Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore
It’s like playing a round of golf with some of the most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs and listening to the stories behind their success.
Hi, I’m Paul Liberatore, and I love talking to entrepreneurs and the stories behind their brands. I find it intriguing when people are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and successes. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to some of the biggest names and brands in the game of golf.
So come join me on my quest to find the stories Behind the Brand.
Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore
#144 - Whoosh: Colin Read (CEO)
Whoosh is a modern, cloud-based software platform designed to revolutionize operations and activity management for private clubs, golf courses, and entertainment venues. Launched in 2022, Whoosh addresses the long-standing challenges faced by the industry, which has traditionally relied on outdated, on-premise systems that are cumbersome and inefficient. By offering a tablet-centric, intuitive interface, Whoosh untethers staff from fixed workstations, enabling them to engage directly with members and guests across the property.
The platform streamlines workflows by automating and simplifying core business functions such as tee time booking, lesson scheduling, payment processing, and member communication. Its robust analytics tools provide insights into guest behavior and spending patterns, empowering clubs to optimize operations and enhance hospitality. Whoosh’s enriched member rosters equip staff with detailed information, helping create personalized experiences that make every guest feel valued.
Whoosh’s rapid adoption is fueled by its focus on solving real operational pain points, such as reducing revenue loss and saving significant staff time-often over 20 hours per week. The company has achieved strong traction, boasting high customer retention and expanding into public courses and “eatertainment” venues through strategic partnerships, including with Square for seamless payment integration.
Led by founders with deep expertise in both golf and technology, Whoosh continues to innovate, aiming to set new standards for digital transformation in the leisure and recreation industry. Its vision is to deliver best-in-class, integrated solutions that modernize club operations, improve communication, and elevate both staff efficiency and member satisfaction.
What's up guys? Welcome to the Behind the Golf Brand Podcast. Today I have my good friend, colin Reed from Woosh. If you guys are in the golf world in any way, shape or form and play I don't know if you can book a time you're probably using his app, um, or his software is pretty cool, but growing like crazy, and even before the show I found out that he grew up out here, so that's kind of cool too. So welcome to the show thanks, paul.
Colin:Appreciate you having me and uh excited to participate so where are you located right now, right? Now I'm calling you from Mill Valley, california, just over the Golden Gate Bridge, but my team we have about 30 people fully remote across the United States.
Paul:That's a lot. What's the weather like in San Francisco right now? Is it cold?
Colin:Doesn't change 61 degrees and foggy year-round.
Paul:Is it going to rain today? It always rains. I feel like when you're in San Francisco.
Colin:Sure hope not. To be honest, I'm hoping to probably hit a couple golf balls this afternoon. But yeah, it's 61 and a little foggy and overcast today About running the course here for the Bay Area. So did you grow up in golf? I did grow up in golf. I've had a golf club in my hand since I was seven years old. I picked up the game when my dad started to play and we grew up with the game together. Golf has been a big reason I am where I am today. Played competitive golf throughout Arizona, played competitive golf up in New England, played high school golf at Taft in Connecticut where I was captain of the team, and then I played at Claremont McKenna where I was a two-time All-American and captain of that team, and I actually tried going pro after that but realized my short game was not good enough and I learned that quickly, so-.
Paul:When did you realize that pro is probably not the path? When these guys are like good and better than?
Colin:you Like like I don't want to do that shit, forget it. I'm gonna say 2007. I was just graduated college. I was trying for a few months and I think there was a Southwestern tour event at Greyhawk and it was one of those times in June where they course played fast, they watered down the greens, so it was kind of vomit and flip, wedge in and I think the winner shot 59, 61, 62 and I realized at that point okay, cool, I can throw in a bunch of 65, 66s and not make money.
Paul:I am not sure I got much left in the tank, so that was kind of turning point when you start playing in that caliber yeah, it's funny because I think about a lot of different, like pros on the show or instructors that you know and they say the same thing. They're like yeah, at some point you just realize I'm good, but I'm not that good, or I'm not willing to try to get that good, because some people are just off the chart good, and then they go a different path, which is cool. It's levels.
