TenFore Golf podcast with Jonathan Wride and Jarrette Schule
Episode 22

TenFore Golf podcast with Jonathan Wride and Jarrette Schule

In this episode of the Tech Caddie podcast, Mike Hendrix interviews Jonathan Wride and Jarrette Schule from TenFore Golf. They discuss the origin story of TenFore, the challenges faced in developing golf management software, and the importance of user experience. Jonathan opens up about how he co-founded Supreme Golf with Ryan Ewers and the journey that led to Jonathan leaving Supreme Golf to help Jarrette build TenFore Golf.

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Jonathan Wride

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1hr 10min

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Description:

In this episode of the Tech Caddie podcast, Mike Hendrix interviews Jonathan Wride and Jarrette Schule from TenFore Golf. They discuss the origin story of TenFore, the challenges faced in developing golf management software, and the importance of user experience. Jonathan opens up about how he co-founded Supreme Golf with Ryan Ewers and the journey that led to Jonathan leaving Supreme Golf to help Jarrette build TenFore Golf. You'll learn about the Golfler and foreUP acquisitions and you'll learn about the strong board of directors Jonathan assembled at Supreme Golf. Jonathan shares his vision for the company and how their technology stands out in the market. The conversation also covers the partnership between Jonathan and Jarrette, innovations like their Jackrabbit kiosk software, and the recent Reserve with Google integration. They emphasize the importance of proving their commitment to putting their money where their mouth is. Their ground breaking development around credit card surcharging and tee time marketplace disruption in golf puts them at the forefront of technology in the industry.

As Promised:

Magic Clips:

PGA General Manager Chad Pettingill shares his golf technology strategy

Watch as Mike and Chad explore the booking experience when using Lightspeed Golf in a desktop environment. Chad provides a pro tip in using Golf EMS to simply his events and golf packages operation and learn why Chad opted to leave foreUP and Sagacity Golf in favor of Lightspeed.

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Chad Pettingill

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40min

TenFore Golf podcast with Jonathan Wride and Jarrette Schule

In this episode of the Tech Caddie podcast, Mike Hendrix interviews Jonathan Wride and Jarrette Schule from TenFore Golf. They discuss the origin story of TenFore, the challenges faced in developing golf management software, and the importance of user experience. Jonathan opens up about how he co-founded Supreme Golf with Ryan Ewers and the journey that led to Jonathan leaving Supreme Golf to help Jarrette build TenFore Golf.

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Jonathan Wride

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1hr 10min

Proshop Tee Times Jay Snider

In this episode you'll meet Jay Snider who built a simple tee sheet and email tool for his country club, to help keep dues down. Today, Proshop Tee Times has become a robust point-of-sale, tee sheet, member management solution for a wide variety of golf courses.

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Jay Snider

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52min

Robb Smyth from Cobalt Software a private country club expert

In this episode of the Tech Caddie podcast, Mike Hendrix interviews Rob Smyth from Cobalt Software, discussing his journey in the golf technology industry, the evolution of Smyth Systems, and the impact of family-owned businesses on company culture.

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Robb Smyth

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1hr 11min

CourseRev launches AI Powered Tee Time Booking by Phone and Chat

CourseRev is a voice reservation system for golf courses that uses AI technology to handle tee time bookings over the phone. The system can integrate with tee sheet systems like Lightspeed and Club Prophet, allowing golfers to make reservations, join waitlists, and receive directions to the golf course. The system has surpassed online reservations in terms of volume and has handled more than 75-80 calls per day for a course. CourseRev is a game changer in terms of labor costs and customer experience.

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Manna Justin

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52min

The Strategy Behind Colin Read's Golf Tech Fundraising

Colin Read, co-founder of Whoosh, discusses his background in golf and entrepreneurship, as well as the challenges and opportunities in the golf tech industry. He emphasizes the importance of improving member and guest experiences, as well as staff workflows, through technology.

