it to another
venue, six and a half thousand square feet in downtown Melbourne.
And that's when I kind of really got into golf.
And we had, you know, we had simulators, lessons and all that.
And then one day I had a phone call from the US from Joe Assel and Steve Barrelly,
his right-hand man at the time.
(03:05):
And they kind of said, kind of, who the hell are you? Why do you have our name?
I'm like, who the hell are you?
You know, I never heard of them. And then I Googled them and I'm like, oh, wow. Okay.
That's funny. you know, we, we try to merge the businesses.
We actually try to get a golf to come to Australia, but Australia is not the
most optimal place with capital raising, which is what we try to do.
So that kind of didn't work out, but we stayed friends.
(03:25):
And, you know, through my journey, I started 24 seven golf as a indoor unmanned,
like a golf gym, you know, those 24 hour gyms that were like booming in the,
you know, 15, 20 years ago.
So I'm like, well, why don't we do that for golf? And so I started that and first one did well,
I opened a second venue that flopped completely it was a disaster lost all my
(03:46):
money there and i had all this equipment i had to sell and i'm like hey you
know i put it on facebook marketplace and sold it and i know this is good this
is easy and obviously i'm compressing this all but basically i pivoted then to e-commerce,
and then i started manufacturing in china and then i you know expanded to the
u.s moved to the u.s and i kept in touch with with with golf tech and and i
(04:08):
was kind of pitching them you know to to sell my products.
And then one day when they announced they acquired SkyTrack,
which is a launch product in the market, probably heard about,
you know, they kind of called me and said, hey, you know, why don't instead
of selling your stuff, why don't we just buy a whole company?
And, you know, the rest is history, as they say.
And I'm still there, you know, and I'm with GoldTech right now.
(04:30):
And I have the app as a kind of a side hustle.
And yeah, that's kind of a compressing 15 years of history into like a couple of minutes.
Wow, that was actually quite a compression because I have so many questions which came to mind.
Well, we can unpack. We can go down rabbit holes, you know, as you please.
(04:50):
But it's just the thing I'll probably highlight there is, you know,
it's just you just never know when a conversation can lead you somewhere.
And, you know, 10 years after meeting Joe, Joe Assel, you know,
to get that phone call one day was pretty amazing.
And you just never know. I guess the lesson, don't build bridges.
That's right. That's right. Right. So let's put some dates to this journey of yours.
(05:13):
So when did you first acquire Golf Tech Australia or in Melbourne?
Right. So Golf Tech Australia, we bought it sort of end of 2010,
beginning of 2011, if I remember correctly.
I remember we opened officially June 2011.
10 simulator bays, a bunker, a massive putting green, all that.
So and then about 2013 is when I got a call from Joe Assel.
(05:37):
Then 2016 is when I kind of
I wanted to do my own thing and so I I kind of
sold out my share of my share of Gold Tech Australia and then
started this 24-7 golf brand as that indoor center and then about 2017 my first
venue did well probably in the first three four months I started to open my
(05:58):
second one within a year less than a year of that so about late 2016 early 2017
is when it It kind of fell over.
And then I pivoted to e-commerce.
Got it. Got it. And which venues were these?
Were these in Melbourne and like different localities in Melbourne?
Yeah. So the first one was like a little place.
It was near my house where we were living at the time in a small apartment building
(06:20):
with like a couple of retail stores on the ground floor.
And I had two bays. I just put in two simulator bays. You know,
it's quite tight just to test the concept. But it had street frontage and that helped.
My second venue was in downtown. So this was in suburbs, right,
in the suburbs of Melbourne.
And then my second place opened in downtown Melbourne, away from Golf Tech Australia,
(06:40):
because they didn't want us to compete in any way, because we're still friends,
and to this day we're still very good, close friends.
And they still open on Collins Street and doing great, very happy and proud of them.
So I had the other end of downtown, basically. But I opened it up two flights
of stairs, and that was a very bad mistake, because the rent was cheap.
But there's a reason it was cheap. So that one failed quite miserably.
(07:03):
Going back to GolfTech Australia, when you first acquired them,
who was providing the simulator technology?
This is what, 10, 15 years ago or so.
Was technology as prevalent within the golf industry as now?
Oh, it was completely different, actually.
And so the technology we used back then was a UK-based company called Sports Coach Systems.
(07:25):
Now, they're still around. Andy's the founder. He still runs it.
So he uses a camera system and infrared cameras, infrared.
Well, actually, back then it was halogen lights, then switched to infrared lights.
But basically, it's a camera-based system.
The cool thing about it was it would provide you club path because it was an overhead system.
Now, you know, how accurate it was, let's leave that conversation for another time.
(07:46):
But it worked and it had an interface that was, you know, a little bit 90s, but again, it worked.
And back then there wasn't many other products you could go with.
You know, there was either Foresight GC2, which was on the floor,
you know, next to the player, which wasn't ideal because we wanted overhead
for obvious reasons, the commercial venue.
And then there was TrackMan, but, you know, it was very expensive.
And there were others as well, which were even like $100,000 per bay.
(08:11):
I think a bad golf or full swing maybe was around then. I don't remember.
It was a long time ago. But it was very expensive.
And as we launched with that technology, it kind of did the job. It wasn't perfect.
But we ended up – I actually was then selling these for people's homes or other
businesses that wanted to start.
So we ended up opening or helping open rather maybe another 13,
(08:32):
14 venues around Australia.
Okay. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them survived. And then the pivot
to actually the e-commerce aspect of it, which led to 24-7 golf.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Sure. So again, kind of a series of accidents, but let me give you the contrasting
picture, which kind of led me to the conclusion.
(08:53):
So in my 24-7 golf venue, I was charging about $12.95 a week for unlimited practice.
You could come in and practice as much as you want. Now, initially I started with Trackman, but
we had a bit of a falling out and i actually called
joe then see good things we stayed friends and i said hey can
you have you got any second hand four sides you can sell me whatever he
said look we don't but there's this new company called sky
(09:15):
track i know the founder don thorpe so he's like i'll introduce you and so i
i called don ended up buying sky tricks i replaced track with sky track and
you know everyone was like are you gonna lose all your members because people
love you know track i lost two members out of several hundred so it wasn't a
big deal but you You know, Skytrak was a great product, still is a great product,
and it did the job just fine.
(09:36):
And the venue, so the 1295, the venue got maybe 120, 140 members, I can't remember now.
But what kept happening is it needed a lot of support.
People would like come in and they're like, oh, how do I, I mean,
people call the support by support number and go, how do I switch it on?
Like the thing has one button.
(09:57):
I mean, come on, man, one button.
So, you know, I even, I remember I even got this, like this little robot that you like stick on.
It's got this little, like a robotic, like finger that would switch it on.
So I could switch it on remotely because people wouldn't be able to switch it on.
It was, it was embarrassing to us, but it was a lot of work to kind of support.
When that second venue went out of business and I sold the SkyTrek systems with
(10:20):
the screens, I noticed that I wasn't getting any phone calls from the people
that paid me like four or $5,000 for this whole kind of setup.
And I'm like, wow, what a difference. When someone spends that kind of money,
they go to YouTube, they Google it, and they work it out.
Whereas when they're paying like $12 a week, they don't bother.
They just call the support number.
(10:42):
And I'm like, for this business to scale, I would need massive support and kind of make it foolproof.
And in the end, I'm like, oh, I could just sell it online and just kind of never hear from them again.
It was a pretty easy choice at the time. It's an interesting observation that
by targeting the higher end, you have less headaches because the higher end
customer is also a little bit different than, you know, the guy paying $1.95 a month.
(11:06):
It is. And it's also, they feel they've invested, you know, they feel like they
have made an investment, a co-investment into the idea of a golf simulator.
So, you know, for them to go and spend lots of money and then not learn how
to use it, then they would feel like they've wasted all this money.
Whereas at $12.95 they kind of didn't care and
that was you're right that's a really interesting contrast and i wouldn't call
(11:29):
it high end i would just say a level of investment that really makes them want
to get value out of that investment it's a good lesson in business you know
if you sell things too cheap you know give away things for free this you know
there's a plenty of advice about giving away things for free where people don't
really value it so they don't really invest
their own time or energy into it. I think it's valid.
(11:49):
So what led to you coming to the US then? Well, we had...
A significant advantage in Australia where before I started manufacturing in China,
the only place you could get, you know, simulator enclosures and mats,
not mats, there were some mats, but most of the components were in a Gulf simulator
(12:10):
from the US and it was very expensive. It cost you double to ship it into Australia.
So when I started manufacturing, bringing containers, it really grew the business,
grew the brand and we were quite dominant and the brand is still very dominant in Australia.
But, you know, the big dream was to come to the US, you know
the scale you know australia has like a million golfers at
best you know us has 45 50 million so
(12:32):
there's a you know slightly bigger market and i thought that there's an opportunity
to hit a price point to come in and and be a budget solution for the simulator
space and that's kind of the angle we we went and then also the other angle
i had was because i was doing manufacturing i wanted to be like a b2b seller
to others and so i i we had obviously this was during COVID.
