June 25, 2024 • 38 mins
In this week's episode I interview my good friend Jake Gordon, the Co-Founder & CEO of Noteefy, the fast-growing technology company helping golf operators fill tee time cancelations more easily.
Noteefy (pronounced ‘notify’) has the first automated tee time assistant / waitlist for golfers and golf courses to improve the golfer booking experience, while accelerating course revenue and efficiency. The Noteefy booking assistant (technology is patent pending) enables golfers to input their personalized playing preferences, then get a real time notification when their desired tee time comes available. The golfer then books on the existing POS tee sheet as they normally would and the course keeps 100% of the revenue. Golfers never need to call again, and operators fill every desired tee time.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today we play golf.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Let me show you how we do it in the pros.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
Yeah . Welcome to Behind the Golf Brand podcast.
I never missed with the SevenIron , a conversation with some
of the most interestinginnovators and entrepreneurs
behind the biggest names ingolf. My
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Friends were the golf clubs. I lived on the golf
course, I lived on the drivingrange
Speaker 3 (00:19):
From Pro Talk . You should learn something from
each and every single round.
You play to fun from on and offthe green. Why would
Speaker 5 (00:26):
You play golf if you don't play it for money?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Just let me put the ball in a hole. This is Behind
the Golf Brand podcast withPaul Libert . Tore .
Speaker 6 (00:34):
Guys, welcome to the Behind the Golf PR Podcast.
Podcast. Hey, I have my goodfriend Jake Gordon from No Fi .
It's actually a really cool appand system. Like I wish they'd
invented this a long time ago,but Jake invented it, so now we
get to use it. But it's reallycool and I'm really excited to
have him on the show. Sowelcome to the show, Paul.
Speaker 7 (00:52):
Thanks for having me. So
Speaker 6 (00:53):
Where are you located?
Speaker 7 (00:55):
I'm here in Los Angeles, California where it's
, um, blue skies and sunny. Um,so there are worse places to be
and it's almost like one of theepicenters of , uh, of Muni
golf these days. So it's funto, you
Speaker 6 (01:10):
Know , yeah, it's changing a lot, right? Like
Muni golf's become like superpopular there.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
Oh yeah. I think , um, it's kind of interesting.
So from Santa Barbara to callit San Diego, which is about
120 miles, there are over 200public golf courses. So it's
almost like Scottsdale. I feellike the density of courses out
here. And there's a lot's thatmain
Speaker 6 (01:32):
Munis though.
They're all like pri they'reall expensive.
Speaker 7 (01:34):
No, no, those are , those are public 18 hole
courses is , it's crazy.
There's a ton out here.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
But it's like changing too 'cause like it's
becoming popular, right? Likeit's like trendy I guess is a
better of saying it, right?
Like it's Yeah,
Speaker 7 (01:47):
It's
Speaker 6 (01:47):
A place to be seen.
Speaker 7 (01:49):
Yeah, no, it's true.
It's funny, like golf,especially in this market, I
think in general, like it'shaving a moment , um,
especially among new golferswho I'd say aren't super used
to , um, playing the game,right? You go out to any of
these Muni courses and you seehigh school kids who are in
shorts, in basketball, shortsand, you know, wearing t-shirts
(02:13):
and just hacking it around. AndI think part of you wants to
be, you know, kind offrustrated. You're like, man,
pick up the pace of play. Like,you know, guys, let's, you're
using a driver in the Fairway. But then the other
part is like, well it's alsokind of cool that golf is like
a fun destination to hang outwithout a lot of that pressure.
Like, you don't know what youdon't know. So it's kind of a
(02:34):
balance where you're right,it's definitely become a place
to hang out, be seen. Um, youknow, it's very hard to get tee
times out here. Um , is itreally? Oh my God, I
Speaker 6 (02:44):
I heard like there's like blocks, right? And then
like resellers buy 'em and isthat what's going, I remember
that somewhere. Somebody toldme that. Is that true?
Speaker 7 (02:52):
Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's hard to know
exactly what is going on. Butat the LA City courses , um,
you, they release the teetimes, nine days out at 6:00 AM
you go , uh, for, and that'sfor city residence . You can go
on there at six, at 5:59 AM6:00 AM they're released, you
(03:15):
refresh. And by 6 0 1 9 daysout, almost a hundred percent
of the inventory is gone.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
See, there has to be some kinda like bought or
something that's like, it hasto be, dude, it has to be like,
someone's figured out a way oflike locking that in. You know,
it's on like concert tickets.
It's like,
Speaker 7 (03:35):
No , it's like
Speaker 6 (03:36):
We're all gone .
Speaker 7 (03:38):
It is really like that. So what's interesting, I
don't actually think it's botsthat are buying them up because
if you go through the process,you know, you have to hit a
capcha , you have to put in
Speaker 6 (03:50):
Well there's for , you know , as well as I do ,
there's ways around Cap .
Speaker 7 (03:52):
So you would Yeah , I don't, I don't, I know
there's some bots, but likewhen you talk to the operators,
what's happening is it'sactually brute force . So I've
heard that there are rooms ofpeople rooms who literally
right at 5 59, they all buy upas much inventory as possible.
(04:15):
And then one reseller actuallymoves a lot of that inventory
through like WhatsApp groups,honestly. Like they'll buy
resell .
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Like really basic, like basic, like not even
Speaker 7 (04:27):
That's what I'm saying . No, that's what I'm
saying. Like people think, ohmy God, there are these
unbelievably sophisticated botsthat have figured out how to
buy every single tee time . AndI'm like, when you talk to the
guys, they get 30,000 hits onthe site at that minute
Speaker 6 (04:42):
And it dies and there's no more for it for the
next, the next day.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
No, everything's zapped up. But actually this
is, so I was one of those guysat 5:59 AM hitting a refresh
trying to find tee times ninedays out. So Thursday for the
following Saturday. And it wasalmost impossible. But what
would always happen withoutfail is there's a 24 hour
cancellation policy whereyou'll get fined 10 bucks ahead
(05:10):
if you cancel inside 24 hours.
So without fail, at 25 hoursout before the tee time, Friday
mornings, a bunch of inventorycomes online a bunch for in
prime time . And so what Iwould do is I'd be, you know,
you and I are having a chat onThursday or Friday and I'd have
my monitor over here and I'mhitting refresh on all these
(05:31):
teesha TSheets waiting for lastminute inventory to come online
and without fail, because I wasa tee time guy from my group of
friends. Without fail, I'dalways get a great tee time and
then I'd tell the buddies, youknow, we're playing, here's
where we're playing 10:00 AMwhatever. It was a brute force
, brute force mechanism withvery little sophistication. But
(05:55):
, um, I came from thetechnology industry. I was
working at a big consultingfirm at called Accenture and we
were um, I was on our venturesteam, so I was working with
technology companies all thetime. And I think one day,
actually, I don't know if itwas YouTube, you know when you
go on YouTube you followsomeone. I'm sure like if I
(06:16):
followed you, I get an alertthat says, Hey, Paul just went
live with behind the
Speaker 6 (06:20):
Brand . Yeah .
Notifications. Yeah. Click thebell.
Speaker 7 (06:22):
I was like, okay, click the bell, get an alert
when the , when the creator youwant comes online. And it's
funny, I had a, there was acreator who had a podcast I'm
obsessed with and he'd call itlike his noie , like his
like the Noie gang,which is kind of cringey, but
he's like, the people who getnotified and then jump on the
(06:44):
live stream , they're like hispeople. And so I was like, noie
notify YouTube. And then withOpenTable have used OpenTable
to book like for restaurants.
Yeah, they have an alertingfeature when the restaurant, if
there's a last minutecancellation. So the vision was
like, huh, if I can combine allthese things for golf, that
would save me a lot of time.
(07:04):
I'd play more and it would makemy life easier. So that was
long-winded. But you know, asan LA So
Speaker 6 (07:11):
You started notify,
Speaker 7 (07:13):
Huh?
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Is that how you started at all of this too?
Speaker 7 (07:15):
That was how everything,
Speaker 6 (07:17):
What year was this?
Speaker 7 (07:18):
2022.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
Okay, so you had this idea. Yeah. But then how
did you implement it? It seemsa lot . It's a lot. Yeah. It's
crazy. You think about it .
'cause you gotta like, so,okay, so how did you implement
this? So you had this idea ofwhat did you do? Did you like
build a , like did you buildbackground a back or , uh, you
know, the foundation in thebackground or what did you have
to do to build something like
Speaker 7 (07:38):
That ? Yeah, so I'm not a software engineer. So the
first thing is like, I had thisidea, like, it would be awesome
to get notified
Speaker 6 (07:47):
Like that, like that noise in the background. Is
that like a , is that how itsounds
Speaker 7 (07:50):
Like I know
, it's something pretty much
like that. Um , I was like, Igotta , and I'm turning off my
, uh, alerts here, but I waslike, I gotta get a system that
pretty much can chime me likethat when tee times at my
favorite courses comeavailable. That was the idea. I
(08:10):
thought my hypothesis was thisis a consumer product. This is
going to be an app that helpsgolfers play golf at the
courses in their area moreeasily. That was the vision.
That was the idea. But I waslike, okay, now what First
thing I did is I put up, like Iwanted to test the idea before
(08:33):
I put any time and energy intoit. So I put up a Facebook ad
that said, Hey, I made alanding page, I on GoDaddy with
just the idea. Like literallyit took 20 minutes or less to
take a GoDaddy template andjust say, you know, it's so ,
(08:55):
it's hard finding tee times. Itsucks finding tee times . We,
we've built a better way. Bethe first to find out , put
that landing page. It took 15minutes and then I was like,
okay, I'd love to test thisidea. So I took , I had a
Facebook , um, create aFacebook ad with the idea and
(09:16):
just put it out there toSouthern California. And
amazingly thousands of peoplestarted signing up. Like the
Facebook ad was converting.