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Colin Read

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48min

USGA's Scott Mingay talks GS3 golf ball and Deacon platform

Mike Hendrix interviews Scott Mingay from the USGA. They discuss the development of the GS3, a golf ball that measures green speed, smoothness, and firmness. The GS3 is used by golf course operators and superintendents to improve the playing experience and make data-driven decisions about maintenance practices. The conversation focused on the GS3 ball and the Deacon course management system. The Deacon platform is a cloud-based system that integrates data from various sources to help golf course superintendents make informed decisions.

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Scott Mingay

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58min

Golfspot - Your Single Point Of Truth

Menno Liebregts, founder of Golfspot, discusses the challenges of managing customer data in the golf industry and the need for an integrated solution. He shares insights on the company's journey, customer base, funding, and expansion plans. The conversation highlights the importance of open platforms and the impact of data on decision-making in the golf industry.

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Menno Liebregts

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37min

Jason Pearsall about Building Club Caddie, Autism and the Future

Jason Pearsall, the founder of Club Caddie, shares his journey of building the company and the importance of understanding the day-to-day operations of a golf course. Jason has the unique perspective as a golf course owner as he purchased Warren Valley Golf Course in 2022. Club Caddie started as a food and beverage delivery system called Golfler, but quickly evolved into a full clubhouse management software. Pearsall's experience as a golf course owner and operator have allowed him to build a product that solves real problems for golf course operators. The company has experienced significant growth and success, winning deals with management companies and continuously improving their product.

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Jason Pearsall

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1hr 11min

Overwhelming Support for LA City Golf New $10 Player Deposit Tee Times

Kevin Fitzgerald, Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association, provides an update on recent meetings regarding the implementation of a pilot program for golf tee time bookings in Los Angeles. The Golf Advisory Committee and the Recreation and Park Board of Commissioners both endorsed the staff recommendation for a $10 non-refundable deposit per player when booking a tee time.

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Kevin Fitzgerald

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34min

ezLocator founder Jon Schultz conversation on The Tech Caddie podcast

Jon Schultz, founder of ezLocator, discusses how their solution helps superintendents find the daily optimum hole location and enhances communication within a golf facility. ezLocator now include AI to improve the customer experience.

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Jon Schultz

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35min

Inside the LA City golf tee time controversy

In this episode of the Tech Caddie podcast, Mike Hendrix speaks with Kevin Fitzgerald, the Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association, about the intersection of golf and public policy. Included is the TikTok video from Dave Fink which helped expose the gray market on the KaKao app, used by hundreds of golfers to score the best tee times available at the LA City municipal golf courses. Aaron Gleason from Golf Geek Software, discussed their solution called FairPlay Guardian, which uses machine learning to detect fraudulent activity in tee time bookings. Matt Holder from Loop Golf emphasized the need for operators to understand the pricing pressure and revenue management opportunities in the golf industry.

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Kevin Fitzgerald, Aaron Gleason, Matt Holder

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54min

Aaron Gleason, Golf Geek Co-Founder, announces FairPlay Guardian

Aaron Gleason discusses the issue of reselling tee times at LA City Golf courses and how Golf Geek's FairPlay Guardian technology can help detect and prevent fraudulent activity. He also spoke about the importance of knowing the conversion rate of a booking engine and how marketing automation can help increase revenue.

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Aaron Gleason

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29min

Kevin Fitzgerald from Southern California Golf Association

Mike Hendrix and Kevin Fitzgerald, the Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association have a conversation about golf in Los Angeles. They discuss the role of the advisory board for Los Angeles City Golf Courses and the intersection of golf and public policy. They also peer into the issue of reservation systems and online brokers in the golf industry and specifically the City of Los Angeles.

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Kevin Fitzgerald

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43min

Matt Holder from Loop Golf clears the air on The Tech Caddie podcast

Matt Holder from Loop Golf joins the podcast to discuss Loop Golf. Matt talks about the early days for Loop and mistakes made along the way. Mike and Matt go into detail about tee time scraping and how Loop helps golf courses.