And again, during COVID, some businesses obviously suffered.
(12:55):
Golf Simulator was not one of those businesses. It was booming like crazy.
And our business grew like 6X, 8X, I can't remember, a lot.
And once we were still in lockdown in Melbourne, we couldn't leave.
I mean, we couldn't go more than three miles outside the radius of a house and
only one person, crazy Crazy times, right?
(13:16):
But from my house, I opened a 3PL logistics warehouse in the US,
shipped some containers and started selling.
And then when the lockdown finished, end of 21, basically first flight out,
moved myself and then the family a couple of weeks later to Dallas and got a
warehouse here and grew that.
We also opened actually in Europe with a JV partner over in Luxembourg.
(13:39):
And yeah, then we made a bit of a name for ourselves in more of like a B2B and
some B2Cs as well, but we were really both.
And when was that actual transaction with GolfTech?
So that was, we actually signed, penned the deal at the dinner before the PGA show started last year.
(14:00):
So about 15 months ago.
Okay. So January 2023.
Yeah, that's it. That's it. Wow. And can you share any numbers with the audience?
Unfortunately, I cannot. I cannot, but it was, you know, the deal was structured
in a way where we both took on risk and took on the reward.
(14:20):
So it wasn't, you know, a lot of people, I get this question a bit,
and a lot of people think that, you know, a sale, you kind of,
you know, you get a check, you deposit it, you buy a private jet and you,
you know, fly off into the sunset.
It's not really how most transactions work. You know, you got to stay on,
you got to help grow the business and which is what I'm doing.
And, you know, it's doing fantastically well, but, you know,
because I was still quite a small business, especially on the US scale,
(14:43):
the idea was to how do we structure it that we both share in the upside without,
you know, GolfTech taking a lot of risk.
And so, you know, it took a few swings and roundabouts and maybe four months of negotiation.
But once we settled on the principles, it was a fairly easy thing to just go
through due diligence and go through all those things.
I also have a patent on the enclosure that I designed. So that was part of the
(15:05):
deal. And that was a really unique thing to have in the space.
And so for anyone who's listening, who's thinking about anything like that,
it's really great to have a defendable position.
It creates a lot of value in your business if you have something like a patent
or a really valuable trademark or anything like that. So that really helped the conversation.
(15:27):
And there's a multi-year deal to continue growing the business together.
Standing now at this point in time, you are with GolfTech.
You obviously were very successful. You learned quite a bit along the journey.
So tell us about your day-to-day with trying to grow 24-7 golf as a partner of GolfTech.
(15:48):
So most of the growth, and you would have maybe seen this, obviously SkyTrackGolf.com
is one of the main channels, direct-to-consumers, and there's a lot of studios now for sale.
So the idea was, the reason for the transaction was when GolfTech bought SkyTrack,
they had kind of the right thinking.
They said, look, if you're buying a golf launch motor, you need something to
(16:11):
hit the ball into and something to hit the ball off. off, you know,
you're not just going to buy a thing that tracks the ball, especially SkyTrek's indoor unit.
But even with the outdoor units, you know, with FlightScope,
for example, most people still use it indoors.
And so the idea was how do we create an end-to-end solution for the customer?
And that's why they reached out to me because they were looking at it from that
(16:31):
point of view as the end-to-end solution to the customer, which I think was
absolutely the right way to look at it.
I think we've really, I think the whole market has moved away from just selling
a box that tracks which has been, you know, tradition with like a Trackbunner or a Foresight unit.
And now people are really buying the whole solution.
And so that was part of the deal. And we also pushed into big box.
(16:53):
So, you know, Walmart or Sam's Club and, you know, PGA Superstore and Shields,
you know, Second Swing, they're all selling these studios that we make.
And that was probably the biggest part of sort of the mutual growth that we set out to achieve.
And then the other part of the growth that I take care of is the international market.
(17:14):
So really trying to grow the whole golf simulator space internationally.
There's plenty of, I mean, America does spend, you know.
I think there's 50% or 55% of golfers in the world are in the U.S.,
but 70% of the expenditure on golf is in the U.S.
So the international market is not as big, but it's still a great place for
(17:36):
growth, and it's very developing, so there's going to have more growth in the future.
Got it. And what's the price point of the studio solution currently?
So it's really around sort of between $5,000 and $7,000 for kind of everything,
everything you need, meaning projector, mat, putting mat, everything.
So it's become, like I told you before, back in 2011, it was $100,000, but 2013 it was $50,000.
(18:00):
Then it was $20,000, now it's $5,000 to $6,000. Now there's other products that are even cheaper.
There's a couple of, Garmin's been very successful at a $600 unit itself, et cetera.
So there's really now a spectrum of cost and accuracy and what people want to
get out of it. So depending on how much of an avid golfer you are versus a casual golfer.
(18:22):
So I actually wanted to explore the lower end in terms of price point as well.
But before we go there, talk to us a little bit about the international market.
Because, you know, for example, Asia, Japan, Korea, you know,
there's a lot of love for golf there.
And then Southeast Asia, India, where it's very densely populated,
(18:43):
land is very expensive, kind of lends
itself to a concept conceptually that simulators would
be a would be in demand out there i
mean is that true it's a good question the
there's definitely been a growth there not
as so i remember for the first six seven
years ago maybe there was a big article whether for the first time in
(19:05):
south korea there were there was more golf played
on what they call screen golf right indoor golf then outdoor golf
and i would imagine now u.s is
quite up to that by the way i don't know if you saw the ngf report i think
last year in january said the same thing about the u.s
so there's so much more off off course golf being played japan
obviously is a very mature golf market it's a very high-end market
(19:26):
because there's so much there's not much land so the you know the
cost of golf is quite high same with south korea
i've actually played golf in india i played at puna puna
golf club which is like 120 year old you know
colonial golf club and I played around Belgium as well
I have played a lot around Asia I love playing golf in Asia it's the course
is a very different than unique and I played in Brunei anyway I digress but
(19:50):
I think there's a there is a different interest in simulator golf in in Asia
that I've seen it's not so much the.
Of the fun sort of practice that you see like in career or like people playing full rounds,
obviously as you know the weather you know gets very hot and humid
to be outdoors so i think practicing outdoors in asia is quite at least for
(20:13):
me you know quite challenging you know you know within four minutes i'm sweating
like like i've never sweat in my life but i think there is a growing market
and it's still in the sort of the high-end market right it's there's still a
lot you Golf is still a very high-end sport.
And as it starts to move into the wider population, to more the middle class
of Asia, I think that's when it'll truly start to grow.
(20:36):
But that's where you want to be there before that happens so that you build
a name for yourself, you build a brand and a footprint so people can automatically
think of you when they think of an affordable home simulator solution.
And who are your competitors in the US and even in the international market?
So there's kind of two, there's other launch model companies, of course.
(20:58):
So, you know, Skytrak has competitors, obviously like Flightscope,
you know, Bushnell slash Foresight, you know, GC3 or Bushnell LaunchPro.
There, you know, there's overhead units like Unicor and a couple others, Trackman, of course.
So there's a couple of those names and there's Garmin and Rapsodo that have
the lower end price point units.
(21:19):
So from that point of view, there's the simulator companies.
And then there's also other companies that make studios, you know,
so like Indogold here in Dallas as well.
Companies like that are competitors for the whole solution. And they're US-based.
It's more segmented in Europe and Asia. So you don't really have competitors
(21:42):
in Asia, for example, talking about internationally, right? It's just very segmented for now.
But I think it's going to end up with kind of a couple of big players that will
kind of take on the market more holistically.
And now, folks, I wanted to mention that this show is brought to you by QSchoolSports,
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(22:04):
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So now, just segwaying into the launch monitor concept,
where now, as you were saying, Garmin has,
(22:25):
let's say, a $600 unit, and you've launched Golf Track, and that conceptually
is a zero-cost unit, because now you can actually run it off your phone. So talk to us about that.
Yeah, sure. Well, again, you're going to laugh, right? Again, a complete accident.
So when i had my indoor center 24
7 golf in the first one right the two bay.
(22:47):
Center when i switched to sky track
the a lot of my customers wanted to
get a video replay of their swings but the
only product that really was available at the time was called swing catalyst it's
still around great product it was way too expensive for me i couldn't afford
it and i went to
a developer i bought a a couple of usb cameras right
(23:09):
down the line front on i went to a developer i said look could you could
you build me a little software that kind of records it and it's going to sync with sky tracks
it kind of backtracks and kind of
syncs the shot with the video right like a you know it's kind
of available in many software now and we
built that and then i was looking at the cameras i'm like
yeah these cameras are you know they're okay but not you
(23:30):
know not really what i'd like and i had a samsung s9
at the time right this is how old this thing is right okay so
this idea i had a s9 and i'm and i had
another one i think an s8 like the previous version and i'm
like the cameras and this is pretty good so i
replaced the usb cameras with phones and
i asked my developer can you write a little stuff that'll use
(23:51):
the phones as the cameras and we did and then
i'm as i'm watching these videos you know as i'm doing testing i'm like the
ball is pretty clear here on these phones i wonder if we could track the ball
with a phone and seven and a half years later i can tell you that yes we can
and so obviously it's camera-based technology but.