Like they
Speaker 6 (09:25):
Were off because they didn't get a freaking tee
time . It's all literally
Speaker 7 (09:28):
People were off about the availability and
they, you know, were lookingfor solutions. I hit a pain
point. I was like, okay, whatI've validated.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Yeah . So now you found the pain point, right?
Which is the same pain pointyou had. Now you know it's for
everybody. Correct . And thennow how do you monetize it?
Speaker 7 (09:46):
So the next step was one of those people who had
signed up reached out to me andsaid, Hey, I'm a senior
software engineer at Microsoft.
I've been in the, you know,building technology for 10
years. I'm obsessed with golf.
I have this problem. Let meknow if I can help. And it was
honestly almost like theheavens opened up and just like
(10:09):
dropped the perfect partnerright on my lap because his
name is Dathan . We were like,I said, okay, cool, let's go
play around of golf and we gottogether. Lemme check
Speaker 6 (10:20):
You out . Let's let's date before we get
married. We
Speaker 7 (10:23):
Were dating before we got married for sure. Yeah ,
you have , we started datingpretty much . Okay .
We, we got out there , um, weplayed at a muni on like a
Thursday afternoon and we justwalked the course and got to
know each other and we had agreat, we had great chemistry.
We're very different .
Speaker 6 (10:41):
You buy drinks.
Speaker 7 (10:43):
Yeah, I picked up the, I picked up the round. I,
I bought the round , but $17afternoon, you know, walking
fee. And what was great isjust, we were super different
but kind of aligned with ourentrepreneurial passion,
interest. And the mostimportant thing was that we
were obsessed with thisproblem. Like if I was to go
(11:04):
build a, you know, healthcareAI company, there's just no way
I could jump outta bed everyday and like be fired up to go
kicked out a brick wall and dothis. But when I thought I love
golf, I love solving this T topproblem. And Dahan was exactly
the same. The difference was hewas a software engineer. So he
(11:25):
was an , he was a builder andmy background was in helping
take startups to market. So wehad this great synergy. I was
like, all right , I guess Ihave to figure out if I
actually know what I'm doing.
. Yeah. And you know,over the next um, six months
pretty much we built a workingminimally viable product, an
(11:46):
MVP and this MVP you could putin your course, you can put in
your parameters days, timesplayers and it'll start to ping
you when there's availability,right? So it was working
minimally version of what wewanted. But then I was like,
okay, well what are we, what'sthe business? Right? Is this a
(12:08):
consumer business? Are peoplegonna download an app or like
what's, what is
Speaker 6 (12:11):
It ? Yeah. Because everybody gets tired of apps
nowadays I feel like it's like,that was cool like 10 years
ago. Now it's like, oh doanother app. I don't wanna do
Speaker 7 (12:17):
Another app. Right?
So for us we were like, youknow what? And also just my
skills and my interests, likeI'm not, there's consumer and
then there's B2B as twobusiness models. Consumer is
like Instagram, Uber, Amazon,Airbnb, those are consumer
software companies. And thenyou've got B2B, which is like
(12:38):
Salesforce, HubSpot, like allof these B2B companies. So I
was like, my instinct's muchmore B2B, let's take notify and
bring it to the courses. And ifwe can, if we can help courses
fill last minute cancellationsby pinging their golfers when
there's inventory based ontheir preferences, we will have
(12:58):
just achieved the same thingfor the golfer. Right. Paul
found his tee time at .
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Yeah . From the source, right? The actual
source. Correct.
Speaker 7 (13:06):
So Paul found his tea time at Ken McDonald on
Saturday morning when it openedon Friday night
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Night . What time people play Ken McDonald for
Now that I think I'myou gotta like any course like
, alright , ready ? That'swhere I play at a lot. I'm
just, I'm just joking around.
Speaker 7 (13:20):
Paul wanted to play , uh, Kopa on Saturday morning
'cause he's at
Speaker 6 (13:26):
I expensive. I don't play there. I'm like at
McDonald. No .
Speaker 7 (13:28):
Yeah, you're rolling it . And so our whole thing is
, so our technology where weended up going was, okay, let's
license this to the coursewhite label the technology,
meaning it will look and feellike Ken McDonald, it will look
and feel like TPC Scottsdale.
It will look and feel like Wkopa . But the functionality of
(13:48):
the technology is connectingthe golfer with the inventory
in real time when it opens. SoPaul can say, I wanna play
Saturday morning at Kenny Mac
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Or any course, like anyone, whatever course they
wanna play at and be like,okay,
Speaker 7 (14:03):
Any course that has signed up for us. So the course
is our customer, the golfer'sthe user. And so the course
pays a software subscription.
They bring our software totheir customers. Next thing you
know, they're driving their
Speaker 6 (14:19):
Website . They already go on the website
'cause they wanna book a timedirect
Speaker 7 (14:21):
On their website.
Exactly. So that's how itworks.
Speaker 6 (14:25):
Yeah . Solve that problem without having to like
be another competitor. That'ssmart.
Speaker 7 (14:31):
Exactly. We, we are not, we don't see ourselves as
like a golf now competitor. Wedon't see what we are. We don't
Speaker 6 (14:38):
Wanna be like , you don't, you care less, you don't
wanna , we're
Speaker 7 (14:41):
Not in the consumer
Speaker 6 (14:43):
Software. You have the booking system. You don't
be a booker. You just want tobe a tool.
Speaker 7 (14:47):
Hey , we don't even wanna be a T sheet . We just
want to be
Speaker 6 (14:51):
It's data a helpful Yeah , you wanna be the , you
wanna be the link between thetwo.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
We want to be the helpful assistant for the
course and the golfer to makethem play more with less
effort. That's our, that's whatwe try to do.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
How does it work? So is it like, is it, is it , so
do you, I'm assuming itprobably is like a landing page
system that you guys control,right? Or something like that?
I'm assuming like the data,like it's not like on
individual sites. Like theyprobably have a link that goes
back to you guys, which is thebrain, right?
Speaker 7 (15:21):
Kind of kind of. So you go to TPC Scottsdale right
now, or you go to Ken Mac oryou go to Wico pa or you go to
any of the hundreds of coursesthat use our system. You look
at their T sheet and you don'tsee the tee time you're looking
for
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Yeah, the time .
Yeah. Which happens all thetime. Right? It's like, oh, two
30 on a Tuesday afternoon. Ohgreat, okay . Well it'll be 400
degrees outside. So Exactly.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
So instead you now say, I'm looking to play
between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AMNotify me when it comes
available. Submit. That's allyou have to do. You go about
your life.
Speaker 6 (15:58):
So it's on the t sheet page then.
Speaker 7 (16:00):
Exactly. That's where we live. We are
integrated into the existingbooking control . So you're
Speaker 6 (16:05):
A box, like you're a box somewhere on the page That
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Exactly. Yeah . We ,
Speaker 6 (16:09):
This changes
Speaker 7 (16:10):
And then Exactly.
We're a link, we're a widgetthat lives right on the courses
existing site that powers thesystem.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
So regardless of like, I don't know much about
like golf course stuff. Solike, do most golf courses use
the same software? Right ? Isthere like, you know what I'm
saying? Is there like only somany software companies for
golf courses? Or like how doesthat work?
Speaker 7 (16:29):
I'd say there's seven. Yeah, there's about
seven to 10 big ones. Um, andso we So
Speaker 6 (16:35):
You agree with all those then I'm assuming?
Speaker 7 (16:36):
Yeah, exactly. We just bolt onto all of 'em and
augment what they're alreadydoing. So the T sheet companies
in many cases have actuallyembraced us and they've been
like, oh cool, you guys have acool product that we don't
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Have to develop that we don't have to figure that
out. We just wanna sell our ,we just wanna sell our
software. That's all we wanted.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
And what's really interesting is a lot of the t
sheet companies actually makethe money not on selling
software. It's the POS businessthat's profitable.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
Oh really?
Speaker 7 (17:06):
So p os stands for
Speaker 6 (17:08):
because
the whole thing, right? It's
like you buy that system foryour course and it does
everything and the teaching ispart of
Speaker 7 (17:14):
It . Well , it's very interesting. So let's say
Paul's golf course is lookingfor software and then you look
at all the vendors , many ofthem will subsidize the
software expense to take aportion of the point of sale
revenue. So I give you $10 or Igive you a hundred dollars. The
point of sale company takes 3%.
Speaker 6 (17:36):
Holy. Yeah . So it's only a credit card charge.
Speaker 7 (17:40):
So 2% goes to the processing and the
infrastructure and then theytake 1% of all transactions.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
Yeah , that's So they , but they still probably
get charged on whatever thecredit card charges too, right?
Speaker 7 (17:49):
Right. So they usually,
Speaker 6 (17:51):
So now that was really 6% or seven or whatever
the hell.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
So it's usually 3% of the transaction goes to kind
of
Speaker 6 (18:00):
Processing the credit
Speaker 7 (18:01):
Card processing. The company that's doing POS will
take usually 1% of everytransaction. 2% goes to the
payment processors or, or so
Speaker 6 (18:11):
They pay like a preferred rate and they
probably have a preferredpercentages and system .
Speaker 7 (18:14):
Exactly. That's where the revenue is. So if
you're doing $10 million,
Speaker 6 (18:18):
You 1%. Right. So like times all those courses,
right? So now it's the numbersname
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Like Stripe. You familiar with uh , Stripe?
Yeah. They
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Charge you . Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (18:29):
So all of these companies, they're taking a
percent of the point of saletransaction. That's where,
that's why they're worth a lotof money, but it works at
scale. Um, but my point there,micro
Speaker 6 (18:39):
Transactions really, it's like you're making a penny
every millisecond, right? Andit's all gonna add up very
quickly. Right? Not, oh, I'mnot gonna make a dollar. We're
gonna make a dollar . But
Speaker 7 (18:48):
That's exactly why they like working with us
because we're driving morevolume and the course like
Speaker 6 (18:54):
You're not losing money . Yeah. 'cause they're
getting leakage, right? It'slike you only have a commodity,
which is the time on thecourse. And once that expires,
like that's it. Exactly.