Colin:I think there's levels everywhere you go, even at the college level. There's a big level between a college player and all america player. There's a big difference between a elite amateur, um, and definitely a professional. And then there's a big gap between those pros that are out there corn fairy, latin, amateur, those things and those that are top 100. So there's different gaps in the game and the higher you get, the better you get, the more those discrepancies and those levels really play a role so what did you do after golf?
Paul:so did you. What did you go into then?
Colin:so coming out, um, yeah, you know, I realized that golf wasn't kind of the path for me to go professional. Um, I fell into, you know, actually actually investment banking, doing SPACs when they were still called reverse mergers and pipes back in 2006. And for me, I then realized from the best banking side I had access to capital. So I started my first company called Ecotality. Back then we launched the Blink line of EV chargers. We IPO'd on NASDAQ in 2009. We supported the Leaf, the Volt, the Tesla. Abb would come and acquire us in 2012.
Colin:At that point I've had eight years of my life stuck between a utility and a car company. I wanted to innovate. I got in touch with Garrett Camp, founder of Uber, and they were starting up a new startup called Reserve after that, looking at table management. So I joined there on the founding team. Reserve would go and we'd end up merging actually with Resi. So a lot of what you see right now with Resi for fine dining table management was what we built at Reserve, became a VC for a minute and actually was on a board observer during that Resi transaction.
Colin:After that, I've always wanted to build things. Vc was in the past for me. So I actually founded a company called Above Data doing geospatial data for hedge funds, and then was looking to start this company in 2017, when I got poached to go run corp dev for a 5G internet play called Common Networks. We got acquired by Facebook or Meta in November of 2020, at which point I realized it's the perfect time to go start what I've always wanted, which was whoosh, and really focus on the golf world.
Paul:Bro, you're like 40 years old. You did all this stuff. This is crazy. Like you know, this is like someone's resume. Who's like 60, right Like that's crazy.
Colin:If you're not moving, you're dying right and I.
Paul:I know.
Colin:Yeah, you got to hustle. I realize I got a lot. Of some people have dials. I got an on-off switch, so when I'm on I try to when does the off switch go on? Not very often.
Paul:Not that often right Answer that question 2006.
Colin:2006,. That's when the on switch went on.
Paul:Yeah, but did you have, like, how did you, I don't know, did you just kind of build on your knowledge because you were playing golf before?
Colin:that was like was your, was your education in finance or was it in tech, or like, or just well, I came out of claremont as a government and psych major and, candidly, in college I watched way too much West Wing and so when I got out of college I was like I'm gonna go change the world.
Colin:And how did that happen? I ended up becoming, you know, assistant finance director, which is really assistant to the finance director for a lot of different campaigns, and I realized how what I was good at is actually raising money and asking for money for these political campaigns. And well, how do I parlay that? I can parlay that in private equity, because what you do primarily is raise capital. So I kind of realized at an early age that, you know, I am lucky enough to grown up in a country club environment around the company of adults. Asking for things is something I'm used to and that kind of parlayed into fundraising and starting companies. And I think the tech side if they go six to 2025 almost 20 years that's almost been the golden age of tech. It's been a gold rush silicon valley. So I'd say I cut my teeth in tech just as early as anyone else here.
Paul:Um in silicon valley I mean it's cool because, like it's almost like you had the education without even really realizing it right, just by when you're, by growing up in that world, so you weren't like awkward to it or like not. You know, like some people are probably afraid to say something or ask a question, and it's like I don't know, people have money, don't have problem spending it. If you say the right, if it's right question, and it's like I don't know, people have money, don't have problem spending it. If you say the right, if it's right, you know it's like is it going to make them money or not?
Colin:like no we're just talking here. I'd say one of the things I learned in my career is that you know that quote of success occurs when opportunity needs preparation right, and sometimes preparation is a mental thing. You don't feel prepared and I remember in 06 I'm founding this company and I'm building this to 200 people. I didn't feel prepared for that. I actually went back and got a master's degree from Arizona State, WP Carey alum things and I'd say, more than anything, I'm not a technical founder but I think we worked with so many great CTOs. I've worked with so many great CTOs, product minds and engineers that I've learned a lot around sprint cycles and agile sprint systems and how we do points and weighting and feature and product development. That has been helpful. But I would say right now I'm really good on the business side of things. I think I'm great at that piece. My co-founder and CTO, Scott Peppers, is one of the best CTOs I've worked with. He keeps a lot of the technology stuff under wraps I'm sorry, not under wraps, but under good control and good hands.