(24:16):
Did you have to solve like a deep science problem to to make it reliable and
a lot of a lot of deep science problems i mean there's there's a couple of factors
at play here so obviously the cameras And from the Samsung S9 to the iPhone,
whatever is the new one, 15, 16, I lose track, right?
We also switched to iOS only for now. We will get back to Android one day.
(24:37):
It's just iOS is more stable in terms of the cameras that you have access to and the SDK and all that.
There's a lot more variability with Android. You know, you've got Pixel,
you've got Samsung, you've got Huawei, et cetera. So...
There is the concept of cracking the ball and figuring what is a ball and what is not a ball.
And there's a reason why most launch monitors that are camera-based,
(25:01):
sorry, not most, all of the launch monitors that are camera-based,
they use infrared cameras.
So a white ball or any ball, when you do a flash of an infrared flash,
which a human eye can't see, right, but it lights up the ball really clearly.
And that's how a Foresight unit works, that's how SkyTrack works,
et cetera, or the overhead units, they all use infrared.
(25:21):
And so it's kind of easy to tell the white pixel of the, you know,
the ball as the ball moves in the air.
With a phone, you don't get that. You have the RGB camera, pretty standard camera.
You have a set exposure and, you know, shutter speed and all of those kind of
factors. So you don't really have a lot of flexibility in terms of the camera.
You know, you get what you get and you've got to make use of it.
(25:42):
And so our kind of secret sauce has been developing the, and it is AI models.
You know, it's a computer vision AI models.
That basically figure out what is the ball what is not a ball and what is a
club and what is not a club you know and when the club hits the ball and when
it doesn't hit and all those kind of things.
And the biggest complexity that comes from it, and people might be surprised
(26:03):
to hear this if they're used to the traditional camera-based launch monitors,
to make it work in not one venue,
not 10, but like 10,000, 100,000 different backyards or garages or living rooms
or whatever, that's what's really difficult.
So it's making it work across multiple environments has taken years and years of work and capturing.
(26:28):
Hundreds of thousands of frames of shots and then processing them and using
deep learning models and computer vision models to filter out the noise and
really be able to track the ball effectively.
Now, if you think about it, the little ball with a decent drive is going 180 miles an hour.
Right. Right. It's pretty hard to track that over.
(26:50):
And phone cameras are developed for certain photography, right?
They're developed to be able to, you know, sort of 10 to 15 feet is ideal.
You know, they're not really, you know, long lens kind of thing.
But also, if you want to use it indoors, you need to be able to see the ball
flying, you know, in less than 10 feet and be able to calculate all that data.
Right, right, right. And which comes to my next question, what kind of data
(27:14):
do you get out of your golf track app? Is it speed rate, angles and all that?
Yeah, so we measure, so I'll break it down to two things, right?
And this is important for all launch monitors.
You got to know what a launch monitor measures and what it calculates, right?
I mean, everything, even if something is measured, it's still calculated.
But what I'm talking about calculated is like, it's deduced from the things that you did measure.
(27:36):
So for example, we measure ball speed.
We measure horizontal launch angle, vertical launch angle. We also measure the
club path, right? whether you're in to out, square out to in,
to get the shape of the shot. That's a determining factor.
From that data, plus also the input of what club you're actually using,
we have models, so AI models, that...
(27:58):
Calculate things like backspin spin axis
so the shape of the shot you know distance carry
all those kind of things right you know even club
path face angle all of those we don't we don't
report all of them we try to really simplify it when we present
it to the user on the phone but that's you know
the calculated part of the of the launch water but the measurement is
(28:19):
those key factors which is you know ball speed and
the azimuth so the horizontal vertical launch jingles and
where is the camera placed during the swing
so it's on a small tripod you know about six
inches off the ground about a driver length away
from the ball right looking down the line so you
kind of looking so you know the app has a little line like a
(28:40):
red line in the middle of the screen you line that up to your target and that's
how you know kind of that's your target and and it sits and
it sits a driver length away near the ground because obviously even with
a driver you cannot not hit the phone because of
the arc right you never you're always a foot away from
the phone even though you know it may feel a little
bit close but you'd never hit it and some
(29:01):
there's some other apps out there but you know that have different
locations where you know kind of makes you a bit nervous to have a phone there
so that's another thing that we've kind of made a conscious decision is we wanted
to make it very easy for people wanted to kind of not be conscious because i'm
sure you know this if you're conscious of something in your swing you're going
to shank it you know, eight out of 10 times.
(29:22):
So we don't want you to be, you know, thinking about, am I going to connect
with the ball and then the phone as I swing this driver? So yeah.
Now, what you do is your software, is it available, let's say on the app store
and then you download the software and is there a monthly subscription?
No, so at the moment it's free. We're still kind of in a very open beta version.
(29:45):
So we want people to use it. We want to see how they use it.
We want to build a community out of it and really gather more data so we can
make it more and more accurate.
And, but, but if you, and it gives you in terms of the, the free version, right?
You use it, you get your data, you get for the last shot. You can also listen to three AirPods.
We also have a watch app that shows you that, you know, you can control through
(30:07):
the, through the Apple watch if you have that.
And if you want to play simulator golf, which is something I didn't mention before.
So we've integrated with, you
know, E6 connect, which allows you to play simulator golf or with GS pro.
We've also built a little connect with you can
play it with pga 2k 21 and 23
soon we're having a few challenges with 23 for
(30:29):
some reason but we'll fix that and then you know we hope to release ea sports
pga tour connector as well which basically is like a little app that sits on
your computer that converts the the shot you hit on on golf track to like keyboard
and mouse swings and allows you
to play the non-simulator version you can just buy for 20 30 bucks on on
steam or whatever right in esports and we
(30:51):
wanted to make you know my whole vision is to make it very accessible right
so so if you can be playing you know and it might not be as realistic as
playing you know the simulator version like e6 or gs pro but it'll still be
a lot of fun and that's kind of the point is like our vision is fun we don't
want you to be obsessing over your backspin or you know ball speed it's a different
you know we'll probably talk a little bit about it but there's i i see a big
(31:12):
difference between sort of casual you know non-golf or like the top
golf customer versus like an avid golfer that is more like a SkyTrack, FlightScope customer?
In my mind, you know, to simplify this, you need data to train the model.
And the more golfers you have in different conditions, the better your model
(31:32):
is going to get over time.
So it kind of makes sense to offer the app for free because then,
you know, there's no barrier to somebody downloading this app and actually starting to use it.
And then on the monetization aspect, that the ability to use this along with
the simulator could be an area you could monetize.
(31:52):
It is, and that's actually the one that we are. And I'm sorry,
I kind of didn't finish my trail off the hook there.
But yes, so that's what we charge, I think, $12 a month or $100 a year for the cheapest.
And it goes up to like $299 a year for like a 27-course pack with ECX or something
similar for the GS Pro, which gives you a few hundred golf courses.
So yes, that is how we monetize, because we have a deal with those companies
(32:16):
and we share in the revenue.
But at the moment, the goal is definitely to get as many users.
I mean, we've had around 20,000 downloads so far.
I'd love to get it to 100,000 in the next 12 months, let's say. And you're right.
That's the cool thing about, I mean, ChatGPT has taught us this, right?
It educated the market where the more data you have, the more accurate,
(32:39):
the better you get. And the funny thing is the improvement is exponential.
It's not linear. It's getting better because we've been developing for seven
and a half, almost eight years, I think.
The improvement, the speed at which we're improving our models right now is even surprising me.
And I'm kind of the eternal optimist and see behind the curtains.
(33:01):
But we have certain sessions where
we're within 3% of a $20,000 to $40,000 simulator just using a phone.
And and you know in fact last week i was in orlando and i was uh i was showing
it to david ledbetter in on a golf zone you know simulator and it was pretty
(33:21):
amazing to see how close the numbers were you know and one's like 50 000 one
is free so that was that was pretty special,
so for our listeners out there you know we'll we'll share a link in the description
of the podcast where you were saying that this is now available on the apple
app store yeah you can You can download it for free and you can use it.
(33:42):
And please, there's two.
The only thing I ask is there are two. There's a guided setup and there's a quick setup.
If it's your first time using it, please go through the guided setup.
It'll help you have a great experience.
That's one of the biggest challenges we have is, you know, because it's available to everyone.
And remember that whole thing earlier I was telling you about how when you give
something for free, people don't fully invest the same as if they paid $5,000.
(34:04):
Now, I want to give it away. You know, I want people to use it.
But to get a great experience out of it, they need to kind of go through the
little wizard that takes them through how to set it up and everything.
And we're always working to make it as easy as possible. But this is where building
a community and listening to the customer is really helping us and make it better and better.
And I think we've got some improvements coming in the next month or so where it'll be even easier.
(34:27):
But, yeah, that's the only thing I ask is just take the guided setup.
So now let's discuss the current landscape in golf.
After the pandemic or during the pandemic, a lot of people picked up golf for the first time.
And there's a lot of spending power when you start enjoying golf.