Speaker 7 (19:01):
Bingo. It's it's perishable. Every tee time is
perishable. It's like Yeah . Amovie . And it's like fruit .
Fruit . It's like a fruit. It'slike movie tickets. It's like
airlines. It's like hotels. Assoon as the day passes that's
gone. It's gone. So theoperators care a lot about
preserving that. And the golferis like, Hey there, there's
(19:24):
some golfer out there thatwould play that tee time
somewhere. The question is, dothey know that it exists?
Right? Whenever there's acancellation and previously
there just wasn't any greatscalable system to being able
to, you know, understand Youwould've ,
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Well you would also would've thought that like a
golf now or whoever Right?
Would've invented that a longtime ago. Right? Because I
mean, you would just think thatbecause you're like, well you
have this system and these appand fees and all this crap, you
know, to be a member and blahand blah, blah blah. Like this
was like level one, right? LikeYeah.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
Yeah. I was surprised it didn't exist . But
then we've spent now two yearsand hundreds of thousands of
hours of software engineering.
You know, we built up our teamnow at 15 , um, and most of
that is engineering buildingthis great one product, right?
So, you know, we filed a patenton it and like we now have this
(20:17):
great system that we can use tokind of scale. Um, and every
one of all of our engineering'sin-House and everything we're
doing is, you know, justsharpening this X right? We
don't want to be every single,we don't , you don't ,
Speaker 6 (20:31):
You don't wanna be competitor ball as people. You
just wanna be, you want be yoursystem. That's what we, that's
what we have. And you wanna bethe best at that so that like,
they're not gonna go and maketheir own 'cause you already
have it. Or if they make theirown, you're gonna sue their As
because you guys have depends .
Speaker 7 (20:44):
We wanna , we wanna be a good steward in the
market, right? Like one thingthat, and all of this is new ,
is new to me. I didn't playgolf until four years ago. I
never played golf until Covid.
I fell in love with the gameand my background is in
technology, so I just have afresh pair of eyes on a lot of
this I'm learning. And a lotof, you know, the point of
Speaker 6 (21:06):
You're problem solving too. Like, you're
seeing like why, why, why is itlike that? That doesn't make
sense,
Speaker 7 (21:11):
Right ? Right. So a t sheet , like a golf course
picks a t sheet point of salesoftware company who, you know,
whether that's easy, you know,golf now has a full stack
Lightspeed four up , you know,there's new companies like
called ten four. There's cGAS ,there's all of these software
companies. They have to do inmany cases, like 70 products
(21:36):
just to turn the lights on fora golf course. They have to do
the T sheet , they have to dothe point of sale, they have to
do email marketing in manycases they have a mobile app.
There are, there is a laundrylist of just basic criteria
that a TV
Speaker 6 (21:51):
That's so funny too is that most people will just
call the golf course and belike, Hey, I wanna book a time,
you know , most like , I wannaplay like , oh yeah, sorry, we
have these times available, butlike, you gotta train the
public. You gotta train the,the older generation that this
is a better way of doing itbecause they can just not have
to worry about it and plug itin and they're good to go. You
(22:12):
know? Yeah. So calling in mydad calls , my dad calls all
the time. Right. But callingdad
Speaker 7 (22:18):
. Well, you
know what's unbelievable? So we
have some courses in like PalmBeach and we see the age
demographics of the peopleusing the product. The number
one age demographic over thereis 75 years old using our
system. Number one. It it iscrazy. Like people, it , it's
been the biggest surprise, Iwould say of launching the
(22:39):
system is how the average ageof the users are between 50 and
70 years old of notify.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
That's awesome.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
Yeah, because they don't wanna call
Speaker 6 (22:51):
Don . They wanna call, don't wanna talk to
anybody you wanna call. I don'twanna call golf course and like
have some dumb conversation fora minute to find out. I can't
get the time I want.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
Exactly. Exactly.
So, so
Speaker 6 (23:04):
Then , so then when did you get your first client?
Or who , like, how'd you do ,how'd you get that?
Speaker 7 (23:10):
So the fir it's actually a pretty funny story.
So being in LA there's amunicipal course out here
called , uh, Simi Hills . It'ssuper popular. They do like
85,000 rounds a year. It is a ,yeah, it's crazy amount of
rounds, but it's a great golfcourse. Just really fun layout.
A
Speaker 6 (23:28):
Really nice muni.
Yeah. Like, yeah, it's likereally, really
Speaker 7 (23:30):
Nice Muni priced at like $70. It's
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Portable .
Speaker 7 (23:35):
Yeah , you can walk it, it's in the mountains. It's
got elevation, it's gotinteresting whole layouts.
There's trees, there's, youknow, like nestled par threes
that are, you know, at hugeelevation differences. It's
just a blast and it's superhard to get a Teton. Oh . So
this was, this was one of thesecourses where I'm smashing
(23:55):
refresh, refresh, refresh. Andone day when I had the idea, I
picked up the phone and Icalled up Brian, the gm and I
said, Hey, this is Jake. Uh , Iplay your course all the time.
Huge fan. Huge fan. Cool. Wellhow can I help? Quick question
for you. Really hard to findtee times. Yeah. What else is
new? But cancellations alwaysoccur. Uhhuh .
What if there was a way to getnotified when a cancellation
(24:18):
occurred at the last minute atyour course, would you be
interested in that? He's like,yeah, does that exist? That
sounds cool. I said, no, it'san idea,. And he said,
okay, call me , uh, call mewhen it's ready. So I call him
back three, four months laterwhen we had an initial version.
I showed it to him. He is like,dude, this is pretty cool. Uh ,
we'll try it. And so heactually , yeah ,
Speaker 6 (24:38):
There's no downside, right? Like, I mean, yeah ,
Speaker 7 (24:41):
He rolled it out. Um , it was our first course and
then from there at Parlayed ,um, we got Kemper Sports ,
which is one of the biggestmanagement companies too .
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
They own a lot of, right ? Like a
Speaker 7 (24:52):
Lot . They have about 170, 180 up to 200
courses even that they manageand some that, so
Speaker 6 (24:58):
That's key, right?
It's like go after the whales.
Like you show proof of concept,go after the whales that have a
lot of courses that manage alot of. And then, then you get
all those courses and then it'slike you can start filling in
the ma the gaps, right? Likewhere are we? Yeah,
Speaker 7 (25:14):
It's a risk .
Speaker 6 (25:15):
How do you do like a muni though? Because it's, oh ,
I guess, I dunno . But inCalifornia, like, are the munis
now getting managed by largercompanies? 'cause they're
happen here in Arizona. Likethe city's like selling the
contract. Really?
Speaker 7 (25:28):
Yeah. Well the cities in some cases will have
a management company around thecourse. Like Kenny Mack is run
by Corco .
Speaker 6 (25:35):
Um , yeah, but they just got that last year and you
know what, they paid for that?
A lot of money. Like 20million?
Speaker 7 (25:41):
No, they sold it Ken
Speaker 6 (25:43):
McDonald. No , they got it. They got somebody, they
got it last year.
Speaker 7 (25:46):
The management contract
Speaker 6 (25:48):
You're saying ? Yeah , there was , there was
somebody else and they justtook over January 1st.
Speaker 7 (25:51):
Got it. You know, it's in , so my my point is,
you know, with them MCOs , um,they run these courses very
streamlined and they , it'sit's obviously, as you said,
it's attractive to trying
Speaker 6 (26:04):
Yeah . Guess they don't a clue what they're
doing, dude. Like it's alreadybetter. You know what I mean?
Like it's not Yeah .
Speaker 7 (26:10):
Retired
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Dude out front being like, what the ?
Speaker 7 (26:14):
Yeah. These, the , the MCOs can come in. They know
how a playbook, they know howto run these, run the course.
Um, but you know from Exactly.
But like if you yeah . If youdon't do well, like as a
technology company for them,you're shut out. Right.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Blackballed , you're like your thing's , we're not
gonna use you. You're full ofit. Exactly. And you're never
gonna get our business oranybody else's because we're
gonna tell everybody else yourstuff's
Speaker 7 (26:39):
Pretty much. So you gotta have something that
works, you know? Um, but that'skind of how we compounded one
thing into the next Into thenext. Yeah . And you know,
it's, you gotta be able to showthe value. That's what it comes
down to. You . If you don't,then you're out. Well
Speaker 6 (26:53):
Mean think how much money you're, you're like, it's
all this lost revenue for 'em .
Right? Right. Like that wasmoney that they were going to
lose.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
And the golfer is now gonna be notified, Hey,
your stuff's coming in. Do youwant it now? Yes, yes, yes,
yes. You know , and then it'slike, it's, it's like they
already want that. It's likeyou're , so then how, so then
the, the golf course p purchasea license , um, of uh , a
licensing agreement with you touse your software.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
Yep , yep . That's exactly it. Free for the end .
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Is that a yearly licensing fee or is that like
you don't, are you chargingbased on the like percentage,
blah, blah, blah .
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Just a yearly licensing fee. That's
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Smart. So makes it easy because you don't like ,
okay . Not all like convolutedand being like, well you only
sold 14 blah blah blahs.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
Yeah , exactly.
Easy. That's exactly it.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
Which makes even easier to sell later on
Speaker 7 (27:47):
, you know,
but the courses wanna know
like, okay, that's great thatyou drove $200,000. I don't
wanna necessarily pay now 30
Speaker 6 (27:56):
10%. Yeah, I'll be 20 grand for that. Like,
Speaker 7 (27:59):
Right. They, it's very easy when it's fixed price
to know the ROI . It's blackand white
Speaker 6 (28:06):
For you too because you know they're buying it for
the year or however longthey're buying it for. You
know, that money's coming in,they have to pay for it, move
on. Not like, oh I gotta chasemy money down. Where's my
percentage?