Paul:So you started Woosh in 2020?.
Colin:Yeah, we officially started December of 2020. We wrote our first on a code march of 21. We had a handful of beta customers in 21.
Paul:Then we officially launched at the pga show in january 22 what made you decide to go into this space, into like what's the word, in case we don't know whoosh is like. I guess first explain what whoosh is to the, to the audience, and then that might help.
Colin:Yeah so whoosh right now is a leader in reservation systems for golf clubs, specifically private and public, as well as full activity management. We have approaching 300 customers over the past three years. About 30 percent of the top 100 golf courses everywhere, from shinnecock and Seminole to Olympic Club and Whisper Rock use our platform for their daily operations and typically, if you're a member of a private club, you probably know us because we're your member app. We're the tool that staff uses, or if you go to a golf course at Grass Clippings, we're probably the booking engine behind that.
Paul:So then, what made you think this is a good space to go into? Because a lot of people might think like software for golf courses, it doesn't sound like sexy, right, but like why is this cool? You know what made you think like hey, there's a hole in the market for this.
Colin:So I'll give you two answers on that. The first one is a bit more of my own intrinsic motivation. Golf has given me so much. It got me into college. It's got me in a lot of places in my career.
Colin:I think the biggest piece for me has allowed me to grow up, as I mentioned, in the company of adults at Arizona Country Club. Realistically, I now have two young boys they're now nine and 11. But I wanted to show them hey, you can work hard, you can be successful at things and you can still do what you love. And for me, building a technology company, taking my tools that I've learned in the past and then applying that to a sector like golf, is showing them I can do and be successful at something you love. So, as a dad, there's a big motivation there. I think when it comes to golf, people forget that private golf and golf as a whole our technology is still antiquated. There has not been a lot of invention, a lot of disruption over the past 10, 15, 20 years. When you look at private golf clubs specifically, that is absolutely the case and they're probably the worst when it comes to technology that's available to them.
Paul:Why.
Colin:So in COVID well, in COVID, you know, everyone started moving to online tee times. A lot of clubs couldn't do it because a lot of their legacy providers don't even have apps, and so the private club world is dominated by 20-year-old technologies, on-premise servers Like a dot right. It feels that way in a lot of occasions, and what does that lead to? It leads to really bad member experiences and that leads to really bad staff interactions, right like you think about pga professionals today, and the big issue right now is retention of them, because a lot of these guys love golf and girls love golf, but they don't get the chance to play.
Colin:And so we came in and said, hey, if we can improve the member experience, we can create an app solution and a customer interface that's 10, 15, 20 years newer than what's on the market. That's more intuitive. Then, on the back and on the staff side, when you watch their workflows and how dysfunctional they are, if we can streamline those, we're going to change the industry. And that's kind of what we've done. We're saving pro shop staff 20 hours a week in staff time at a typical private club. That means that now your first and second assistants can actually maybe find time to go out and play with the members or take those 20 hours a week and devote that back to the member experience, right. So that's kind of how we've really changed um, I'd say operations. A lot of facilities is making them more streamlined and efficient, but really I think the member experience has been greatly improved too.
Paul:I mean it's cool, it's actually genius too, I think, if you think about it too, it's like it's an untapped market, right, because I mean I think everybody realized in 2020-ish COVID years that, like I mean, even post, you can't even book a tea time. It feels like right, and then you might get like back in the day you could go. Whatever that cheap ass website was. It's like, oh, here's wasted time, what was wasted time? Hours like three o'clock in the afternoon, you know somewhere in glendale, right, or something like that in the middle of summer. Um, but like, I mean you could, you especially? I mean I've had a lot of guests from la right.
Paul:Big problem there you can't get any tea time, not even a private side. I'm talking like this public. You can't get anything. That is now trickled. I feel like arizona, like essentially, you can't get a tea time. I mean it was like this growing up too, but this is a lot worse, right, I mean essentially, from like what end of october till about I don't know now may, right, like good luck getting a tea time. And if you do, it's going to be like buku expensive, which that wasn't, I mean the. The cost is different, but just even trying to get a tea time. So I could imagine how that's even compounded when it comes to the private side. Because no one's talking to these guys, right? No one's talking to these golf courses, they're because that's more of a private play, right?