The sky's the limit. I mean, you could spend thousands and thousands of dollars
(34:47):
just on the equipment and then on instruction and so on.
From where you sit as an entrepreneur and also in your seat at GolfTech,
which is a huge chain of golf instruction offerings, where do you see golf going from here?
That's a good question. Very open-ended question.
(35:09):
I think there's a couple of interesting things happening in the space. Sure.
The biggest distinction I like to talk about when it comes to,
especially the growth post-COVID, with all these new entrants into the golf
world or the golf market, they are not single-digit handicap players.
I think people need to really realize that. I know it sounds so obvious,
(35:30):
but I think a lot of people, when they think of people entering golf,
they think about all the advanced things that they could market to them or sell them, et cetera.
But these are people who like never hit a golf club. And these are also people,
and this is where Topgolf, I think, has done an amazing job.
I mean, what an amazing business where they made it fun for people that have
(35:51):
no interest in being on a golf course, right? They made it enjoyable.
And I think that sort of segment of the market, this new wave of golfers is
coming in through that avenue where they're having so much fun with it.
We've got to make sure that it stays fun because if you go from Topgolf and
(36:12):
you go onto a golf course and they say, you know, you have to tuck your shirt
in, you have to wear white socks, not, you know, black socks or gray socks.
You know, these are some of the rules of country clubs, right?
For someone who's not used to it, they'll be like, I'm not doing this.
I'll go back to Topgolf. And you've ruined that initial experience.
So I think we in the industry have to think about from those people's point
(36:33):
of view, not from a traditional point of view that we're used to.
And I think that'll help us grow the game and get people more,
you know, get them to enjoy golf in their way, how they want to do it.
The other thing, you know, and GolfTech is a market leader and has been for
many decades, really, in terms of technology, as well as other launch product companies.
And, you know, Garmin's a great example as well.
(36:54):
Technology is just a critical part of golf now.
I don't know any coach that doesn't use some type of technology.
Even if they're using their iPhone to video your swing and then just,
you know, do like a voiceover, they're still using technology.
And there's platforms like Coach Now, et cetera, that allow coaches to do that, right?
So I think technology is absolutely critical and how you use technology is going
(37:17):
to be more and more critical.
And this is where I see Golf Track playing is that Topgolf customer was just
talking about before that wants to enjoy.
I think I'd like to see people use Golf Track and the phone as a way for them
to have whatever experience they want to have.
And golf is like a byproduct. And a portion of that
market is going to continue on the
(37:39):
journey from like a non-golfer to a a casual golfer to an avid golfer and by
the time they get to avid golfer i think that's when they start investing in
custom fitting and launch monitors like you know like in like like a sky track
or etc and you know building out a studio but the feedback we get from our customers like.
You know some of them say i've always wanted
(38:01):
my golf simulator but i just can't justify because i don't play
enough and i'm not good enough i can't justify investing three
four five thousand on this so this is
a way for them to get get a toe in the water at
a very low risk and i think there's gonna be a progression but the masses are
gonna be on the you know the the the very low end there's actually one of my
(38:24):
favorite books there's a i forget the guy's name an indian entrepreneur he wrote
a book called the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid right and his whole thing is if you
sell something to for one dollar to a billion people you'll
have a very good business and i i really like the philosophy i
mean there's some people that go for the high end like if you think about trackman
as a brand if you think about foresight like the quad and the gc3 like it's
(38:46):
or full swing of their high-end brands right and and i don't think they've they
see themselves you know coming down you know to to like a garmin level right
i mean this is why like you know Toyota has,
was it Lexus and Toyota?
This is not the first time it's happened in the market, right? This is pretty common.
(39:08):
And so I like the bottom of the pyramid, not the tip of the pyramid.
That's very insightful.
And as we kind of wind down our conversation, you probably have met many,
many golf entrepreneurs in your journey and also in your seat at Golf Tech.
(39:28):
Many of them start off dreaming big and never quite make it.
What do you think is that essential element which is missing in people who try
and fail in golf entrepreneurship versus the people who succeed?
I think there is no, I mean, firstly, I'll say there's no one thing.
It could be a myriad of things, but I know people don't like hearing that.
(39:51):
I didn't like hearing that myself when it was, when someone would say it to me.
So, so there are a couple of things, or one of the main, I would say is doesn't
apply to golf entrepreneurship, but it applies to any entrepreneurship is a
grit, which is just, just keep going.
You know, I've, I've been nearly bankrupt so many times.
I, I joke, you know, I've been to rock bottom so many times I have a membership
(40:11):
card and, And, but it's kind of, it's, it's who I am. It's, it's what I wanted to do.
And, and I actually consider myself so lucky that I'm in golf because I fell in love with golf.
And I think it was Steve Jobs actually said this on stage once he said,
someone asked him, you know, what makes you keep going?
And he said, because I am slightly insane because sane people would stop.
(40:32):
They would give up. They would move on to something else.
But he goes, because I'm slightly insane and I believe so much in,
in what I'm doing and And I love what I'm doing, that I will pursue it no matter what.
And I feel like that's kind of me.
I should have walked away. I had a very successful IT career.
I could have been a CTO at Salesforce or something, a very high-end C-level job or whatever.
(41:00):
But that's not what brings me happiness.
And it's not the example I want to set for my kids. kids
i i think steve galloway had a really good quote about that only rich people
tell you to pursue your passion because once they've made the richness you know
they can pursue their passion right i think he says pursue what you're good
(41:22):
at figure out what you're good at and pursue that.
So i think if you figure out what you're good at and if you're lucky enough
that you actually truly enjoy i mean if you're gonna be good at something that
you hate you're never gonna going to succeed.
I had that when I had my, I had a consulting company, IT consulting company,
and I was very good at it, but I hated every day of it. And in the end it failed.
(41:42):
So I would say if, if you get to a point where you like in the golf and you
love golf and you have a successful business, you are so, so,
so, so lucky, you know, count your blessings.
But even if you don't do something you truly love, love being good at something
and pursue Pursue that until you succeed because the reality is I think most
(42:03):
people, they give up. They give up too early.
Last week, I was at a presentation. I was chatting to Kevin Harrington,
the original shark from Shark Tank.
He loves his golf. And he started one of his little presentations.
He said, I have started, I think he said 1,000 businesses and 700 of them failed.
(42:26):
But no one says, oh, hey, there's the guy that failed 700 times.
They see a guy with, you know, whatever he's worth and all the success.
And, you know, this is where most people, when they read these books or listen
to videos of successful people, they think they succeed on the first go.
There are very few people that, you know, it happens to them. It absolutely does.
(42:47):
But it's a tiny, tiny little minority and you don't learn much from it.
You learn from the failures.
So I would say, you know, fail fast, embrace it. do something you're good at
and if you're lucky enough to do something that you love as well.
You've hit the jackpot that's great advice
and i love that that membership at the
rock bottom golf club yeah exactly
(43:09):
yeah well you know as we
end any other topics you would like to
speak about anything we missed no i
think i mean there's so much to unpack and you know would love
to chat out again i think golf is
just such a great industry and such
a great sport and someone said to
me early on why would you start with any other sport when you're going to
(43:32):
end up with golf anyway and that really pushed me into
golf i do i do love it and i think for
people that want to pursue golf as
a business just have to find your
niche and and find it the other thing actually one more
thing i will say about success you know that that previous question you
asked is you know don't find don't
(43:53):
get a solution and look for a problem right don't
be a solution looking for a problem find a problem that you
want to solve that's how you build a successful business whether it's in golf
or anything else but especially in golf because people get excited about their
ideas about their shiny toy and they fall in love with their own idea and they
forget to ask the very critical question does this solve an actual problem that's out in the market it.
(44:17):
That's the only thing I would say. That's kind of the last piece of advice.
Well, thank you, Igor, for making the time. Pleasure speaking with you.
Thank you so much for having me. And ladies and gentlemen, that is a wrap for
today. Thank you for listening.
Music.
(44:46):
Thank you for watching!
Golf is just such a great industry and such a great sport.
And someone said to me early on, why would you start with any other sport when
you're going to end up with golf anyway?
And that really pushed me into golf. I do love it. And I thank the people.
Music.
(00:30):
Welcome to the Accelerate Golf Podcast, where we explore player improvement
and the business of golf through conversations.
I'm your host, Bikram Kapoor, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Igor Weinstein,
a golf entrepreneur who founded and sold 24-7 golf to GolfTech and is currently the CEO of GolfTrack,
(00:54):
a launch monitor app with the accuracy of high-end launch monitors that's available
on the Apple App Store for free.
Welcome, Igor. Thank you for having me.
So right off the bat, Igor, talk to us about this deal with GolfTech,
your passion, you know, which led you to actually start 24-7 golf.
(01:18):
Sure. The story is actually a bunch of coincidences that kind of happened,
and I keep joking about at it but it's actually true
that it's basically an accident i i ended
up in golf i'm a tech guy by trade you
know i've been in texas i was very young and i just
kind of accidentally fell in love with golf uh through a friend of mine damon
(01:40):
back in melbourne australia and i the story i kind of have to go back i have
to go back quite a number of years so just hang on with me because it's gonna
go back like 15 years you know so i long story short is i didn't really play
golf i played I, you know, in college,
I was like, you know, once every three, four months, I had a friend who played golf, Matt,
and, you know, he took me out, wasn't really that interested.