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Matt Holder

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29min

Don Rea, golf course owner and VP, PGA of America talks tech

Don Rea joined Mike Hendrix on The Tech Caddie podcast for a conversation about the technology Don uses to run the golf course he owns in Mesa, AZ - Augusta Ranch Golf Club. Don is the VP of the PGA of America and he speaks about operating technology from that perspective and from his knowledge gained as a podcast host with Jay Karen, the Executive Director of the NGCOA.

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Don Rea Jr.

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48min

Del Ratcliffe, Founder Kodology - PITCHcrm, joins Mike on The Tech Caddie podcast

Del shares his background as an entrepreneur and his life in golf. He discusses the history of Seven Jars Distillery and the discovery of buried treasure on his family farm. Del talks about entering the golf business and the importance of technology in the industry. He shares his experiences with EZLinks and Fore Reservations, as well as the development of Kodology and Pitch CRM.

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Del Ratcliffe

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1hr 6min

Morgan Kimmins joins Mike Hendrix on The Tech Caddie podcast

Morgan Kimmins from Springfield Golf Resort in Chandler, Arizona discusses their use of Lightspeed technology and the impact it has had on their business. He highlights the benefits of Lightspeed's punch pass feature and the ease of use of their booking engine. He also discusses the importance of communication and the use of technology for frost delays. Morgan emphasizes the value of support and training provided by Lightspeed and the positive experience they have had with their customer service.

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Mogan Kimmins

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42min

Dave Vanslette joins Mike Hendrix on The Tech Caddie podcast

Dave Vanslette, Founder and CEO from FAIRWAYiQ discusses the evolution of the company and its focus on data and automation in the golf industry. They have developed hardware sensors and software solutions to optimize golf course operations and enhance the player experience. They are focused on reducing friction and improving efficiency in the golf industry through AI and automation. The company has a strong customer support system and aims to provide value to golf courses of all types

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Dave Vanslette

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51min

Brendon Beebe formerly foreUP CTO

Brendon Beebe, former CTO of foreUP, discusses his experience in the golf industry and building a successful company. He emphasizes the value of bootstrapping, hyper-focusing on specific market segments, and building a flexible system to meet the needs of different golf courses. At the end of the episode, Brendon asks Mike about how he would compete with GolfNow if he was to build a tee time aggregator and how he would use GolfNow if he was a golf course owner.

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Brendon Beebe

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51min

Allison George Toad Valley Golf Course

Allison George, a golf course owner and operator, discusses her experiences with various technology platforms in the golf industry. She shares personal updates, including her involvement in the golf industry and her use of technology in her golf courses.

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Allison George

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55min

Dathan Wong Noteefy

Noteefy is a waitlist software that aims to help golfers play more golf and golf courses make more money. The product allows golfers to set their preferences for tee times and receive alerts when those tee times become available.

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Dathan Wong

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36min

Tyler Arnold Eagle Club Systems

Tyler Arnold, CEO of Eagle Club Systems, discusses the company's golf management software and its success in the industry. He highlights the flexibility and simplicity of their system, as well as their focus on customer support.

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Tyler Arnold

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35min

Transcript:

Welcome. I am Mike Hendrix from SMB Golf. And today we have two guests from TenFore Golf, Jonathan Wride, CEO, and Jarrette Schule, founder and CTO. So gentlemen, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. So I think I've been aware of TenFore certainly more than two years.

and you guys have gone through a lot of change in the last 18 months. think that's fair to say. Yes. Yes. I think that's fair. Okay. but Jarrette since you're the founder, why don't you give us a little background on, how this thing kind of sprung out of the ground, what the origin story is. and then I think everybody would be really interested to know about today and where the, where the company sits today and how the technology works today.