Colin:Yeah, I mean, if you look at private golf, let's just look what COVID did. Covid saw increase in rounds about 15 to 20% across the nation. In private clubs, though, you saw 30, 35% increase in play. If a club is doing 30,000 rounds and now they're doing 37,000 rounds on the same track with the same membership, that's a tough experience for staff. That's an even tougher experience for the members that are now dealing with a lot of compaction during primetime periods. So that's like something that we're really trying to solve.
Colin:I think public golf as a whole. What people take for granted is golf course is like a restaurant, you know, and when you want to go to the best restaurants in town, odds are you're probably not just going to make that reservation same day. And what we're seeing now with record levels of play across the country, with supply and demand, you know, or the supply side of golf courses really leveling out we're going to see a lot more golfers per per course, and so the future of this game is people are going to have to learn. If you want to go play at the best course in your area, you got to plan a week or two in advance, right? You're not going to have that last minute tee time anymore, unless you're going to your local Muni and even then in markets like LA you might get lucky.
Paul:Yeah, even at Muni you might get lucky.
Colin:And then places like private clubs. Now everyone's moving to tee times on the weekends, right. Long gone are the days of just walk up and play. So now we start to think about how do we use digital tools the right way, how do we use weightless management the right way, and start to automate those tools and create a better experience for golfers to access these facilities. This industry is on the cusp of a lot of disruption right now and I'm proud to say I think that we're actually leading the way and causing some of our competitors to really raise the bar.
Paul:So are you guys only focused on private or only when it comes to software?
Colin:Private's probably our bread and butter. That's where we started. We started off first with a cloud-based cloud-based solution for no tea time facilities. We brought on some of the best courses in the country. Places like Oupi and Yemen Tall were some of our first users Shinnecock places like that. We then built tea time requests and we built full direct tea times with member apps and booking restrictions and really our claim to fame there is we can handle restrictions better than anywhere else. And again in COVID you started seeing a lot more restrictions on private play. Then all of our customers came to us and said hey, you built the best golf solution. Can you service the rest of our club?
Paul:So then we built out rackets fitness tennis, because a lot of these guys don't just own one course, they own a massive portfolio of courses.
Colin:Or even don't just own one course. They own like a massive portfolio of courses we'll even take. Take, for example, olympic club. You have three golf courses. At downtown campus, which is athletic center, you have fitness, tennis, swimming, basketball, barbershops right, they don't want to look everywhere for that software, so we've now come in and basically been the primary booking engine and then we had a lot for golf, for everything but essentially it's like it doesn't matter.
Paul:Insert product here, right, like whatever the item is, it's the same process.
Colin:I mean that's right and then what happened is a lot of the golf multi-course operators came to us, said, hey, we want you to service our entire portfolio and and it's public and private. So last year we did a strategic partnership with Square, the big point of sale company. They are now our preferred provider in public golf solutions and so when we go into a public golf course, we typically come in with Square. Again, thinking about it's 2025, the cloud's. Here, you know, integrations work. How do we bring best-in-class solutions for every single operator in the facility, and that's what we did with Square for public We'll be announcing pretty shortly here our kind of preferred private partner as well but really taking an open ecosystem 2025 modern approach to the whole industry. So, to answer your question, I'd say right now, about 90 percent of portfolio is private. The other 10 is public. The area that we see the most growth in public actually is in the simulator and yeah, I didn't ask you about that.
Paul:I saw you like have all this like the simulator reservations, like how it is. How is how? What is similar or different in comparison just to regular golf course stuff when it comes to simulator?
Colin:You know, I think we kind of have two products. We have a T-sheet, which most people think about as kind of slot-based, and then we have activity management, which think of it like tennis bookings and courts, which is very similar to what we do for simulator bookings. We have now been, we have a partnership with Foresight Sports where we are their largest provider I'm sorry, we're their preferred provider of commercial simulator software and we're seeing massive amounts of growth in the SIM space. That's probably been one of our largest growth areas recently is everyone's opening, you know, five bay, 10 bay SIM facilities and they need something to manage membership.
Paul:You can see that a lot in public courses too. Like I hear at least, you're seeing people build additions to the public course to have Sims on there, so they can rent that out too.