(02:01):
And when I was about 30, I was consulting, had already gone through various
entrepreneurial, you know, rollercoaster rides of both, you know, boom and serious bust.
My friend, Damon, was a member at this business at this indoor golf center called
Golf Tech Australia, which is completely unrelated to Golf Tech USA.
And that's kind of the funny part of the story that how it all kind of loops back in.
(02:24):
And he said, why don't you come get some lessons? He was quite good.
He was like an 8, 9 handicap at the time. And he's like, come get some lessons.
And so I went and I got some lessons and I just got addicted.
It must have been that one shot where I just absolutely striped his sweet spot.
And, you know, it was just, that was it. I was hooked.
And kind of turning a long story a little bit shorter.
(02:44):
We ended up buying that business at Golf Tech Australia and moving it to another
venue, six and a half thousand square feet in downtown Melbourne.
And that's when I kind of really got into golf.
And we had, you know, we had simulators, lessons and all that.
And then one day I had a phone call from the US from Joe Assel and Steve Barrelly,
his right-hand man at the time.
(03:05):
And they kind of said, kind of, who the hell are you? Why do you have our name?
I'm like, who the hell are you?
You know, I never heard of them. And then I Googled them and I'm like, oh, wow. Okay.
That's funny. you know, we, we try to merge the businesses.
We actually try to get a golf to come to Australia, but Australia is not the
most optimal place with capital raising, which is what we try to do.
So that kind of didn't work out, but we stayed friends.
(03:25):
And, you know, through my journey, I started 24 seven golf as a indoor unmanned,
like a golf gym, you know, those 24 hour gyms that were like booming in the,
you know, 15, 20 years ago.
So I'm like, well, why don't we do that for golf? And so I started that and first one did well,
I opened a second venue that flopped completely it was a disaster lost all my
(03:46):
money there and i had all this equipment i had to sell and i'm like hey you
know i put it on facebook marketplace and sold it and i know this is good this
is easy and obviously i'm compressing this all but basically i pivoted then to e-commerce,
and then i started manufacturing in china and then i you know expanded to the
u.s moved to the u.s and i kept in touch with with with golf tech and and i
(04:08):
was kind of pitching them you know to to sell my products.
And then one day when they announced they acquired SkyTrack,
which is a launch product in the market, probably heard about,
you know, they kind of called me and said, hey, you know, why don't instead
of selling your stuff, why don't we just buy a whole company?
And, you know, the rest is history, as they say.
And I'm still there, you know, and I'm with GoldTech right now.
(04:30):
And I have the app as a kind of a side hustle.
And yeah, that's kind of a compressing 15 years of history into like a couple of minutes.
Wow, that was actually quite a compression because I have so many questions which came to mind.
Well, we can unpack. We can go down rabbit holes, you know, as you please.
(04:50):
But it's just the thing I'll probably highlight there is, you know,
it's just you just never know when a conversation can lead you somewhere.
And, you know, 10 years after meeting Joe, Joe Assel, you know,
to get that phone call one day was pretty amazing.
And you just never know. I guess the lesson, don't build bridges.
That's right. That's right. Right. So let's put some dates to this journey of yours.
(05:13):
So when did you first acquire Golf Tech Australia or in Melbourne?
Right. So Golf Tech Australia, we bought it sort of end of 2010,
beginning of 2011, if I remember correctly.
I remember we opened officially June 2011.
10 simulator bays, a bunker, a massive putting green, all that.
So and then about 2013 is when I got a call from Joe Assel.
(05:37):
Then 2016 is when I kind of
I wanted to do my own thing and so I I kind of
sold out my share of my share of Gold Tech Australia and then
started this 24-7 golf brand as that indoor center and then about 2017 my first
venue did well probably in the first three four months I started to open my
(05:58):
second one within a year less than a year of that so about late 2016 early 2017
is when it It kind of fell over.
And then I pivoted to e-commerce.
Got it. Got it. And which venues were these?
Were these in Melbourne and like different localities in Melbourne?
Yeah. So the first one was like a little place.
It was near my house where we were living at the time in a small apartment building
(06:20):
with like a couple of retail stores on the ground floor.
And I had two bays. I just put in two simulator bays. You know,
it's quite tight just to test the concept. But it had street frontage and that helped.
My second venue was in downtown. So this was in suburbs, right,
in the suburbs of Melbourne.
And then my second place opened in downtown Melbourne, away from Golf Tech Australia,
(06:40):
because they didn't want us to compete in any way, because we're still friends,
and to this day we're still very good, close friends.
And they still open on Collins Street and doing great, very happy and proud of them.
So I had the other end of downtown, basically. But I opened it up two flights
of stairs, and that was a very bad mistake, because the rent was cheap.
But there's a reason it was cheap. So that one failed quite miserably.
(07:03):
Going back to GolfTech Australia, when you first acquired them,
who was providing the simulator technology?
This is what, 10, 15 years ago or so.
Was technology as prevalent within the golf industry as now?
Oh, it was completely different, actually.
And so the technology we used back then was a UK-based company called Sports Coach Systems.
(07:25):
Now, they're still around. Andy's the founder. He still runs it.
So he uses a camera system and infrared cameras, infrared.
Well, actually, back then it was halogen lights, then switched to infrared lights.
But basically, it's a camera-based system.
The cool thing about it was it would provide you club path because it was an overhead system.
Now, you know, how accurate it was, let's leave that conversation for another time.
(07:46):
But it worked and it had an interface that was, you know, a little bit 90s, but again, it worked.
And back then there wasn't many other products you could go with.
You know, there was either Foresight GC2, which was on the floor,
you know, next to the player, which wasn't ideal because we wanted overhead
for obvious reasons, the commercial venue.
And then there was TrackMan, but, you know, it was very expensive.
And there were others as well, which were even like $100,000 per bay.
(08:11):
I think a bad golf or full swing maybe was around then. I don't remember.
It was a long time ago. But it was very expensive.
And as we launched with that technology, it kind of did the job. It wasn't perfect.
But we ended up – I actually was then selling these for people's homes or other
businesses that wanted to start.
So we ended up opening or helping open rather maybe another 13,
(08:32):
14 venues around Australia.
Okay. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them survived. And then the pivot
to actually the e-commerce aspect of it, which led to 24-7 golf.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Sure. So again, kind of a series of accidents, but let me give you the contrasting
picture, which kind of led me to the conclusion.
(08:53):
So in my 24-7 golf venue, I was charging about $12.95 a week for unlimited practice.
You could come in and practice as much as you want. Now, initially I started with Trackman, but
we had a bit of a falling out and i actually called
joe then see good things we stayed friends and i said hey can
you have you got any second hand four sides you can sell me whatever he
said look we don't but there's this new company called sky
(09:15):
track i know the founder don thorpe so he's like i'll introduce you and so i
i called don ended up buying sky tricks i replaced track with sky track and
you know everyone was like are you gonna lose all your members because people
love you know track i lost two members out of several hundred so it wasn't a
big deal but you You know, Skytrak was a great product, still is a great product,
and it did the job just fine.
(09:36):
And the venue, so the 1295, the venue got maybe 120, 140 members, I can't remember now.
But what kept happening is it needed a lot of support.
People would like come in and they're like, oh, how do I, I mean,
people call the support by support number and go, how do I switch it on?
Like the thing has one button.
(09:57):
I mean, come on, man, one button.
So, you know, I even, I remember I even got this, like this little robot that you like stick on.
It's got this little, like a robotic, like finger that would switch it on.
So I could switch it on remotely because people wouldn't be able to switch it on.
It was, it was embarrassing to us, but it was a lot of work to kind of support.
When that second venue went out of business and I sold the SkyTrek systems with
(10:20):
the screens, I noticed that I wasn't getting any phone calls from the people
that paid me like four or $5,000 for this whole kind of setup.
And I'm like, wow, what a difference. When someone spends that kind of money,
they go to YouTube, they Google it, and they work it out.
Whereas when they're paying like $12 a week, they don't bother.
They just call the support number.
(10:42):
And I'm like, for this business to scale, I would need massive support and kind of make it foolproof.
And in the end, I'm like, oh, I could just sell it online and just kind of never hear from them again.
It was a pretty easy choice at the time. It's an interesting observation that
by targeting the higher end, you have less headaches because the higher end
customer is also a little bit different than, you know, the guy paying $1.95 a month.
(11:06):
It is. And it's also, they feel they've invested, you know, they feel like they
have made an investment, a co-investment into the idea of a golf simulator.
So, you know, for them to go and spend lots of money and then not learn how
to use it, then they would feel like they've wasted all this money.
Whereas at $12.95 they kind of didn't care and
that was you're right that's a really interesting contrast and i wouldn't call
(11:29):
it high end i would just say a level of investment that really makes them want
to get value out of that investment it's a good lesson in business you know
if you sell things too cheap you know give away things for free this you know
there's a plenty of advice about giving away things for free where people don't
really value it so they don't really invest
their own time or energy into it. I think it's valid.