Yeah, sure. So I'm a coder by trade. That's what I've always done 25 years or so. And so I'm an engineer at heart and, I worked for, some big companies and some smaller companies. And then around 2008, 2007, I was like, I'm done working for big companies. They're not exciting.

too many meetings and I got an offer to work for a startup in the medical world. And then I loved it. And so I was pretty much a full stack programmer for different startups and different, oil and gas banking. And I just picked up the game of golf and I kind of fell in love with it. And one of my playing partners, I'll never forget, we had, he's just always looking for the car girl and

I said, why don't I just build something as a side hustle, like an app where you could just, you know, order from the bev cart on the course and they know where you are. And it's kind of like an Ubering beer to yourself. what year is this? Jarrette? this would be, 2016. We kind of just had this idea to build this, this app and ended up being like a little point of sale that ran on a phone, smartphone, and then a little customer facing app.

that did the same. there two separate apps and are basically just a way for a golfer to communicate with a bev cart, like 10-4 good buddy, you know, that kind of thing. And they're just communicating and buying, I'm buying stuff from the bev cart and the bev carts getting my location on the course in a human readable form. So John on the third hole, putting green ordered four Bud Lights. She's paid, she's tipped. All she has to do is

drop the beer off and move. So you're kind of removing that log jam. That's the way I had envisioned it in my mind, right? Just streamlining that business operation on the course. the bev cart attendant, think has the other app, correct? Yeah. Well, it's really just a little point of sale app that have notifications and say, Hey, this guy wants this over here, but she could also ring up traditional orders

at the same time. So I went to market with it. I had a buddy who gave me a little bit of money just to try it out. And I went to a PGA show back in like, I want to say it was like 2017. And I kind of had some, some resistance, every golfer I talked to was like, OMG that's the greatest idea I've ever heard of. Right. And every operator I met, I knew nothing about the golf.

And every operator says, know, bev cart's like 5 % of my total revenue. does this integrate with my, my point of sale system? And I was like, well, gosh, I never really thought about that. He's like, yeah, I don't want to run two different reports at the end of the night from two different systems. if it's only going to be 5 % or,

If it's like something for event, event coordination or tournaments or something like that, then yeah, sure. Right. so I was like, all right, back to the drawing board and no problem, you know, and I, I'd come from industries where there was a lot of open API's and communication amongst companies. And,

I was, I'm sure you know why I'm laughing. Not a lot of open API. You're spoiling the end of the story. Yeah. So I just made phone calls. It's just a citizen try to get hold of some of these big guys. And I couldn't even get a return phone call, right? Cause all I wanted was to feed my transactions into their system. I didn't want to, you know, impede on their business model or anything.

And coming from a lot of different startups, I thought this would be no big deal. It's just an integration. and I got no, no, no, no, no. I didn't even get a no. just got like, I've nothing would get none of my emails, none of my, contact submissions, none of that got returned. And then I started, kind of educating myself on what was out there. as far as point of sale and tee sheet and booking engine.

And you know, from a startup world, everything you use is always bleeding edge, right? It's the opposite of a big company. Everything you use in a startup is like the latest and greatest because why not? Right? You're just getting started. So when I looked in the, in, at all the different offerings, I was just shocked. I, it looked like something that my dad wrote in Excel in the late eighties

you know, we've had people on who started golf technology companies in the mid eighties or the late eighties. know, one of the things that I've learned in this space, Jonathan, be interesting to get your thoughts on this. If the golf course club, whatever.

they're using tech for the first time or tech to solve a certain problem for the first time. They actually don't know what else is out there. And it's interesting if you can be the first provider, how much that customer won't churn because essentially you've solved the problem. It doesn't matter if the UI is good or bad. And I'm not suggesting that I don't want great UI. I think it's super important, but if you're first in it's interesting how long they won't churn.

just based on the fact that you were first and frankly, they don't know what else is out there. Yeah, I agree with that 100%. And I think, and if you do provide a solution, that's all in one, easy to use, that what is the reason to leave, right? I don't have a reason even to look at other software. It works. I can take money. I can have clients. I can communicate with my staff. I can communicate with my golfers. I can integrate with any partner I need to. So yeah, you're really entering.