Colin:Look at Grass Clippings. They just put in, I think, 18 top tracer bays. Yeah, you know, and I think that's really Not the ranch right Like all these.
Paul:Well, I guess yeah.
Colin:I mean both city courses technically, but they're managed by outside. We see that growing a ton right. And if you're a golf facility, we talk about pro shops or golf shops right, golf shops sell golf. That doesn't have to be green grass, it can be indoors and in the sim.
Paul:And what you're doing is giving people an opportunity. Have you been to Dobson Ranch? I was just there. You played Dobson Ranch before doing is gonna be up in ranch. I was just there, like um, you played up. You played up in ranch before, of course, a million times, right, and so, like I was just there, they put a freaking miniature golf there in the front, but in front of the top, tracers are right before you get to this miniature golf now, like a little mini miniature golf course. I was like what the f?
Colin:like it's crazy dude, it is crazy. We're seeing the rise of golf complexes, not just golf courses. Yeah, I think that's the big gap and we look now in public. Historically, everyone's built a homegrown t-sheet and attached a subpar point of sale to it.
Paul:Now I look at it right, I mean forever, like because no one's playing golf, but golf. But golf is changing. Golf is changing right now.
Colin:You look at a golf facility and they probably have lessons, clinics, events, simulators, connected ranges, maybe a bocce ball, whatever that is, plus a full F and B restaurant. So we look at this and say the game of golf is evolving, which is not just golf courses, it's golf facilities. How do we build the right software for the entire facility, for all of those operators?
Paul:So how many commercial simulator places do you think you're working through now, or is it just, or it is all connected to the other courses. You know the same, the same stuff. Is there any separate systems? You don't even are separate places, or are they all attached?
Colin:lot of them are separate I'd say in the private club world, probably at this point 10, 15 of our portfolio, is adopting some sort of indoor sim for lessons, instruction, training, academy of the winter.
Paul:It's so funny, isn't it? Is that so random like you still would never have? Like I've been talking about this for years and now it's actually happening. You know what I mean.
Colin:Where, like technology, everywhere, dude, it's the technology is moving fast and the cost of adoption is going down right. A sim facility 10 years ago used to be a hundred thousand dollars. Now it's like 30 to 40 right. So that cost curve will continue to go down and it becomes. It will become the next few years and then any of that golfers expect at any club or any facility so you can't have like a.
Paul:You can't walk into a club or a pro or I mean a club for damn sure but like you can't go to like a public course and not have a. You have a sim right or like, or if you do it, one is not going to be enough. It's going to have to be like four bays. Five bays, you know what I mean.
Colin:I think there are flavors. I'll pick on some local clubs in that area. Right, if you go to Greyhawk, you're there to play the golf course, you're there to be in Phil's Grill. If they didn't have a sim facility. Not the end of the world, right, but then the rest of that Phoenix market, how do yourself? I go down to south mountain, I start looking at the courses down there. What's different, what's the amenity? Where do I want to hang? Well, yeah, I think at that point, these ancillary services around the golf course, simulators, hitting bays, connected ranges, those are all reasons for me just to go there and have a drink and hang out with my buddies and oh you're why?
Paul:why I want to come and, like, turn into an event, like you know what I mean, like you, it's, it's, yeah, it's changing. This is changing, it's not?
Colin:simulators to me, and let's actually give credit where credit's due top golf, top golf, top golf has changed the world and in the golf world, and the fact that it's now making golf more acceptable to masses. Come as you are, you don't have to wear pleated pants with a tucked in collared shirt anymore. Right, this could be a fun environment. There you go, between you, know your your your lunch break after hours, with your kids, with your wife and your family, whether they play golf or not, and they're going to feel comfortable right.
Paul:So simulators? Yeah, it's, it's closing the gap. You know what I? Mean accessibility is what it's doing, or that's what it's done really.
Colin:And what we're seeing. I think NGF posted last year that 10% of all off course golfers migrate to green grass every year. So what that tells me is that the game of golf is only getting healthier and stronger. We have a healthy pipeline of green grass players coming in. I think the boom in Sims which we're going to see even more in the UK, where they have much more space constraints than here in the U S that is going to lead to the next generation of golfers.