Speaker 7 (28:19):
Exactly. Exactly. So that's kind of been the , the
playbook and we just keepmaking the thing better every
single day .
Speaker 6 (28:26):
So how many courses do you have right now?
Speaker 7 (28:28):
350.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
A lot of courses.
Speaker 7 (28:30):
Yeah. Where's
Speaker 6 (28:31):
The biggest market at for you? California.
Speaker 7 (28:35):
You know, you'd think, but there have been some
hotspots. So DC we probably, wehave over 30 courses in DC in
that one market. We have ameaningful amount of all the
meetings and all the publiccourses in DC are using our
system, which , wedon't have any footprint there.
It's just how it's been. Likethe operators in that market
(28:57):
have taken, they
Speaker 6 (28:58):
All know each other.
Right. They're like, Hey.
Exactly.
Speaker 7 (29:02):
New York Metro. We have a ton of courses, you
know, in California we do. Butyou know, there's some hotspots
like Chicago, Florida, in , youknow, NorCal , we have in , in,
you know, Sacramento, like it'sbeen in , in , you know, we
have 10 courses. So do
Speaker 6 (29:16):
You have like a sales team that has to go
around or do you have to goaround and talk to these
people?
Speaker 7 (29:20):
We've just started to scale up our kind of sales
team. Um, but for the firstyear or so, it was just
Speaker 6 (29:27):
Word of mouth kind of me ,
Speaker 7 (29:28):
Just me. Just me helping out, chasing
Speaker 6 (29:30):
People down, calling 'em
Speaker 7 (29:33):
Little bit. Yeah.
Mostly as I said, like goingthrough a lot of the building
relationships with themulti-course operators, going
slow with them to prove it outbefore adding
Speaker 6 (29:44):
Yeah. And fix whatever issues. And so like,
and making them happy. So thenyou're like, okay, we're not
selling a product that hasproblems, you know, multiplied
by 350, you know, it's only bya hundred or
Speaker 7 (29:56):
Whatever . Right , right. So we won't scale up to
add the next one unless, youknow, people are happy and
they're getting the value andthey're , you know,
Speaker 6 (30:04):
Things .
So how does the system work?
Okay, so like, I wanna playKenny Mac on Saturday. Yep .
And they don't have the time Iwant. Yep . What happens?
Speaker 7 (30:12):
It literally, there's a link on their T sheet
that says, didn't see the Ttime you're looking for at your
preferences. Here I wanna playSaturday morning, not only this
Saturday. Every Saturday forthe rest of the year between
seven and 10:00 AM from my fourcell notify. Then we start
pinging you, Paul .
Speaker 6 (30:28):
So is it like email or is it by phone or by text?
Both
Speaker 7 (30:31):
Email and text. So
Speaker 6 (30:32):
You can choose or is it both automatically
Speaker 7 (30:34):
You can choose
Speaker 6 (30:35):
And then it's like a notification. Hey dumb come
play golf . Right. Andthen they can decide if they
don't wanna , that's fine.
'cause there could be a 300other people that want be
notified. That's so now it'sfirst come first serve to , but
then, okay, so let's say I getthe notification, then what
happens? I have to go online orI just call the course. Or what
do people do ?
Speaker 7 (30:55):
You click a link which redirects you back to the
course on the exact day you'relooking for and then it's on
you
Speaker 6 (31:01):
Did this show like the whole fricking liket sheet
or just the time you want andyou can continue to like
purchase.
Speaker 7 (31:07):
So you put in a t time range, we'll drop you on
the right day you asked for,and then it's on you to book
the
Speaker 6 (31:14):
T sheet . Oh, you pay . Okay . That's smart.
Because of like, oh, I actuallywant 8 49, 8 20.
Speaker 7 (31:18):
Exactly. Exactly .
Speaker 6 (31:19):
And you just wanna get 'em back on the T sheet
page of the day that theywanted. Correct . So what
happens, so on the backendthen, let's say I canceled my
time. Yep . Right? I'm assuminghow it works. Yep . Then the T
sheet changes 'cause it gotcanceled. Yep . And then it
boop goes right back on thescreen. And then your , but on
the back end , your systemalready picks it up like, okay,
(31:41):
it's changed and then it goesboop and it goes out at the
same time.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
Pretty much. I mean we , that's
Speaker 6 (31:46):
When you first come first serve , but you're giving
the notification to whoeversigned up for notify.
Speaker 7 (31:49):
Similar. Yeah. Yeah.
And , and behind the scenes alot of the sophistication is
knowing who wanted what teetime when they wanted it. Like
there's a mountain ofparameters that Paul wanted.
Right. Database . All thethings that you wanted to play.
We have to match that toavailability. Like just to
(32:11):
trigger notification and go outto the right person at the
right time is,
Speaker 6 (32:15):
I can imagine your database is like crazy.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
There's a , I mean, DA and the engineering team,
like they're really mad golfscientists who are just
focusing on this one thing allthe time. So it's, it's getting
better every day. Every singleday we're chipping away, we're
adding this. And then, okay, ifyou think 350 operators, they
all have ideas about things tomake it better. So they're
(32:39):
always telling us, aj
Speaker 6 (32:40):
Yeah. They see problems that may have made a
problem yet or might be like,Hey, you might be able to tweak
it in this way. Which is coolbecause they're a partner then
they don't feel like you'retaking advantage of 'em. They
just think , Hey cool, you guysare helping us out. We have no
problem paying you for thelicensing and you could make us
a better product by doing this.
You're like , exactly . Okay,cool. We didn't know that. And
you guys know 'cause you're onthe front, you're on the front
(33:02):
line .
Speaker 7 (33:03):
Yeah. We want to be their partner. We want them to
feel comfortable to share, youknow, ideas and recommendations
and everything with us.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
Smart. You're smart, dude. Smart.
Speaker 7 (33:13):
You're
Speaker 6 (33:13):
Unfortunately though , you're you
Speaker 7 (33:15):
Friend . No , it's , it's okay .
Speaker 6 (33:18):
, you were a
Dodger fan every time about
Dodgers for like a half hourtoday. We like to Dodgers. So
Speaker 7 (33:26):
, don't get
me started, man. I'll go all
day talking about the boys andBlue
Speaker 6 (33:32):
. It's like,
I , the joke is like, how do
you know somebody went to OhioState? They tell you they went
to Ohio State. Like that's justthe thing. Like, it's like you
just , they'll just tell youall the time . So , um, it's
like with the Dodgers fan . Um,so what , what's in store for
you guys this year then ? Likewhat's ,
Speaker 7 (33:51):
So the plan right now is for us to , uh, to just
stay heads down and get betterevery single day. We're just
trying to maximize our impactof notify in the market right
now. So like 350 golf courses.
That's great. We think thatthere's much, there's a lot
more courses than that who havethe
Speaker 6 (34:07):
dude ,
bro. This is like a worldwide
product. So
Speaker 7 (34:09):
That's the first step. Yeah. We could go
international, we could, youknow, but really we're excited
about other use cases as well.
You know, making sure that inspa and hospitality really as
many different use cases aspossible can benefit from , uh,
what we have here. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (34:27):
What would be good.
That's so smart. Is thereanything else like this product
in other markets or in otherindustries or Not really.
Speaker 7 (34:40):
I love what , um, OpenTable has in terms of that
seamless, you know, in therestaurant industry, but I've
not seen anything like this inhospitality across the board .
Speaker 6 (34:55):
No, I haven't either . I think it's , I think it's
genius. It's genius. Uh , sowhat what is your background
then, really? Is this tech or asales or what , or not sales,
but like you were at Accenture,what'd you do at Accenture?
Speaker 7 (35:13):
So when I was at Accenture, we had a stage
emerging technology. Andeverything we would do is try
and figure out how , um, we cantake cool startups to our big
clients, solve problems thesedeals and get, get in front of
(35:36):
their AI or their cloud ortheir digital health , their
cyber solution, and get it infront of the , uh, the
customers. Uh , learn a tonabout how to take startups to
market. Um , that's just what Idid every single day. So That's
(35:58):
cool . That's where, that'swhere I was at before I'd taken
the entrepreneur plunge .
Speaker 6 (36:02):
Man, dude, I'm really impressed with this .
This is cool. Like, I didn'tknow until like how robust this
is, but it's like , I think youguys just scratch the surface
like you were saying too.
Speaker 7 (36:12):
Yeah, I appreciate it. It's, it's a lot of fun. We
feel like kids in a candy shopright now doing what we're
doing. Um, and uh, we're, we'refired up man. I think the best
is yet to come. Yeah,
Speaker 6 (36:26):
Well where can people find you?
Speaker 7 (36:30):
So if you're a golfer , um, you can come ,
come to our website calledNotify N-O-T-E-F-Y app and we
have a, a segment on our site,which is all of our courses.
And we'd love for you to gosupport one of our course
partners if you're a golfer orgo knock on the GM's door and
say, Hey, why don't you guyshave notify? Um, and if you're
(36:51):
an operator , you do ,
Speaker 6 (36:52):
Jake will give you a , a free , uh, .
Speaker 7 (36:55):
. Yeah ,
we'll , we'll hook you up. Um ,
and then if you're an operator, uh, we'd love to chat about
how we can help your course.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
That's cool, man. I , I'm really impressed. This is
actually really cool. So smart.
It's like you find that littlething, right? That like needs
to be fixed and that's allabout entrepreneurialship,
right? And like h how do you, Idon't know , like you don't
have to be like, Jake sucks atgolf. I mean , you only played
for four years. I do this
Speaker 7 (37:22):
Dude ,
Speaker 6 (37:22):
This dude already figured out like the problem is
played golf for like thebeginning of time. So
Speaker 7 (37:28):
I thankfully , uh, the technology works better
than my golf game. 'cause itneeds a lot of help, man .
, I'm fighting to break90 out there. That's, that's my
, uh, I'm , I'm hunting bogeygolf.