And with a great solution, you don't provide them a reason to look around or to leave because they always have something that fulfills their needs. Right. That's why I've always thought all the, thousands of golf courses that don't use reservation technology today. It's an interesting market to approach, you know, because of the, low churn rate. so Jarrette, go on. You're not hearing back from anybody. You then start to investigate. Well, what are the systems out there? You're not super impressed.

What, next? Yeah. Well, I just, I just, I guess I just kind of got, agitated a little bit and no one would respond to me. And, and then I started looking at everything and it was more than the UI. was like, I was seeing screenshots, of things that were just way too complicated. It looked like I was launching a NASA rocket, right? Instead of.

making a golf reservation. And so it was really more of a UX thing for me. Like, you know, an app can be ugly and function awesome. And a lot of these apps really do like, you know, because they've been around for 40 years, right? They've had time to, you know, build out those features that they get requested, request, request, right? And they've had time to do it. But I just thought that at the of the day, 80 % of those things are probably not used by 80 % of the users.

And it's just too much. Right. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to build everything. Right. I'm going to come in here. I love golf. I love the space. I see a gap in the market that I could, that I can exploit and build the best, most modern cutting edge technology there. Right. And that's who I am at heart. I I'm a builder. I'm a farmer, not a hunter. I love being in my hole and building stuff. Right. Anything that

What gives me, what gets me up in the morning is that there's something that exists in the world today that didn't exist yesterday because of me, right? That excites me. And I take a lot of pride in that and I love it. I love coding. I love building software. So I thought, yeah. Yeah. And tell me, tell me just a little bit about your team today. How many other people are helping you code today?

Seven, the seventh is about to start on the tech side. Wow. So yeah, so you're really Jonathan, you guys are really obviously building that out. That's great. So Jarrette, when you when you are a farmer, right or builder, and I think I've said on this podcast before, the builders are the people that impress me the most because I really because of what you just said a minute ago, that when you wake up on day two, there's something in the world that didn't exist the day before. And that's always just grabbed me, you know, it and I'm kind of drawn.

to those people. But one of things we know is those people generally do need to get aligned with a hunter, if you will, right? If you really want to build something big. You know, obviously, I'm kind of alluding to Jonathan coming on board here. When do you think you realize that? When do you think you realized, yeah, I've got a need here if I'm going to get from, let's say you've gotten from A to B, but if I want to get from B to C, I've got a need here. I'm to have to solve.

Yeah. So, so I launched, I finished building the point of sale system, the database, the API, the point of sale, tee sheet, booking, all that stuff, the backend portal. And it was just, of course, all just me at that point, right. Building everything for the first. from, I worked on it from 2016, seven days a week, no vacay. got really, actually I didn't, I didn't go to a seven day a week schedule 'til about 2017 and a half or so.

And then I just started calling golf courses in my area and found a beta course in San Antonio and launched with them in 2018. Did about a year and a half beta program with them. And it was calls at five in the morning. Hey, I've got a line of golfers out the door. Your app's crashing. was, it was the most stressful, awful year and a half of my life. I didn't know. thought my family was going to fall apart. It was really bad. But I got through it.

And, you know, fell in love with my operators and they fell in love with me and we worked together and we built stuff that they didn't have in any of the other systems. I actually, before I built it, I put together a small golf advisory board because as a seasoned programmer, you know, always build what the user wants, not what you want. Right. So, Steve jobs. Is that what he did? know, Steve Jobs' approach is different. I'm not saying it's right for everyone.

But you know, his approach was they don't know what they want. I know what they want. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm opposite. They know what they want because they live it and breathe it every day. Amen. And, and so I did the beta course and then, it's just started growing organically with just me and, and I ended up hiring one of the guys on my golf advisory board.

as my first employee, was a customer success manager and he had run seven golf courses at the same time for Alamo city golf trail in San Antonio. And he had used all the different systems. so I, I, I met with him every couple of weeks at first to kind of get like, what's the perfect tee sheet? How do you build a tee tee? A green tee? How do you, what sucks about building a green tee right now? What's awesome about it in these different systems?