(11:49):
So what led to you coming to the US then? Well, we had...
A significant advantage in Australia where before I started manufacturing in China,
the only place you could get, you know, simulator enclosures and mats,
not mats, there were some mats, but most of the components were in a Gulf simulator
(12:10):
from the US and it was very expensive. It cost you double to ship it into Australia.
So when I started manufacturing, bringing containers, it really grew the business,
grew the brand and we were quite dominant and the brand is still very dominant in Australia.
But, you know, the big dream was to come to the US, you know
the scale you know australia has like a million golfers at
best you know us has 45 50 million so
(12:32):
there's a you know slightly bigger market and i thought that there's an opportunity
to hit a price point to come in and and be a budget solution for the simulator
space and that's kind of the angle we we went and then also the other angle
i had was because i was doing manufacturing i wanted to be like a b2b seller
to others and so i i we had obviously this was during COVID.
And again, during COVID, some businesses obviously suffered.
(12:55):
Golf Simulator was not one of those businesses. It was booming like crazy.
And our business grew like 6X, 8X, I can't remember, a lot.
And once we were still in lockdown in Melbourne, we couldn't leave.
I mean, we couldn't go more than three miles outside the radius of a house and
only one person, crazy Crazy times, right?
(13:16):
But from my house, I opened a 3PL logistics warehouse in the US,
shipped some containers and started selling.
And then when the lockdown finished, end of 21, basically first flight out,
moved myself and then the family a couple of weeks later to Dallas and got a
warehouse here and grew that.
We also opened actually in Europe with a JV partner over in Luxembourg.
(13:39):
And yeah, then we made a bit of a name for ourselves in more of like a B2B and
some B2Cs as well, but we were really both.
And when was that actual transaction with GolfTech?
So that was, we actually signed, penned the deal at the dinner before the PGA show started last year.
(14:00):
So about 15 months ago.
Okay. So January 2023.
Yeah, that's it. That's it. Wow. And can you share any numbers with the audience?
Unfortunately, I cannot. I cannot, but it was, you know, the deal was structured
in a way where we both took on risk and took on the reward.
(14:20):
So it wasn't, you know, a lot of people, I get this question a bit,
and a lot of people think that, you know, a sale, you kind of,
you know, you get a check, you deposit it, you buy a private jet and you,
you know, fly off into the sunset.
It's not really how most transactions work. You know, you got to stay on,
you got to help grow the business and which is what I'm doing.
And, you know, it's doing fantastically well, but, you know,
because I was still quite a small business, especially on the US scale,
(14:43):
the idea was to how do we structure it that we both share in the upside without,
you know, GolfTech taking a lot of risk.
And so, you know, it took a few swings and roundabouts and maybe four months of negotiation.
But once we settled on the principles, it was a fairly easy thing to just go
through due diligence and go through all those things.
I also have a patent on the enclosure that I designed. So that was part of the
(15:05):
deal. And that was a really unique thing to have in the space.
And so for anyone who's listening, who's thinking about anything like that,
it's really great to have a defendable position.
It creates a lot of value in your business if you have something like a patent
or a really valuable trademark or anything like that. So that really helped the conversation.
(15:27):
And there's a multi-year deal to continue growing the business together.
Standing now at this point in time, you are with GolfTech.
You obviously were very successful. You learned quite a bit along the journey.
So tell us about your day-to-day with trying to grow 24-7 golf as a partner of GolfTech.
(15:48):
So most of the growth, and you would have maybe seen this, obviously SkyTrackGolf.com
is one of the main channels, direct-to-consumers, and there's a lot of studios now for sale.
So the idea was, the reason for the transaction was when GolfTech bought SkyTrack,
they had kind of the right thinking.
They said, look, if you're buying a golf launch motor, you need something to
(16:11):
hit the ball into and something to hit the ball off. off, you know,
you're not just going to buy a thing that tracks the ball, especially SkyTrek's indoor unit.
But even with the outdoor units, you know, with FlightScope,
for example, most people still use it indoors.
And so the idea was how do we create an end-to-end solution for the customer?
And that's why they reached out to me because they were looking at it from that
(16:31):
point of view as the end-to-end solution to the customer, which I think was
absolutely the right way to look at it.
I think we've really, I think the whole market has moved away from just selling
a box that tracks which has been, you know, tradition with like a Trackbunner or a Foresight unit.
And now people are really buying the whole solution.
And so that was part of the deal. And we also pushed into big box.
(16:53):
So, you know, Walmart or Sam's Club and, you know, PGA Superstore and Shields,
you know, Second Swing, they're all selling these studios that we make.
And that was probably the biggest part of sort of the mutual growth that we set out to achieve.
And then the other part of the growth that I take care of is the international market.
(17:14):
So really trying to grow the whole golf simulator space internationally.
There's plenty of, I mean, America does spend, you know.
I think there's 50% or 55% of golfers in the world are in the U.S.,
but 70% of the expenditure on golf is in the U.S.
So the international market is not as big, but it's still a great place for
(17:36):
growth, and it's very developing, so there's going to have more growth in the future.
Got it. And what's the price point of the studio solution currently?
So it's really around sort of between $5,000 and $7,000 for kind of everything,
everything you need, meaning projector, mat, putting mat, everything.
So it's become, like I told you before, back in 2011, it was $100,000, but 2013 it was $50,000.
(18:00):
Then it was $20,000, now it's $5,000 to $6,000. Now there's other products that are even cheaper.
There's a couple of, Garmin's been very successful at a $600 unit itself, et cetera.
So there's really now a spectrum of cost and accuracy and what people want to
get out of it. So depending on how much of an avid golfer you are versus a casual golfer.
(18:22):
So I actually wanted to explore the lower end in terms of price point as well.
But before we go there, talk to us a little bit about the international market.
Because, you know, for example, Asia, Japan, Korea, you know,
there's a lot of love for golf there.
And then Southeast Asia, India, where it's very densely populated,
(18:43):
land is very expensive, kind of lends
itself to a concept conceptually that simulators would
be a would be in demand out there i
mean is that true it's a good question the
there's definitely been a growth there not
as so i remember for the first six seven
years ago maybe there was a big article whether for the first time in
(19:05):
south korea there were there was more golf played
on what they call screen golf right indoor golf then outdoor golf
and i would imagine now u.s is
quite up to that by the way i don't know if you saw the ngf report i think
last year in january said the same thing about the u.s
so there's so much more off off course golf being played japan
obviously is a very mature golf market it's a very high-end market
(19:26):
because there's so much there's not much land so the you know the
cost of golf is quite high same with south korea
i've actually played golf in india i played at puna puna
golf club which is like 120 year old you know
colonial golf club and I played around Belgium as well
I have played a lot around Asia I love playing golf in Asia it's the course
is a very different than unique and I played in Brunei anyway I digress but
(19:50):
I think there's a there is a different interest in simulator golf in in Asia
that I've seen it's not so much the.
Of the fun sort of practice that you see like in career or like people playing full rounds,
obviously as you know the weather you know gets very hot and humid
to be outdoors so i think practicing outdoors in asia is quite at least for
(20:13):
me you know quite challenging you know you know within four minutes i'm sweating
like like i've never sweat in my life but i think there is a growing market
and it's still in the sort of the high-end market right it's there's still a
lot you Golf is still a very high-end sport.
And as it starts to move into the wider population, to more the middle class
of Asia, I think that's when it'll truly start to grow.
(20:36):
But that's where you want to be there before that happens so that you build
a name for yourself, you build a brand and a footprint so people can automatically
think of you when they think of an affordable home simulator solution.
And who are your competitors in the US and even in the international market?
So there's kind of two, there's other launch model companies, of course.
(20:58):
So, you know, Skytrak has competitors, obviously like Flightscope,
you know, Bushnell slash Foresight, you know, GC3 or Bushnell LaunchPro.
There, you know, there's overhead units like Unicor and a couple others, Trackman, of course.
So there's a couple of those names and there's Garmin and Rapsodo that have
the lower end price point units.
(21:19):
So from that point of view, there's the simulator companies.
And then there's also other companies that make studios, you know,
so like Indogold here in Dallas as well.
Companies like that are competitors for the whole solution. And they're US-based.
It's more segmented in Europe and Asia. So you don't really have competitors
(21:42):
in Asia, for example, talking about internationally, right? It's just very segmented for now.
But I think it's going to end up with kind of a couple of big players that will
kind of take on the market more holistically.
And now, folks, I wanted to mention that this show is brought to you by QSchoolSports,
a technology company that offers thoughtfully designed point-of-sale bookings,
(22:04):
payments, omni-channel retail,
and customer management software that accelerates your business growth.
Visit QSchoolSports.com for more information. Thank you.
So now, just segwaying into the launch monitor concept,
where now, as you were saying, Garmin has,
(22:25):
let's say, a $600 unit, and you've launched Golf Track, and that conceptually
is a zero-cost unit, because now you can actually run it off your phone. So talk to us about that.
Yeah, sure. Well, again, you're going to laugh, right? Again, a complete accident.