Speaker 6 (37:40):
Hey, we all are, dude, that's, that's just
normal. But well thank you forbeing on the show today. Um,
you guys had checked out ,notify, that's , I mean, I'm
really impressed. There's veryfew times where I'm impressed
with like software and golf andI'm like, dude, this thing's
smart. I think you're justscratching the surface is where
you guys can actually use it.
So , um, thank you for being onthe show and I'll see you guys
(38:00):
in the next episode.
Speaker 7 (38:01):
Thanks Paul.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Behind
the Golf Brand podcast. You'regonna beat me, the golf stay
connected on and off the showby visiting golfers
authority.com. Don't forget tolike, subscribe and leave a
comment. Golf is always morefun when you win. Stay out of
the beach and see you on thegreen.
Today we play golf.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Let me show you how we do it in the pros.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
Yeah . Welcome to Behind the Golf Brand podcast.
I never missed with the SevenIron , a conversation with some
of the most interestinginnovators and entrepreneurs
behind the biggest names ingolf. My
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Friends were the golf clubs. I lived on the golf
course, I lived on the drivingrange
Speaker 3 (00:19):
From Pro Talk . You should learn something from
each and every single round.
You play to fun from on and offthe green. Why would
Speaker 5 (00:26):
You play golf if you don't play it for money?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Just let me put the ball in a hole. This is Behind
the Golf Brand podcast withPaul Libert . Tore .
Speaker 6 (00:34):
Guys, welcome to the Behind the Golf PR Podcast.
Podcast. Hey, I have my goodfriend Jake Gordon from No Fi .
It's actually a really cool appand system. Like I wish they'd
invented this a long time ago,but Jake invented it, so now we
get to use it. But it's reallycool and I'm really excited to
have him on the show. Sowelcome to the show, Paul.
Speaker 7 (00:52):
Thanks for having me. So
Speaker 6 (00:53):
Where are you located?
Speaker 7 (00:55):
I'm here in Los Angeles, California where it's
, um, blue skies and sunny. Um,so there are worse places to be
and it's almost like one of theepicenters of , uh, of Muni
golf these days. So it's funto, you
Speaker 6 (01:10):
Know , yeah, it's changing a lot, right? Like
Muni golf's become like superpopular there.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
Oh yeah. I think , um, it's kind of interesting.
So from Santa Barbara to callit San Diego, which is about
120 miles, there are over 200public golf courses. So it's
almost like Scottsdale. I feellike the density of courses out
here. And there's a lot's thatmain
Speaker 6 (01:32):
Munis though.
They're all like pri they'reall expensive.
Speaker 7 (01:34):
No, no, those are , those are public 18 hole
courses is , it's crazy.
There's a ton out here.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
But it's like changing too 'cause like it's
becoming popular, right? Likeit's like trendy I guess is a
better of saying it, right?
Like it's Yeah,
Speaker 7 (01:47):
It's
Speaker 6 (01:47):
A place to be seen.
Speaker 7 (01:49):
Yeah, no, it's true.
It's funny, like golf,especially in this market, I
think in general, like it'shaving a moment , um,
especially among new golferswho I'd say aren't super used
to , um, playing the game,right? You go out to any of
these Muni courses and you seehigh school kids who are in
shorts, in basketball, shortsand, you know, wearing t-shirts
(02:13):
and just hacking it around. AndI think part of you wants to
be, you know, kind offrustrated. You're like, man,
pick up the pace of play. Like,you know, guys, let's, you're
using a driver in the Fairway
part is like, well it's alsokind of cool that golf is like
a fun destination to hang outwithout a lot of that pressure.
Like, you don't know what youdon't know. So it's kind of a
(02:34):
balance where you're right,it's definitely become a place
to hang out, be seen. Um, youknow, it's very hard to get tee
times out here. Um , is itreally? Oh my God, I
Speaker 6 (02:44):
I heard like there's like blocks, right? And then
like resellers buy 'em and isthat what's going, I remember
that somewhere. Somebody toldme that. Is that true?
Speaker 7 (02:52):
Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's hard to know
exactly what is going on. Butat the LA City courses , um,
you, they release the teetimes, nine days out at 6:00 AM
you go , uh, for, and that'sfor city residence . You can go
on there at six, at 5:59 AM6:00 AM they're released, you
(03:15):
refresh. And by 6 0 1 9 daysout, almost a hundred percent
of the inventory is gone.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
See, there has to be some kinda like bought or
something that's like, it hasto be, dude, it has to be like,
someone's figured out a way oflike locking that in. You know,
it's on like concert tickets.
It's like,
Speaker 7 (03:35):
No , it's like
Speaker 6 (03:36):
We're all gone .
Speaker 7 (03:38):
It is really like that. So what's interesting, I
don't actually think it's botsthat are buying them up because
if you go through the process,you know, you have to hit a
capcha , you have to put in
Speaker 6 (03:50):
Well there's for , you know , as well as I do ,
there's ways around Cap .
Speaker 7 (03:52):
So you would Yeah , I don't, I don't, I know
there's some bots, but likewhen you talk to the operators,
what's happening is it'sactually brute force . So I've
heard that there are rooms ofpeople rooms who literally
right at 5 59, they all buy upas much inventory as possible.
(04:15):
And then one reseller actuallymoves a lot of that inventory
through like WhatsApp groups,honestly. Like they'll buy
resell .
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Like really basic, like basic, like not even
Speaker 7 (04:27):
That's what I'm saying . No, that's what I'm
saying. Like people think, ohmy God, there are these
unbelievably sophisticated botsthat have figured out how to
buy every single tee time . AndI'm like, when you talk to the
guys, they get 30,000 hits onthe site at that minute
Speaker 6 (04:42):
And it dies and there's no more for it for the
next, the next day.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
No, everything's zapped up. But actually this
is, so I was one of those guysat 5:59 AM hitting a refresh
trying to find tee times ninedays out. So Thursday for the
following Saturday. And it wasalmost impossible. But what
would always happen withoutfail is there's a 24 hour
cancellation policy whereyou'll get fined 10 bucks ahead
(05:10):
if you cancel inside 24 hours.
So without fail, at 25 hoursout before the tee time, Friday
mornings, a bunch of inventorycomes online a bunch for in
prime time . And so what Iwould do is I'd be, you know,
you and I are having a chat onThursday or Friday and I'd have
my monitor over here and I'mhitting refresh on all these
(05:31):
teesha TSheets waiting for lastminute inventory to come online
and without fail, because I wasa tee time guy from my group of
friends. Without fail, I'dalways get a great tee time and
then I'd tell the buddies, youknow, we're playing, here's
where we're playing 10:00 AMwhatever. It was a brute force
, brute force mechanism withvery little sophistication. But
(05:55):
, um, I came from thetechnology industry. I was
working at a big consultingfirm at called Accenture and we
were um, I was on our venturesteam, so I was working with
technology companies all thetime. And I think one day,
actually, I don't know if itwas YouTube, you know when you
go on YouTube you followsomeone. I'm sure like if I
(06:16):
followed you, I get an alertthat says, Hey, Paul just went
live with behind the
Speaker 6 (06:20):
Brand . Yeah .
Notifications. Yeah. Click thebell.
Speaker 7 (06:22):
I was like, okay, click the bell, get an alert
when the , when the creator youwant comes online. And it's
funny, I had a, there was acreator who had a podcast I'm
obsessed with and he'd call itlike his noie , like his
he's like, the people who getnotified and then jump on the
(06:44):
live stream , they're like hispeople. And so I was like, noie
notify YouTube. And then withOpenTable have used OpenTable
to book like for restaurants.
Yeah, they have an alertingfeature when the restaurant, if
there's a last minutecancellation. So the vision was
like, huh, if I can combine allthese things for golf, that
would save me a lot of time.
(07:04):
I'd play more and it would makemy life easier. So that was
long-winded. But you know, asan LA So
Speaker 6 (07:11):
You started notify,
Speaker 7 (07:13):
Huh?
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Is that how you started at all of this too?
Speaker 7 (07:15):
That was how everything,
Speaker 6 (07:17):
What year was this?
Speaker 7 (07:18):
2022.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
Okay, so you had this idea. Yeah. But then how
did you implement it? It seemsa lot . It's a lot. Yeah. It's
crazy. You think about it .
'cause you gotta like, so,okay, so how did you implement
this? So you had this idea ofwhat did you do? Did you like
build a , like did you buildbackground a back or , uh, you
know, the foundation in thebackground or what did you have
to do to build something like
Speaker 7 (07:38):
That ? Yeah, so I'm not a software engineer. So the
first thing is like, I had thisidea, like, it would be awesome
to get notified
Speaker 6 (07:47):
Like that, like that noise in the background. Is
that like a , is that how itsounds
Speaker 7 (07:50):
Like I know
like that. Um , I was like, Igotta , and I'm turning off my
, uh, alerts here, but I waslike, I gotta get a system that
pretty much can chime me likethat when tee times at my
favorite courses comeavailable. That was the idea. I
(08:10):
thought my hypothesis was thisis a consumer product. This is
going to be an app that helpsgolfers play golf at the
courses in their area moreeasily. That was the vision.
That was the idea. But I waslike, okay, now what First
thing I did is I put up, like Iwanted to test the idea before
(08:33):
I put any time and energy intoit. So I put up a Facebook ad
that said, Hey, I made alanding page, I on GoDaddy with
just the idea. Like literallyit took 20 minutes or less to
take a GoDaddy template andjust say, you know, it's so ,
(08:55):
it's hard finding tee times. Itsucks finding tee times . We,
we've built a better way. Bethe first to find out , put
that landing page. It took 15minutes and then I was like,
okay, I'd love to test thisidea. So I took , I had a
Facebook , um, create aFacebook ad with the idea and
(09:16):
just put it out there toSouthern California. And
amazingly thousands of peoplestarted signing up. Like the
Facebook ad was converting.
Like they
Speaker 6 (09:25):
Were off because they didn't get a freaking tee
time . It's all literally
Speaker 7 (09:28):
People were off about the availability and
they, you know, were lookingfor solutions. I hit a pain
point. I was like, okay, whatI've validated.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Yeah . So now you found the pain point, right?