Paul:Do you think? So? What was I talking to someone? They're opening up oh damn it. They're opening up like Sim Sim sim facilities in the uk and it's a big sim company. I was like I was surprised. I was like, wait, what it was small. It wasn't like you had a big. You know, like in my mind you think like it's a bay, right, and you have at least. But it was even smaller than that. It was not. It was probably half the size of a normal bay.
Colin:I was like the frick you know, so you don't even need space, like essentially I just visited pitch in downtown london last week and it was I think eight or nine bays memberships, you know, public too, and at night it feels like a nightclub, you know, and I think those are really approachable. It's packed, it's slammed, you know people ordering 18 drinks.
Paul:You know, yeah, it's like it's something to do while you're at a bar.
Colin:You know what I mean or like, and that's also where we see this coming into play. Right, the amount of times now that we're seeing simulators put in at Denver Airport, we have Golf Den, which is a simulator facility there. We see this at bars and places like that. When people now think about going out to eat, they're not just thinking about the food, they're thinking about the experience. And I like to remind people, dining is actually one of the last forms of live entertainment, right, the whole staff kind of works as a school of fish and you're there to see that experience and be served. Right, it's the show. That show has become much more engaging, much more interactive. Places like spin for ping pong um, you know there's one for darts there. There's TOCA sports for soccer You're seeing this with T-squared social and Times Square. You know threes in Greenville, like. You're seeing much more of this food entertainment concept.
Colin:And I think where we play the void, where we fill the gaps here, is we can now create a high-end reservation experience for everything. You know, I even look at resorts a long way. I have the thesis here that high-end reservation experience for everything. You know, I even look at resorts a long way. I have the thesis here that high-end reservations are broken. I look at resorts and I think about some of the beautiful resorts in Hawaii that have great golf courses, and online you can very easily drop a couple thousand dollars on your hotel room, but trying to book that golf course you've got to call the shop, yeah. And then everything else that they market to you nature walks, your life fest for your kids, your helicopter tours, anything else you actually can't book without calling someone. So at the high end of like experiences and hospitality, reservations to me today are still broken. That's where we want.
Paul:We used to kind of fill the gap and we're tackling golf first and we'll kind of get the rest of them here as we go I think it's smart too, because even on the golf side of the private side, like that's where a lot of the decision makers are right, so in other industries. So they're going to be like oh well, why don't we have this in x or y or whatever you know?
Colin:yeah, golf has a lot of influence, um, whether we know it or not, right? And so I think when we give those premier experiences at those facilities, that's how it spreads. I look at some of the lifestyle brands. I think Olo is a good example that actually came from some of the private club world and that's where it first started getting worn, and now they're kind of like the next Lululemon right. So we start to see kind of the top-down and when it comes to kind of luxurious hospitality, I'd say, and why not start at the top?
Paul:Are you moving into pickleball too? Is that part of this picture? Because I would think, like Rackets is a big piece of what we do.
Colin:We support a lot of, you know, large racket facilities, places of 30, 40 courts to us. Golf, uh, I'm sorry. Tennis, padel, pickleball that's a racket sports, a court it's booking, yeah, um, I think pickleball is is, candidly, I think padel is the largest, fastest growing racket sport in the world. I think right now, despite what you see in the hype, we're seeing more people put in padel facilities than pickleball yes, if people don't know who people don't know that is.
Colin:What is that? It's a combination of, uh, tennis, pickleball and squash all in one. They're kind of like these small mini tennis courts with glass um all around them and we're seeing that sport really take off. And so, yeah, answer your question. Yes, we service all rack facilities, pickleball included.
Paul:I think it's cool. I love, I love talking to smart people. This is smart. Like I've had a lot of smart people, but you're like, on a different level, smart um I've had. Like I've had, like you know, like five iron golf I've had.
Paul:Like the founders of that I've always like the sim space come in and it's like it's cool to see and hear it. But then to be like all these like the sim space come in and it's like it's cool to see and hear it. But then to be like it's almost like I don't think people realize it, but like you're the backbone of the of the system, right? Like essentially it's like, yeah, they want their app to look cool and they want everything to work out seamlessly, but like these facilities don't have time to figure that shit out and if they try to go figure it out, it's gonna be all messed up and they're gonna spend a ton of money on it. Because, like you're simply developing something right from scratch. So, and even to have that many private courses sign up like and you that trust it right, because they can't mess it up, because they piss off their membership, they're gonna be that they're hosed right yeah, especially some of our clientele like seminal and fryer's head and sabonic and places like that.