So when i had my indoor center 24
7 golf in the first one right the two bay.
(22:47):
Center when i switched to sky track
the a lot of my customers wanted to
get a video replay of their swings but the
only product that really was available at the time was called swing catalyst it's
still around great product it was way too expensive for me i couldn't afford
it and i went to
a developer i bought a a couple of usb cameras right
(23:09):
down the line front on i went to a developer i said look could you could
you build me a little software that kind of records it and it's going to sync with sky tracks
it kind of backtracks and kind of
syncs the shot with the video right like a you know it's kind
of available in many software now and we
built that and then i was looking at the cameras i'm like
yeah these cameras are you know they're okay but not you
(23:30):
know not really what i'd like and i had a samsung s9
at the time right this is how old this thing is right okay so
this idea i had a s9 and i'm and i had
another one i think an s8 like the previous version and i'm
like the cameras and this is pretty good so i
replaced the usb cameras with phones and
i asked my developer can you write a little stuff that'll use
(23:51):
the phones as the cameras and we did and then
i'm as i'm watching these videos you know as i'm doing testing i'm like the
ball is pretty clear here on these phones i wonder if we could track the ball
with a phone and seven and a half years later i can tell you that yes we can
and so obviously it's camera-based technology but.
(24:16):
Did you have to solve like a deep science problem to to make it reliable and
a lot of a lot of deep science problems i mean there's there's a couple of factors
at play here so obviously the cameras And from the Samsung S9 to the iPhone,
whatever is the new one, 15, 16, I lose track, right?
We also switched to iOS only for now. We will get back to Android one day.
(24:37):
It's just iOS is more stable in terms of the cameras that you have access to and the SDK and all that.
There's a lot more variability with Android. You know, you've got Pixel,
you've got Samsung, you've got Huawei, et cetera. So...
There is the concept of cracking the ball and figuring what is a ball and what is not a ball.
And there's a reason why most launch monitors that are camera-based,
(25:01):
sorry, not most, all of the launch monitors that are camera-based,
they use infrared cameras.
So a white ball or any ball, when you do a flash of an infrared flash,
which a human eye can't see, right, but it lights up the ball really clearly.
And that's how a Foresight unit works, that's how SkyTrack works,
et cetera, or the overhead units, they all use infrared.
(25:21):
And so it's kind of easy to tell the white pixel of the, you know,
the ball as the ball moves in the air.
With a phone, you don't get that. You have the RGB camera, pretty standard camera.
You have a set exposure and, you know, shutter speed and all of those kind of
factors. So you don't really have a lot of flexibility in terms of the camera.
You know, you get what you get and you've got to make use of it.
(25:42):
And so our kind of secret sauce has been developing the, and it is AI models.
You know, it's a computer vision AI models.
That basically figure out what is the ball what is not a ball and what is a
club and what is not a club you know and when the club hits the ball and when
it doesn't hit and all those kind of things.
And the biggest complexity that comes from it, and people might be surprised
(26:03):
to hear this if they're used to the traditional camera-based launch monitors,
to make it work in not one venue,
not 10, but like 10,000, 100,000 different backyards or garages or living rooms
or whatever, that's what's really difficult.
So it's making it work across multiple environments has taken years and years of work and capturing.
(26:28):
Hundreds of thousands of frames of shots and then processing them and using
deep learning models and computer vision models to filter out the noise and
really be able to track the ball effectively.
Now, if you think about it, the little ball with a decent drive is going 180 miles an hour.
Right. Right. It's pretty hard to track that over.
(26:50):
And phone cameras are developed for certain photography, right?
They're developed to be able to, you know, sort of 10 to 15 feet is ideal.
You know, they're not really, you know, long lens kind of thing.
But also, if you want to use it indoors, you need to be able to see the ball
flying, you know, in less than 10 feet and be able to calculate all that data.
Right, right, right. And which comes to my next question, what kind of data
(27:14):
do you get out of your golf track app? Is it speed rate, angles and all that?
Yeah, so we measure, so I'll break it down to two things, right?
And this is important for all launch monitors.
You got to know what a launch monitor measures and what it calculates, right?
I mean, everything, even if something is measured, it's still calculated.
But what I'm talking about calculated is like, it's deduced from the things that you did measure.
(27:36):
So for example, we measure ball speed.
We measure horizontal launch angle, vertical launch angle. We also measure the
club path, right? whether you're in to out, square out to in,
to get the shape of the shot. That's a determining factor.
From that data, plus also the input of what club you're actually using,
we have models, so AI models, that...
(27:58):
Calculate things like backspin spin axis
so the shape of the shot you know distance carry
all those kind of things right you know even club
path face angle all of those we don't we don't
report all of them we try to really simplify it when we present
it to the user on the phone but that's you know
the calculated part of the of the launch water but the measurement is
(28:19):
those key factors which is you know ball speed and
the azimuth so the horizontal vertical launch jingles and
where is the camera placed during the swing
so it's on a small tripod you know about six
inches off the ground about a driver length away
from the ball right looking down the line so you
kind of looking so you know the app has a little line like a
(28:40):
red line in the middle of the screen you line that up to your target and that's
how you know kind of that's your target and and it sits and
it sits a driver length away near the ground because obviously even with
a driver you cannot not hit the phone because of
the arc right you never you're always a foot away from
the phone even though you know it may feel a little
bit close but you'd never hit it and some
(29:01):
there's some other apps out there but you know that have different
locations where you know kind of makes you a bit nervous to have a phone there
so that's another thing that we've kind of made a conscious decision is we wanted
to make it very easy for people wanted to kind of not be conscious because i'm
sure you know this if you're conscious of something in your swing you're going
to shank it you know, eight out of 10 times.
(29:22):
So we don't want you to be, you know, thinking about, am I going to connect
with the ball and then the phone as I swing this driver? So yeah.
Now, what you do is your software, is it available, let's say on the app store
and then you download the software and is there a monthly subscription?
No, so at the moment it's free. We're still kind of in a very open beta version.
(29:45):
So we want people to use it. We want to see how they use it.
We want to build a community out of it and really gather more data so we can
make it more and more accurate.
And, but, but if you, and it gives you in terms of the, the free version, right?
You use it, you get your data, you get for the last shot. You can also listen to three AirPods.
We also have a watch app that shows you that, you know, you can control through
(30:07):
the, through the Apple watch if you have that.
And if you want to play simulator golf, which is something I didn't mention before.
So we've integrated with, you
know, E6 connect, which allows you to play simulator golf or with GS pro.
We've also built a little connect with you can
play it with pga 2k 21 and 23
soon we're having a few challenges with 23 for
(30:29):
some reason but we'll fix that and then you know we hope to release ea sports
pga tour connector as well which basically is like a little app that sits on
your computer that converts the the shot you hit on on golf track to like keyboard
and mouse swings and allows you
to play the non-simulator version you can just buy for 20 30 bucks on on
steam or whatever right in esports and we
(30:51):
wanted to make you know my whole vision is to make it very accessible right
so so if you can be playing you know and it might not be as realistic as
playing you know the simulator version like e6 or gs pro but it'll still be
a lot of fun and that's kind of the point is like our vision is fun we don't
want you to be obsessing over your backspin or you know ball speed it's a different
you know we'll probably talk a little bit about it but there's i i see a big
(31:12):
difference between sort of casual you know non-golf or like the top
golf customer versus like an avid golfer that is more like a SkyTrack, FlightScope customer?
In my mind, you know, to simplify this, you need data to train the model.
And the more golfers you have in different conditions, the better your model
(31:32):
is going to get over time.
So it kind of makes sense to offer the app for free because then,
you know, there's no barrier to somebody downloading this app and actually starting to use it.
And then on the monetization aspect, that the ability to use this along with
the simulator could be an area you could monetize.
(31:52):
It is, and that's actually the one that we are. And I'm sorry,
I kind of didn't finish my trail off the hook there.
But yes, so that's what we charge, I think, $12 a month or $100 a year for the cheapest.
And it goes up to like $299 a year for like a 27-course pack with ECX or something
similar for the GS Pro, which gives you a few hundred golf courses.
So yes, that is how we monetize, because we have a deal with those companies
(32:16):
and we share in the revenue.
But at the moment, the goal is definitely to get as many users.
I mean, we've had around 20,000 downloads so far.
I'd love to get it to 100,000 in the next 12 months, let's say. And you're right.
That's the cool thing about, I mean, ChatGPT has taught us this, right?
It educated the market where the more data you have, the more accurate,
(32:39):
the better you get. And the funny thing is the improvement is exponential.
It's not linear. It's getting better because we've been developing for seven
and a half, almost eight years, I think.
The improvement, the speed at which we're improving our models right now is even surprising me.
And I'm kind of the eternal optimist and see behind the curtains.
(33:01):
But we have certain sessions where
we're within 3% of a $20,000 to $40,000 simulator just using a phone.
And and you know in fact last week i was in orlando and i was uh i was showing
it to david ledbetter in on a golf zone you know simulator and it was pretty
(33:21):
amazing to see how close the numbers were you know and one's like 50 000 one
is free so that was that was pretty special,
so for our listeners out there you know we'll we'll share a link in the description
of the podcast where you were saying that this is now available on the apple
app store yeah you can You can download it for free and you can use it.