trying to like piece together a perfect plan and we built it, got on our beta course, grew organically and then

Fast forward to 2022 ish. I was like, man, like I sure am growing slow, but I liked it because I didn't have a sales team or anything like that, but I loved it because as an engineer, I wanted the product to be perfect before I started scale. yeah, let me, me, let me ask you, cause we do have a lot of, mean, I'm not even sure.

very many people know how many people right now are trying to build TenFore young people, people just coming out of college. And for whatever reason, I seem to get those phone calls, right? Those people seem to, and so I know they watch this, right? Explain a little bit if you can, like maybe from 2018 to 2022, like how are you eating? How are you?

living, are you sustaining yourself? Because that is one of the questions these people ask me is, I don't know how long I can live on ramen. You know, so it'd be interesting to hear from you. Yeah, so I got 100 grand from a buddy of mine, who to this day owns 10 % equity in the company. He believed in me, he's in the oil and gas business. And I took out some credit. And then

And then I cashed out my retirement and all in all the chips. Absolutely. And, and, and, and, so yeah, it was, it was tough. I was, was as a programmer, I was making great money as a programmer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden I was broker than I'd ever been more stressed than I'd ever been higher than I've ever been miserable, but at the same time, more fulfilled than I'd ever been in my life.

And do you have a family at this point? Yeah, yeah, I have. Both my kids have since grown up and moved to college and and after since I started the company. So I pretty much spent I invested my 40s and I'm happily married. But we're having our 25 year anniversary in Good for you. And so she's been kind of part of this stress and misery along with me. Luckily, she works.

You know, we've always kind of been a split income family. kind of make the same amount of money. So it's been real stressful because we, we were living that lifestyle that, you know, two incomes can only afford. And so yeah, fast forward. And I'm really good at knowing what I suck at, right. Which I think is important as as a programmer, as a human being actually. And so I knew I needed somebody that was good on the business side to grow the business.

I was ready by the time I hit 2021 2022 we were smoothly getting through the days without any bug reports people were happy I hadn't had a single customer leave in like two and a half years by the time 2023 hit and and so I just started poking around and I had learned about Jonathan his success with Supreme I really liked Supreme

As a company looking from afar from the outside, I liked their brand. liked the look and feel of their software. I felt like they were kind of like a forward thinking, very like.

innovative company, I the partnership with Barstool Sports and I learned about Jonathan and we kind of met it was kind of he had heard about me I heard him about him but kind of around the same time and so we just started talking and I knew that he would be the one to lead up growing the company. okay. Making it a company. Right. So let's let's for the for

for the listener and whatnot. So Jonathan, you are the co-founder of Supreme Golf and I'll just give a quick synopsis of Supreme and then you can beat it up and correct me. Supreme Golf was the first company that I can recall that came along that kind of acknowledged that there were different ways or sources for golfers to book tee times and you were going to put them all together. And the way I would tell people about Supreme back in the day is I would say,

It's really the Kayak for tee times that that Kayak was willing to sell tee times that came from Expedia or other. Well, I'm sorry, you know, hotels that came from Expedia or other places and Kayak mash them all together. And that's how I explained Supreme. But why don't you tell us your take on Supreme and what the vision was? And then we'll talk about how you guys got together here. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you've got it. What what we started as right.

I was, you I come from the private equity world. So I was looking to invest in certain things, know, like a health food supplement company. Then I met with this group. I don't know how we got started talking about golf, but we started discussing golf, you know. So I did some research and found out at the time, less than 10 % of tee times were booked online. And you're like, why is that? I booked all my flights online. I booked everything online. This is 2011. Well, after some research, it's because there is no single inventory. There was nothing that combined them.

So I looked at doing it, couldn't get a penny. No one would, even wasn't what, five years ago, PE firms started looking at golf, right? Maybe a little bit longer, unless you were GolfNow or Comcast. But anyway, long story short, I said, okay, so I just need to get EZ Links, which was separate at the time from GolfNow. So I just need to get Tee off and GolfNow to work together. And they said, well, my timing might be off, but there was a lawsuit between them. You're never gonna get them to integrate.