Colin:You know we need to get this right and yeah yeah, some places may use it just as a staff tool because we give them better hospitality tools to provide that level of service, right. But we're seeing a lot of folks say, nope, we need to give control back to the members. The membership's getting younger, they need to be able to book at their fingertips, just like an uber, and so we're seeing a lot of places.
Paul:Yeah, they're not gonna wait and they're not gonna accept it.
Paul:Yeah if you're money and you you're already paying for a private membership and you're paying like you're not waiting right, essentially, you want to see it now, you want to have access and you want to get instant gratification, exactly, and if you don't, there's gonna be a big problem. You should probably make, you should probably create, like, a betting app on the app like and the app side for all the like rich guys when they because you know they all bet, when they all play golf and stuff like to be like, okay, who owes who money and stuff slightly different uh set of compliance issues as we move.
Paul:yeah, online betting, exchange your money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we only take cash. Online betting, exchanging money yeah, yeah, yeah, we only take cash. That version of crazy. I have a story. It's a private course.
Colin:It's about the kind of money people won and lost and I'm like dude that's more money than I made in the first year of getting out of college when I was trying to go pro. That was how I tried to get better was put myself in those pressure situations and you play a big game at Arizona country club or whisper rock or some of these courses, and you realize, man, I got my rental line this month. You better make a shot, yeah, you better make that six footer Right.
Paul:And so, yeah, I think your parents were members at Arizona country club, or was your dad into golf, or was what was. What did he do?
Colin:uh, yeah, my dad started um developer he was. He was an entrepreneur himself. He actually was um the ceo of park plaza hotels and resorts, so he came from the hospitality space um, and so we both started learning at the same time and we went to arizona, we joined the club and you know it's unique because that club felt like family. That was my second home.
Paul:I went to St Teresa's. I love that. That place is awesome, man. It's like right in the middle of the city and it's like I don't know, it's just cool.
Colin:It's very Sixth, thirteenth grade, of Bonnie and the Halfway House making Otis Bunkmeyer cookies and that was like our afternoon snack. You know we were the range rats that were always there that the members complained about for beating up the range Right, and that was my upbringing.
Colin:And I think that was a great place to learn. But you know, a lot of what we built looks back on that, on that system, looks back on how Arizona operated, how they went from. Everyone submits their tee times on a pen and paper and you'll know 48 hours out, when your paper tee sheet in the pro shop and then he starts saying, oh, you got a bag drop.
Paul:You got a call. I'll be like well, it's open tomorrow. It wouldn't be available, right? Oh, what a waste of time, you know.
Colin:So that's become more efficient. Right, and now we said okay, you've adopted tools now that are 20 years old. How do we make those tools even better? And so that's going to happen.
Paul:Yeah, you've seen it in other tech spaces, right? I mean like with Uber and everything else, like you don't need to have all that.
Colin:In a space that's dominated by 20-year-old legacy incumbents or longer right incumbents on-premise servers.
Paul:I bet some of this shit's really old dude.
Colin:It's really really old Windows 95-based CD software.
Paul:You're not off. It's a spreadsheet that somebody made in 2002, right. And then they're like oh, this is what you use.
Colin:I've seen clubs with 2,000 members that are running off a Windows XP backbone Right. This is not uncommon in the space and that's why there's such a big opportunity now. And I like to remind folks that never in any industry that has tennis, golf, fitness, spa, admin, member billing, do you buy all your software from one provider Like I can't tell you another industry where that happens. And so if you want to give Michelin quality level of service at your restaurant, you can't give them a Windows XP platform and expect them with those tools. You'd be like what is this? So we have really taken the mindset of hey, let's partner with Seven Rooms for Dining, let's partner with Best in Class Golf Genius for Tournament Management, let's make sure everything looks, feels, the right way to the members and that from the staff perspective, everything talks to each other. So you're not doing a lot of manual data entry, right, and that's where we see a lot more of efficiency and modernization of these systems.
Paul:So do people. So I'm assuming I already know the answer to this, but like, do country clubs or or places? They? They buy the software or they lease it from you? You know what I mean. Whatever, I remember they, what's the word? I can't think of the word.