(33:42):
And please, there's two.
The only thing I ask is there are two. There's a guided setup and there's a quick setup.
If it's your first time using it, please go through the guided setup.
It'll help you have a great experience.
That's one of the biggest challenges we have is, you know, because it's available to everyone.
And remember that whole thing earlier I was telling you about how when you give
something for free, people don't fully invest the same as if they paid $5,000.
(34:04):
Now, I want to give it away. You know, I want people to use it.
But to get a great experience out of it, they need to kind of go through the
little wizard that takes them through how to set it up and everything.
And we're always working to make it as easy as possible. But this is where building
a community and listening to the customer is really helping us and make it better and better.
And I think we've got some improvements coming in the next month or so where it'll be even easier.
(34:27):
But, yeah, that's the only thing I ask is just take the guided setup.
So now let's discuss the current landscape in golf.
After the pandemic or during the pandemic, a lot of people picked up golf for the first time.
And there's a lot of spending power when you start enjoying golf.
The sky's the limit. I mean, you could spend thousands and thousands of dollars
(34:47):
just on the equipment and then on instruction and so on.
From where you sit as an entrepreneur and also in your seat at GolfTech,
which is a huge chain of golf instruction offerings, where do you see golf going from here?
That's a good question. Very open-ended question.
(35:09):
I think there's a couple of interesting things happening in the space. Sure.
The biggest distinction I like to talk about when it comes to,
especially the growth post-COVID, with all these new entrants into the golf
world or the golf market, they are not single-digit handicap players.
I think people need to really realize that. I know it sounds so obvious,
(35:30):
but I think a lot of people, when they think of people entering golf,
they think about all the advanced things that they could market to them or sell them, et cetera.
But these are people who like never hit a golf club. And these are also people,
and this is where Topgolf, I think, has done an amazing job.
I mean, what an amazing business where they made it fun for people that have
(35:51):
no interest in being on a golf course, right? They made it enjoyable.
And I think that sort of segment of the market, this new wave of golfers is
coming in through that avenue where they're having so much fun with it.
We've got to make sure that it stays fun because if you go from Topgolf and
(36:12):
you go onto a golf course and they say, you know, you have to tuck your shirt
in, you have to wear white socks, not, you know, black socks or gray socks.
You know, these are some of the rules of country clubs, right?
For someone who's not used to it, they'll be like, I'm not doing this.
I'll go back to Topgolf. And you've ruined that initial experience.
So I think we in the industry have to think about from those people's point
(36:33):
of view, not from a traditional point of view that we're used to.
And I think that'll help us grow the game and get people more,
you know, get them to enjoy golf in their way, how they want to do it.
The other thing, you know, and GolfTech is a market leader and has been for
many decades, really, in terms of technology, as well as other launch product companies.
And, you know, Garmin's a great example as well.
(36:54):
Technology is just a critical part of golf now.
I don't know any coach that doesn't use some type of technology.
Even if they're using their iPhone to video your swing and then just,
you know, do like a voiceover, they're still using technology.
And there's platforms like Coach Now, et cetera, that allow coaches to do that, right?
So I think technology is absolutely critical and how you use technology is going
(37:17):
to be more and more critical.
And this is where I see Golf Track playing is that Topgolf customer was just
talking about before that wants to enjoy.
I think I'd like to see people use Golf Track and the phone as a way for them
to have whatever experience they want to have.
And golf is like a byproduct. And a portion of that
market is going to continue on the
(37:39):
journey from like a non-golfer to a a casual golfer to an avid golfer and by
the time they get to avid golfer i think that's when they start investing in
custom fitting and launch monitors like you know like in like like a sky track
or etc and you know building out a studio but the feedback we get from our customers like.
You know some of them say i've always wanted
(38:01):
my golf simulator but i just can't justify because i don't play
enough and i'm not good enough i can't justify investing three
four five thousand on this so this is
a way for them to get get a toe in the water at
a very low risk and i think there's gonna be a progression but the masses are
gonna be on the you know the the the very low end there's actually one of my
(38:24):
favorite books there's a i forget the guy's name an indian entrepreneur he wrote
a book called the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid right and his whole thing is if you
sell something to for one dollar to a billion people you'll
have a very good business and i i really like the philosophy i
mean there's some people that go for the high end like if you think about trackman
as a brand if you think about foresight like the quad and the gc3 like it's
(38:46):
or full swing of their high-end brands right and and i don't think they've they
see themselves you know coming down you know to to like a garmin level right
i mean this is why like you know Toyota has,
was it Lexus and Toyota?
This is not the first time it's happened in the market, right? This is pretty common.
(39:08):
And so I like the bottom of the pyramid, not the tip of the pyramid.
That's very insightful.
And as we kind of wind down our conversation, you probably have met many,
many golf entrepreneurs in your journey and also in your seat at Golf Tech.
(39:28):
Many of them start off dreaming big and never quite make it.
What do you think is that essential element which is missing in people who try
and fail in golf entrepreneurship versus the people who succeed?
I think there is no, I mean, firstly, I'll say there's no one thing.
It could be a myriad of things, but I know people don't like hearing that.
(39:51):
I didn't like hearing that myself when it was, when someone would say it to me.
So, so there are a couple of things, or one of the main, I would say is doesn't
apply to golf entrepreneurship, but it applies to any entrepreneurship is a
grit, which is just, just keep going.
You know, I've, I've been nearly bankrupt so many times.
I, I joke, you know, I've been to rock bottom so many times I have a membership
(40:11):
card and, And, but it's kind of, it's, it's who I am. It's, it's what I wanted to do.
And, and I actually consider myself so lucky that I'm in golf because I fell in love with golf.
And I think it was Steve Jobs actually said this on stage once he said,
someone asked him, you know, what makes you keep going?
And he said, because I am slightly insane because sane people would stop.
(40:32):
They would give up. They would move on to something else.
But he goes, because I'm slightly insane and I believe so much in,
in what I'm doing and And I love what I'm doing, that I will pursue it no matter what.
And I feel like that's kind of me.
I should have walked away. I had a very successful IT career.
I could have been a CTO at Salesforce or something, a very high-end C-level job or whatever.
(41:00):
But that's not what brings me happiness.
And it's not the example I want to set for my kids. kids
i i think steve galloway had a really good quote about that only rich people
tell you to pursue your passion because once they've made the richness you know
they can pursue their passion right i think he says pursue what you're good
(41:22):
at figure out what you're good at and pursue that.
So i think if you figure out what you're good at and if you're lucky enough
that you actually truly enjoy i mean if you're gonna be good at something that
you hate you're never gonna going to succeed.
I had that when I had my, I had a consulting company, IT consulting company,
and I was very good at it, but I hated every day of it. And in the end it failed.
(41:42):
So I would say if, if you get to a point where you like in the golf and you
love golf and you have a successful business, you are so, so,
so, so lucky, you know, count your blessings.
But even if you don't do something you truly love, love being good at something
and pursue Pursue that until you succeed because the reality is I think most
(42:03):
people, they give up. They give up too early.
Last week, I was at a presentation. I was chatting to Kevin Harrington,
the original shark from Shark Tank.
He loves his golf. And he started one of his little presentations.
He said, I have started, I think he said 1,000 businesses and 700 of them failed.
(42:26):
But no one says, oh, hey, there's the guy that failed 700 times.
They see a guy with, you know, whatever he's worth and all the success.
And, you know, this is where most people, when they read these books or listen
to videos of successful people, they think they succeed on the first go.
There are very few people that, you know, it happens to them. It absolutely does.
(42:47):
But it's a tiny, tiny little minority and you don't learn much from it.
You learn from the failures.
So I would say, you know, fail fast, embrace it. do something you're good at
and if you're lucky enough to do something that you love as well.
You've hit the jackpot that's great advice
and i love that that membership at the
rock bottom golf club yeah exactly
(43:09):
yeah well you know as we
end any other topics you would like to
speak about anything we missed no i
think i mean there's so much to unpack and you know would love
to chat out again i think golf is
just such a great industry and such
a great sport and someone said to
me early on why would you start with any other sport when you're going to
(43:32):
end up with golf anyway and that really pushed me into
golf i do i do love it and i think for
people that want to pursue golf as
a business just have to find your
niche and and find it the other thing actually one more
thing i will say about success you know that that previous question you
asked is you know don't find don't
(43:53):
get a solution and look for a problem right don't
be a solution looking for a problem find a problem that you
want to solve that's how you build a successful business whether it's in golf
or anything else but especially in golf because people get excited about their
ideas about their shiny toy and they fall in love with their own idea and they
forget to ask the very critical question does this solve an actual problem that's out in the market it.
(44:17):
That's the only thing I would say. That's kind of the last piece of advice.
Well, thank you, Igor, for making the time. Pleasure speaking with you.
Thank you so much for having me. And ladies and gentlemen, that is a wrap for
today. Thank you for listening.
Music.
(44:46):
Thank you for watching!
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