Which is the same pain pointyou had. Now you know it's for
everybody. Correct . And thennow how do you monetize it?
Speaker 7 (09:46):
So the next step was one of those people who had
signed up reached out to me andsaid, Hey, I'm a senior
software engineer at Microsoft.
I've been in the, you know,building technology for 10
years. I'm obsessed with golf.
I have this problem. Let meknow if I can help. And it was
honestly almost like theheavens opened up and just like
(10:09):
dropped the perfect partnerright on my lap because his
name is Dathan . We were like,I said, okay, cool, let's go
play around of golf and we gottogether. Lemme check
Speaker 6 (10:20):
You out . Let's let's date before we get
married. We
Speaker 7 (10:23):
Were dating before we got married for sure. Yeah ,
you have , we started datingpretty much
We, we got out there , um, weplayed at a muni on like a
Thursday afternoon and we justwalked the course and got to
know each other and we had agreat, we had great chemistry.
We're very different .
Speaker 6 (10:41):
You buy drinks.
Speaker 7 (10:43):
Yeah, I picked up the, I picked up the round. I,
I bought the round , but $17afternoon, you know, walking
fee. And what was great isjust, we were super different
but kind of aligned with ourentrepreneurial passion,
interest. And the mostimportant thing was that we
were obsessed with thisproblem. Like if I was to go
(11:04):
build a, you know, healthcareAI company, there's just no way
I could jump outta bed everyday and like be fired up to go
kicked out a brick wall and dothis. But when I thought I love
golf, I love solving this T topproblem. And Dahan was exactly
the same. The difference was hewas a software engineer. So he
(11:25):
was an , he was a builder andmy background was in helping
take startups to market. So wehad this great synergy. I was
like, all right , I guess Ihave to figure out if I
actually know what I'm doing.
pretty much we built a workingminimally viable product, an
(11:46):
MVP and this MVP you could putin your course, you can put in
your parameters days, timesplayers and it'll start to ping
you when there's availability,right? So it was working
minimally version of what wewanted. But then I was like,
okay, well what are we, what'sthe business? Right? Is this a
(12:08):
consumer business? Are peoplegonna download an app or like
what's, what is
Speaker 6 (12:11):
It ? Yeah. Because everybody gets tired of apps
nowadays I feel like it's like,that was cool like 10 years
ago. Now it's like, oh doanother app. I don't wanna do
Speaker 7 (12:17):
Another app. Right?
So for us we were like, youknow what? And also just my
skills and my interests, likeI'm not, there's consumer and
then there's B2B as twobusiness models. Consumer is
like Instagram, Uber, Amazon,Airbnb, those are consumer
software companies. And thenyou've got B2B, which is like
(12:38):
Salesforce, HubSpot, like allof these B2B companies. So I
was like, my instinct's muchmore B2B, let's take notify and
bring it to the courses. And ifwe can, if we can help courses
fill last minute cancellationsby pinging their golfers when
there's inventory based ontheir preferences, we will have
(12:58):
just achieved the same thingfor the golfer. Right. Paul
found his tee time at
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Yeah . From the source, right? The actual
source. Correct.
Speaker 7 (13:06):
So Paul found his tea time at Ken McDonald on
Saturday morning when it openedon Friday night
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Night . What time people play Ken McDonald for
Now that I think I'm
, alright , ready ? That'swhere I play at a lot. I'm
just, I'm just joking around.
Speaker 7 (13:20):
Paul wanted to play , uh, Kopa on Saturday morning
'cause he's at
Speaker 6 (13:26):
I expensive. I don't play there. I'm like at
McDonald. No .
Speaker 7 (13:28):
Yeah, you're rolling it . And so our whole thing is
, so our technology where weended up going was, okay, let's
license this to the coursewhite label the technology,
meaning it will look and feellike Ken McDonald, it will look
and feel like TPC Scottsdale.
It will look and feel like Wkopa . But the functionality of
(13:48):
the technology is connectingthe golfer with the inventory
in real time when it opens. SoPaul can say, I wanna play
Saturday morning at Kenny Mac
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Or any course, like anyone, whatever course they
wanna play at and be like,okay,
Speaker 7 (14:03):
Any course that has signed up for us. So the course
is our customer, the golfer'sthe user. And so the course
pays a software subscription.
They bring our software totheir customers. Next thing you
know, they're driving their
Speaker 6 (14:19):
Website . They already go on the website
'cause they wanna book a timedirect
Speaker 7 (14:21):
On their website.
Exactly. So that's how itworks.
Speaker 6 (14:25):
Yeah . Solve that problem without having to like
be another competitor. That'ssmart.
Speaker 7 (14:31):
Exactly. We, we are not, we don't see ourselves as
like a golf now competitor. Wedon't see what we are. We don't
Speaker 6 (14:38):
Wanna be like , you don't, you care less, you don't
wanna , we're
Speaker 7 (14:41):
Not in the consumer
Speaker 6 (14:43):
Software. You have the booking system. You don't
be a booker. You just want tobe a tool.
Speaker 7 (14:47):
Hey , we don't even wanna be a T sheet . We just
want to be
Speaker 6 (14:51):
It's data a helpful Yeah , you wanna be the , you
wanna be the link between thetwo.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
We want to be the helpful assistant for the
course and the golfer to makethem play more with less
effort. That's our, that's whatwe try to do.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
How does it work? So is it like, is it, is it , so
do you, I'm assuming itprobably is like a landing page
system that you guys control,right? Or something like that?
I'm assuming like the data,like it's not like on
individual sites. Like theyprobably have a link that goes
back to you guys, which is thebrain, right?
Speaker 7 (15:21):
Kind of kind of. So you go to TPC Scottsdale right
now, or you go to Ken Mac oryou go to Wico pa or you go to
any of the hundreds of coursesthat use our system. You look
at their T sheet and you don'tsee the tee time you're looking
for
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Yeah, the time .
Yeah. Which happens all thetime. Right? It's like, oh, two
30 on a Tuesday afternoon. Ohgreat, okay . Well it'll be 400
degrees outside. So Exactly.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
So instead you now say, I'm looking to play
between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AMNotify me when it comes
available. Submit. That's allyou have to do. You go about
your life.
Speaker 6 (15:58):
So it's on the t sheet page then.
Speaker 7 (16:00):
Exactly. That's where we live. We are
integrated into the existingbooking control . So you're
Speaker 6 (16:05):
A box, like you're a box somewhere on the page That
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Exactly. Yeah . We ,
Speaker 6 (16:09):
This changes
Speaker 7 (16:10):
And then Exactly.
We're a link, we're a widgetthat lives right on the courses
existing site that powers thesystem.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
So regardless of like, I don't know much about
like golf course stuff. Solike, do most golf courses use
the same software? Right ? Isthere like, you know what I'm
saying? Is there like only somany software companies for
golf courses? Or like how doesthat work?
Speaker 7 (16:29):
I'd say there's seven. Yeah, there's about
seven to 10 big ones. Um, andso we So
Speaker 6 (16:35):
You agree with all those then I'm assuming?
Speaker 7 (16:36):
Yeah, exactly. We just bolt onto all of 'em and
augment what they're alreadydoing. So the T sheet companies
in many cases have actuallyembraced us and they've been
like, oh cool, you guys have acool product that we don't
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Have to develop that we don't have to figure that
out. We just wanna sell our ,we just wanna sell our
software. That's all we wanted.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
And what's really interesting is a lot of the t
sheet companies actually makethe money not on selling
software. It's the POS businessthat's profitable.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
Oh really?
Speaker 7 (17:06):
So p os stands for
Speaker 6 (17:08):
like you buy that system foryour course and it does
everything and the teaching ispart of
Speaker 7 (17:14):
It . Well , it's very interesting. So let's say
Paul's golf course is lookingfor software and then you look
at all the vendors , many ofthem will subsidize the
software expense to take aportion of the point of sale
revenue. So I give you $10 or Igive you a hundred dollars. The
point of sale company takes 3%.
Speaker 6 (17:36):
Holy. Yeah . So it's only a credit card charge.
Speaker 7 (17:40):
So 2% goes to the processing and the
infrastructure and then theytake 1% of all transactions.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
Yeah , that's So they , but they still probably
get charged on whatever thecredit card charges too, right?
Speaker 7 (17:49):
Right. So they usually,
Speaker 6 (17:51):
So now that was really 6% or seven or whatever
the hell.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
So it's usually 3% of the transaction goes to kind
of
Speaker 6 (18:00):
Processing the credit
Speaker 7 (18:01):
Card processing. The company that's doing POS will
take usually 1% of everytransaction. 2% goes to the
payment processors or, or so
Speaker 6 (18:11):
They pay like a preferred rate and they
probably have a preferredpercentages and system .
Speaker 7 (18:14):
Exactly. That's where the revenue is. So if
you're doing $10 million,
Speaker 6 (18:18):
You 1%. Right. So like times all those courses,
right? So now it's the numbersname
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Like Stripe. You familiar with uh , Stripe?
Yeah. They
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Charge you . Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (18:29):
So all of these companies, they're taking a
percent of the point of saletransaction. That's where,
that's why they're worth a lotof money, but it works at
scale. Um, but my point there,micro
Speaker 6 (18:39):
Transactions really, it's like you're making a penny
every millisecond, right? Andit's all gonna add up very
quickly. Right? Not, oh, I'mnot gonna make a dollar. We're
gonna make a dollar . But
Speaker 7 (18:48):
That's exactly why they like working with us
because we're driving morevolume and the course like
Speaker 6 (18:54):
You're not losing money . Yeah. 'cause they're
getting leakage, right? It'slike you only have a commodity,
which is the time on thecourse. And once that expires,
like that's it. Exactly.
Speaker 7 (19:01):
Bingo. It's it's perishable. Every tee time is
perishable. It's like Yeah . Amovie . And it's like fruit .