Colin:We're a sass company, so they subscribe.
Paul:You're sass, right? Yeah, watch all the money's out doing sasses. Come on now. Watch all the monies I do in SASSs. Come on now. I keep doing what SASSs are, whether it's software or it's a service. Right, that's right. That's where the move. That's making something that somebody doesn't want to, making a software around something that people hate doing.
Colin:I mean it's great for us too. We're not sending you a CD-ROM, we don't have to install it on-premise server, which means that we can do fixes on a daily basis. We can continually improve this system.
Paul:You can test it and fix it and then push it.
Colin:And that's changing the game right. So how do we continue to innovate and disrupt? Well, keep doing it and make sure that we can push it out in real time to our members and our staff, so then. So then, how many courses do you have? Right now, we're approaching about 300 golf courses across the country over since since january of 22, so about two and a half years.
Paul:Are you finding with this, with the data, like there's really not a lot of times available, you know what I mean or a majority of times booked, and I guess it depends on the course and depends on the, the day and time of that facility.
Colin:Um, the biggest in private clubs we see, the biggest. It's very similar to public. Biggest compaction areas are probably friday around noon, apparently half the country plays golf friday around noons.
Paul:Saturday morning, sunday morning friday like traffic man, everybody's working from home yeah, I'd probably say the next biggest day is Wednesday afternoons. Why.
Colin:A lot of private club members like to play golf and have standing games on Wednesdays. We call them the doctors or the bankers, the lawyers games that are all going out Wednesday afternoons. So you start to see your times. But I'd say in general, most of our clubs on average are doing 30, 32,000 rounds a year. Some I'd say in general most of our clubs on average are doing 30,000, 32,000 rounds a year. Some of the lower-end ones are probably in the 20K range, highest end I think we have. Of course it's on pace to do over 80,000 rounds this year.
Paul:That's amazing. So when was the last time you were in Arizona?
Colin:I was in Arizona in early December playing in the Grass League and the Grass League was open. Grass Clippings opened there or the Grass League opened at Grass Clippings.
Paul:Was it I was?
Colin:Yeah, I was sponsored. I was part of the Canadian Hat Tricks and I got to play with a great professional golfer named Andrew Yoon, who's a local boy there in Arizona. Great, great player, probably the best wedge and putter I think I've ever played with.
Paul:You're like see, I could have done that too, man, and I continued, but I'm not a wedge guy. All right, let's kick ass to the ass. So peace out.
Colin:Well, it was a great compliment to my game.
Paul:We finished I think, what is your specialty? What would you say is like your thing, irons, or your driver, or what?
Colin:what do you really? Uh, you know, my swing speed with the driver is about 111, 112 so I'm not crazy deep, but I hit a lot of fairways, I hit a lot of greens and I make a lot of putts, and that's usually a recipe for success um.
Paul:Where can people find whoosh if you're in?
Colin:yep, visit our website, wwwwooshio w-h-o-s-hio. Um. Fill out the forum there.
Paul:We can do a demo, happy to chat with you guys, or probably reach out to your local private club because they're probably using us but you even know it and you're probably like, oh, this is so awesome, I wish I had thought this myself and like, sorry, colin already figured it out. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I love talking about tech. See, I don't know, I geek out on it because I think it's cool, and a lot of the time too, like people stumble on it you know what I mean Like what they're doing and they don't realize it. But you've already figured it out, so it's like I'm gonna make it better.
Colin:So I think it's really we haven't figured it out and I would say it's not all me, paul. I got a great team, scott, on the engineering side, the rest of my engineering, my customer success team like it's not just tech, it's just the people behind it. That's powering. And I say, if you like tech, get excited because in golf you're going to see a lot more of it in the coming years.
Colin:It should not disrupt your on-course experience, but it should make your experience in that facility a lot better, a lot more simple and easier to get to, and I'm really excited about what the innovation landscape looks like going forward.
Paul:Well, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it and I'll see you guys in the next episode.
Colin:Thanks for having me, Paul.
:Thanks for listening to another episode of behind the golf brand podcast. You're gonna beat me. Stay connected on and off the show by visiting golfersauthoritycom. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a comment. Golf is always more fun when you win. Stay out of the beach and see you on the green.