Fruit . It's like a fruit. It'slike movie tickets. It's like
airlines. It's like hotels. Assoon as the day passes that's
gone. It's gone. So theoperators care a lot about
preserving that. And the golferis like, Hey there, there's
(19:24):
some golfer out there thatwould play that tee time
somewhere. The question is, dothey know that it exists?
Right? Whenever there's acancellation and previously
there just wasn't any greatscalable system to being able
to, you know, understand Youwould've ,
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Well you would also would've thought that like a
golf now or whoever Right?
Would've invented that a longtime ago. Right? Because I
mean, you would just think thatbecause you're like, well you
have this system and these appand fees and all this crap, you
know, to be a member and blahand blah, blah blah. Like this
was like level one, right? LikeYeah.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
Yeah. I was surprised it didn't exist . But
then we've spent now two yearsand hundreds of thousands of
hours of software engineering.
You know, we built up our teamnow at 15 , um, and most of
that is engineering buildingthis great one product, right?
So, you know, we filed a patenton it and like we now have this
(20:17):
great system that we can use tokind of scale. Um, and every
one of all of our engineering'sin-House and everything we're
doing is, you know, justsharpening this X right? We
don't want to be every single,we don't , you don't ,
Speaker 6 (20:31):
You don't wanna be competitor ball as people. You
just wanna be, you want be yoursystem. That's what we, that's
what we have. And you wanna bethe best at that so that like,
they're not gonna go and maketheir own 'cause you already
have it. Or if they make theirown, you're gonna sue their As
because you guys have depends .
Speaker 7 (20:44):
We wanna , we wanna be a good steward in the
market, right? Like one thingthat, and all of this is new ,
is new to me. I didn't playgolf until four years ago. I
never played golf until Covid.
I fell in love with the gameand my background is in
technology, so I just have afresh pair of eyes on a lot of
this I'm learning. And a lotof, you know, the point of
Speaker 6 (21:06):
You're problem solving too. Like, you're
seeing like why, why, why is itlike that? That doesn't make
sense,
Speaker 7 (21:11):
Right ? Right. So a t sheet , like a golf course
picks a t sheet point of salesoftware company who, you know,
whether that's easy, you know,golf now has a full stack
Lightspeed four up , you know,there's new companies like
called ten four. There's cGAS ,there's all of these software
companies. They have to do inmany cases, like 70 products
(21:36):
just to turn the lights on fora golf course. They have to do
the T sheet , they have to dothe point of sale, they have to
do email marketing in manycases they have a mobile app.
There are, there is a laundrylist of just basic criteria
that a TV
Speaker 6 (21:51):
That's so funny too is that most people will just
call the golf course and belike, Hey, I wanna book a time,
you know , most like , I wannaplay like , oh yeah, sorry, we
have these times available, butlike, you gotta train the
public. You gotta train the,the older generation that this
is a better way of doing itbecause they can just not have
to worry about it and plug itin and they're good to go. You
(22:12):
know? Yeah. So calling in mydad calls , my dad calls all
the time. Right. But callingdad
Speaker 7 (22:18):
have some courses in like PalmBeach and we see the age
demographics of the peopleusing the product. The number
one age demographic over thereis 75 years old using our
system. Number one. It it iscrazy. Like people, it , it's
been the biggest surprise, Iwould say of launching the
(22:39):
system is how the average ageof the users are between 50 and
70 years old of notify.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
That's awesome.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
Yeah, because they don't wanna call
Speaker 6 (22:51):
Don . They wanna call, don't wanna talk to
anybody you wanna call. I don'twanna call golf course and like
have some dumb conversation fora minute to find out. I can't
get the time I want.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
Exactly. Exactly.
So, so
Speaker 6 (23:04):
Then , so then when did you get your first client?
Or who , like, how'd you do ,how'd you get that?
Speaker 7 (23:10):
So the fir it's actually a pretty funny story.
So being in LA there's amunicipal course out here
called , uh, Simi Hills . It'ssuper popular. They do like
85,000 rounds a year. It is a ,yeah, it's crazy amount of
rounds, but it's a great golfcourse. Just really fun layout.
A
Speaker 6 (23:28):
Really nice muni.
Yeah. Like, yeah, it's likereally, really
Speaker 7 (23:30):
Nice Muni priced at like $70. It's
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Portable .
Speaker 7 (23:35):
Yeah , you can walk it, it's in the mountains. It's
got elevation, it's gotinteresting whole layouts.
There's trees, there's, youknow, like nestled par threes
that are, you know, at hugeelevation differences. It's
just a blast and it's superhard to get a Teton. Oh . So
this was, this was one of thesecourses where I'm smashing
(23:55):
refresh, refresh, refresh. Andone day when I had the idea, I
picked up the phone and Icalled up Brian, the gm and I
said, Hey, this is Jake. Uh , Iplay your course all the time.
Huge fan. Huge fan. Cool. Wellhow can I help? Quick question
for you. Really hard to findtee times. Yeah. What else is
new? But cancellations alwaysoccur. Uhhuh
What if there was a way to getnotified when a cancellation
(24:18):
occurred at the last minute atyour course, would you be
interested in that? He's like,yeah, does that exist? That
sounds cool. I said, no, it'san idea,
okay, call me , uh, call mewhen it's ready. So I call him
back three, four months laterwhen we had an initial version.
I showed it to him. He is like,dude, this is pretty cool. Uh ,
we'll try it. And so heactually , yeah ,
Speaker 6 (24:38):
There's no downside, right? Like, I mean, yeah ,
Speaker 7 (24:41):
He rolled it out. Um , it was our first course and
then from there at Parlayed ,um, we got Kemper Sports ,
which is one of the biggestmanagement companies too .
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
They own a lot of, right ? Like a
Speaker 7 (24:52):
Lot . They have about 170, 180 up to 200
courses even that they manageand some that, so
Speaker 6 (24:58):
That's key, right?
It's like go after the whales.
Like you show proof of concept,go after the whales that have a
lot of courses that manage alot of. And then, then you get
all those courses and then it'slike you can start filling in
the ma the gaps, right? Likewhere are we? Yeah,
Speaker 7 (25:14):
It's a risk .
Speaker 6 (25:15):
How do you do like a muni though? Because it's, oh ,
I guess, I dunno . But inCalifornia, like, are the munis
now getting managed by largercompanies? 'cause they're
happen here in Arizona. Likethe city's like selling the
contract. Really?
Speaker 7 (25:28):
Yeah. Well the cities in some cases will have
a management company around thecourse. Like Kenny Mack is run
by Corco .
Speaker 6 (25:35):
Um , yeah, but they just got that last year and you
know what, they paid for that?
A lot of money. Like 20million?
Speaker 7 (25:41):
No, they sold it Ken
Speaker 6 (25:43):
McDonald. No , they got it. They got somebody, they
got it last year.
Speaker 7 (25:46):
The management contract
Speaker 6 (25:48):
You're saying ? Yeah , there was , there was
somebody else and they justtook over January 1st.
Speaker 7 (25:51):
Got it. You know, it's in , so my my point is,
you know, with them MCOs , um,they run these courses very
streamlined and they , it'sit's obviously, as you said,
it's attractive to trying
Speaker 6 (26:04):
Yeah . Guess they don't a clue what they're
doing, dude. Like it's alreadybetter. You know what I mean?
Like it's not Yeah .
Speaker 7 (26:10):
Retired
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Dude out front being like, what the ?
Speaker 7 (26:14):
Yeah. These, the , the MCOs can come in. They know
how a playbook, they know howto run these, run the course.
Um, but you know from Exactly.
But like if you yeah . If youdon't do well, like as a
technology company for them,you're shut out. Right.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Blackballed , you're like your thing's , we're not
gonna use you. You're full ofit. Exactly. And you're never
gonna get our business oranybody else's because we're
gonna tell everybody else yourstuff's
Speaker 7 (26:39):
Pretty much. So you gotta have something that
works, you know? Um, but that'skind of how we compounded one
thing into the next Into thenext. Yeah . And you know,
it's, you gotta be able to showthe value. That's what it comes
down to. You . If you don't,then you're out. Well
Speaker 6 (26:53):
Mean think how much money you're, you're like, it's
all this lost revenue for 'em .
Right? Right. Like that wasmoney that they were going to
lose.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
And the golfer is now gonna be notified, Hey,
your stuff's coming in. Do youwant it now? Yes, yes, yes,
yes. You know , and then it'slike, it's, it's like they
already want that. It's likeyou're , so then how, so then
the, the golf course p purchasea license , um, of uh , a
licensing agreement with you touse your software.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
Yep , yep . That's exactly it. Free for the end .
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Is that a yearly licensing fee or is that like
you don't, are you chargingbased on the like percentage,
blah, blah, blah .
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Just a yearly licensing fee. That's
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Smart. So makes it easy because you don't like ,
okay . Not all like convolutedand being like, well you only
sold 14 blah blah blahs.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
Yeah , exactly.
Easy. That's exactly it.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
Which makes even easier to sell later on
Speaker 7 (27:47):
like, okay, that's great thatyou drove $200,000. I don't
wanna necessarily pay now 30
Speaker 6 (27:56):
10%. Yeah, I'll be 20 grand for that. Like,
Speaker 7 (27:59):
Right. They, it's very easy when it's fixed price
to know the ROI . It's blackand white
Speaker 6 (28:06):
For you too because you know they're buying it for
the year or however longthey're buying it for. You
know, that money's coming in,they have to pay for it, move
on. Not like, oh I gotta chasemy money down. Where's my
percentage?
Speaker 7 (28:19):
Exactly. Exactly. So that's kind of been the , the
playbook and we just keepmaking the thing better every
single day .
Speaker 6 (28:26):
So how many courses do you have right now?
Speaker 7 (28:28):
350.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
A lot of courses.
Speaker 7 (28:30):
Yeah. Where's
Speaker 6 (28:31):
The biggest market at for you? California.
Speaker 7 (28:35):
You know, you'd think, but there have been some
hotspots. So DC we probably, wehave over 30 courses in DC in
that one market. We have ameaningful amount of all the
meetings and all the publiccourses in DC are using our
system, which
It's just how it's been. Likethe operators in that market
(28:57):
have taken, they
Speaker 6 (28:58):
All know each other.
Right. They're like, Hey.
Exactly.
Speaker 7 (29:02):
New York Metro. We have a ton of courses, you
know, in California we do. Butyou know, there's some hotspots
like Chicago, Florida, in , youknow, NorCal , we have in , in,
you know, Sacramento, like it'sbeen in , in , you know, we
have 10 courses. So do
Speaker 6 (29:16):
You have like a sales team that has to go
around or do you have to goaround and talk to these
people?
Speaker 7 (29:20):
We've just started to scale up our kind of sales
team. Um, but for the firstyear or so, it was just
Speaker 6 (29:27):
Word of mouth kind of me ,
Speaker 7 (29:28):
Just me. Just me helping out, chasing
Speaker 6 (29:30):
People down, calling 'em
Speaker 7 (29:33):
Little bit. Yeah.
Mostly as I said, like goingthrough a lot of the building
relationships with themulti-course operators, going
slow with them to prove it outbefore adding
Speaker 6 (29:44):
Yeah. And fix whatever issues. And so like,
and making them happy. So thenyou're like, okay, we're not
selling a product that hasproblems, you know, multiplied
by 350, you know, it's only bya hundred or
Speaker 7 (29:56):
Whatever . Right , right. So we won't scale up to
add the next one unless, youknow, people are happy and
they're getting the value andthey're , you know,
Speaker 6 (30:04):
Things
So how does the system work?
Okay, so like, I wanna playKenny Mac on Saturday. Yep .
And they don't have the time Iwant. Yep . What happens?
Speaker 7 (30:12):
It literally, there's a link on their T sheet
that says, didn't see the Ttime you're looking for at your
preferences. Here I wanna playSaturday morning, not only this
Saturday. Every Saturday forthe rest of the year between
seven and 10:00 AM from my fourcell notify. Then we start
pinging you, Paul .
Speaker 6 (30:28):
So is it like email or is it by phone or by text?
Both
Speaker 7 (30:31):
Email and text. So
Speaker 6 (30:32):
You can choose or is it both automatically
Speaker 7 (30:34):
You can choose
Speaker 6 (30:35):
And then it's like a notification. Hey dumb come
play golf
don't wanna , that's fine.
'cause there could be a 300other people that want be
notified. That's so now it'sfirst come first serve to , but
then, okay, so let's say I getthe notification, then what
happens? I have to go online orI just call the course. Or what
do people do ?
Speaker 7 (30:55):
You click a link which redirects you back to the
course on the exact day you'relooking for and then it's on
you
Speaker 6 (31:01):
Did this show like the whole fricking liket sheet
or just the time you want andyou can continue to like
purchase.
Speaker 7 (31:07):
So you put in a t time range, we'll drop you on
the right day you asked for,and then it's on you to book
the
Speaker 6 (31:14):
T sheet . Oh, you pay . Okay . That's smart.
Because of like, oh, I actuallywant 8 49, 8 20.
Speaker 7 (31:18):
Exactly. Exactly .
Speaker 6 (31:19):
And you just wanna get 'em back on the T sheet
page of the day that theywanted. Correct . So what
happens, so on the backendthen, let's say I canceled my
time. Yep . Right? I'm assuminghow it works. Yep . Then the T
sheet changes 'cause it gotcanceled. Yep . And then it
boop goes right back on thescreen. And then your , but on
the back end , your systemalready picks it up like, okay,
(31:41):
it's changed and then it goesboop and it goes out at the
same time.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
Pretty much. I mean we , that's
Speaker 6 (31:46):
When you first come first serve , but you're giving
the notification to whoeversigned up for notify.
Speaker 7 (31:49):
Similar. Yeah. Yeah.
And , and behind the scenes alot of the sophistication is
knowing who wanted what teetime when they wanted it. Like
there's a mountain ofparameters that Paul wanted.
Right. Database . All thethings that you wanted to play.
We have to match that toavailability. Like just to
(32:11):
trigger notification and go outto the right person at the
right time is,
Speaker 6 (32:15):
I can imagine your database is like crazy.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
There's a , I mean, DA and the engineering team,
like they're really mad golfscientists who are just
focusing on this one thing allthe time. So it's, it's getting
better every day. Every singleday we're chipping away, we're
adding this. And then, okay, ifyou think 350 operators, they
all have ideas about things tomake it better. So they're
(32:39):
always telling us, aj
Speaker 6 (32:40):
Yeah. They see problems that may have made a
problem yet or might be like,Hey, you might be able to tweak
it in this way. Which is coolbecause they're a partner then
they don't feel like you'retaking advantage of 'em. They
just think , Hey cool, you guysare helping us out. We have no
problem paying you for thelicensing and you could make us
a better product by doing this.
You're like , exactly . Okay,cool. We didn't know that. And
you guys know 'cause you're onthe front, you're on the front
(33:02):
line .
Speaker 7 (33:03):
Yeah. We want to be their partner. We want them to
feel comfortable to share, youknow, ideas and recommendations
and everything with us.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
Smart. You're smart, dude. Smart.
Speaker 7 (33:13):
You're
Speaker 6 (33:13):
Unfortunately though , you're you
Speaker 7 (33:15):
Friend . No , it's , it's okay .
Speaker 6 (33:18):
Dodgers for like a half hourtoday. We like to Dodgers. So
Speaker 7 (33:26):
day talking about the boys andBlue
Speaker 6 (33:32):
you know somebody went to OhioState? They tell you they went
to Ohio State. Like that's justthe thing. Like, it's like you
just , they'll just tell youall the time . So , um, it's
like with the Dodgers fan . Um,so what , what's in store for
you guys this year then ? Likewhat's ,
Speaker 7 (33:51):
So the plan right now is for us to , uh, to just
stay heads down and get betterevery single day. We're just
trying to maximize our impactof notify in the market right
now. So like 350 golf courses.
That's great. We think thatthere's much, there's a lot
more courses than that who havethe
Speaker 6 (34:07):
product. So
Speaker 7 (34:09):
That's the first step. Yeah. We could go
international, we could, youknow, but really we're excited
about other use cases as well.
You know, making sure that inspa and hospitality really as
many different use cases aspossible can benefit from , uh,
what we have here. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (34:27):
What would be good.
That's so smart. Is thereanything else like this product
in other markets or in otherindustries or Not really.
Speaker 7 (34:40):
I love what , um, OpenTable has in terms of that
seamless, you know, in therestaurant industry, but I've
not seen anything like this inhospitality across the board .
Speaker 6 (34:55):
No, I haven't either . I think it's , I think it's
genius. It's genius. Uh , sowhat what is your background
then, really? Is this tech or asales or what , or not sales,
but like you were at Accenture,what'd you do at Accenture?
Speaker 7 (35:13):
So when I was at Accenture, we had a stage
emerging technology. Andeverything we would do is try
and figure out how , um, we cantake cool startups to our big
clients, solve problems thesedeals and get, get in front of
(35:36):
their AI or their cloud ortheir digital health , their
cyber solution, and get it infront of the , uh, the
customers. Uh , learn a tonabout how to take startups to
market. Um , that's just what Idid every single day. So That's
(35:58):
cool . That's where, that'swhere I was at before I'd taken
the entrepreneur plunge .
Speaker 6 (36:02):
Man, dude, I'm really impressed with this .
This is cool. Like, I didn'tknow until like how robust this
is, but it's like , I think youguys just scratch the surface
like you were saying too.
Speaker 7 (36:12):
Yeah, I appreciate it. It's, it's a lot of fun. We
feel like kids in a candy shopright now doing what we're
doing. Um, and uh, we're, we'refired up man. I think the best
is yet to come. Yeah,
Speaker 6 (36:26):
Well where can people find you?
Speaker 7 (36:30):
So if you're a golfer , um, you can come ,
come to our website calledNotify N-O-T-E-F-Y app and we
have a, a segment on our site,which is all of our courses.
And we'd love for you to gosupport one of our course
partners if you're a golfer orgo knock on the GM's door and
say, Hey, why don't you guyshave notify? Um, and if you're
(36:51):
an operator , you do ,
Speaker 6 (36:52):
Jake will give you a , a free , uh,
Speaker 7 (36:55):
and then if you're an operator, uh, we'd love to chat about
how we can help your course.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
That's cool, man. I , I'm really impressed. This is
actually really cool. So smart.
It's like you find that littlething, right? That like needs
to be fixed and that's allabout entrepreneurialship,
right? And like h how do you, Idon't know , like you don't
have to be like, Jake sucks atgolf. I mean , you only played
for four years. I do this
Speaker 7 (37:22):
Dude ,
Speaker 6 (37:22):
This dude already figured out like the problem is
played golf for like thebeginning of time. So
Speaker 7 (37:28):
I thankfully , uh, the technology works better
than my golf game. 'cause itneeds a lot of help, man .
, uh, I'm , I'm hunting bogeygolf.
Speaker 6 (37:40):
Hey, we all are, dude, that's, that's just
normal. But well thank you forbeing on the show today. Um,
you guys had checked out ,notify, that's , I mean, I'm
really impressed. There's veryfew times where I'm impressed
with like software and golf andI'm like, dude, this thing's
smart. I think you're justscratching the surface is where
you guys can actually use it.
So , um, thank you for being onthe show and I'll see you guys
(38:00):
in the next episode.
Speaker 7 (38:01):
Thanks Paul.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Behind
the Golf Brand podcast. You'regonna beat me, the golf stay
connected on and off the showby visiting golfers
authority.com. Don't forget tolike, subscribe and leave a
comment. Golf is always morefun when you win. Stay out of
the beach and see you on thegreen.
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