And I met Will McIntosh, you know, I sat down in 30 minutes. put a deal together, right? That's great. Yeah. Because he saw the value of it at the time. And it was extremely valuable then because we could create a single inventory. He'd have more places to sell his tee times. And we did it, you know, and I, I just said 2011, that was 2014. So I don't want to act like that was a call because I was in the same boat as Jarrette. They don't like to call back, right? Because they get a lot of them. Right. So that's what we did. But then

What we learned and what I learned is that wasn't exactly what the golf owner wanted, right? He didn't mind or she didn't mind selling tee times on a platform, but what they were looking for was also more help on their side, on the operational side with technology. So our next move at that, at the end of what 23, 21 or maybe 20, we were a hundred percent consumer revenue. But then what we did, we expanded into golf course software.

And we started with membership subscription software for public golf courses. Two years later. Which is still an interesting place today. I'm not sure that anyone is completely capitalized on that yet. But I can remember when you did that. I thought, that's a little different. We haven't seen someone try to roll that up, so to speak, if you think that that's a fair way to think about it. Yeah, I agree with you. And within two years, it was 50 % of our revenue.

And you know, so we were 50 50 after a couple of years, we had over 50,000 monthly members on the program. So it was really growing and it continued. And then the natural was for us to get into the point of sale world, right? I mean, that was a natural for us to step into, you know, I bought Golfler, which was used to be Club Caddie, right? You know, so we used to own that and then so back that that back to Jason, who's a good friend of mine. okay, so a couple. I got it.

for help everybody catch up here. So golfler, it's actually interesting, Jarrette. And I'm sure you know this now, but golfler or almost has a little bit of a similar origin as what TenFore has in terms of your trying to solve a bit of a different problem than what golfler became. And for people that don't know golfler ultimately evolves into Club Caddie and goes through a couple of different acquisitions and et cetera, et cetera. The other thing I did want to touch on, cause I don't think we've really ever mentioned Will's name on this podcast, but Will McIntosh.

This is a very intelligent person, very successful person. He came to be part of the GolfNow organization through an acquisition GolfNow made of World Golf. so Will was in the Myrtle Beach area and was exposed to lots of golf courses. And he understood that he actually came from a content perspective. If you could write a ton of content and have a ton of URLs all relating to golf.

Ultimately, that was going to be a good acquisition target. And that's exactly what happened. And then Will's career really, really took off. And Will is still involved today with GolfNow He's gone on to some bigger things with the NBC. But I think, Jonathan, you and I would agree. We've all been on podcasts together. Really, really sharp guy, Will McIntosh. Extremely sharp. And I used to tell people, he'll do more in 30 minutes than you'll probably do in a day.

It's just how his mind works. And there are people like that. So to me and probably to you, there's no surprise where he is today, right? He'll probably be the next, you know, at some point, the chairman of NBC, who knows? I mean, he's not going to stop. It's just how he's driven. So yeah. And he was extremely helpful to me. So I know there's lots of thoughts on GolfNow this or then, but at the core level at the business side, you know, it was to help, you know, the course owner operators, which is what then drove us into where we went to a subscription membership, et cetera, and things like that.

You're you were one of the first guys, although I think Will was in this had this perspective too you could really see the vertical of what if I could solve like all of the problems in the golf shop, right? Like, wouldn't that be the big, big business if we could use software to solve a lot of different problems within the golf shop? That was that was a different vision, I think, than a lot of people had. A lot of other people just thought.

Well, I want to build a point of sale or I want to build a point of sale on tee sheet. You know, both you and Will, I think we're thinking about things like membership as another revenue source for the golf course, obviously tee times and, and how you would sell tee times. and, know, even one of the roles that I played at GolfNow the, the, the group purchasing, right? Well, what if I could help a golf course save money when they purchase things? That was the verticalization.

really of the business. So yeah, so you mentioned Golfler and I think you guys bought Golfler and sold it. That's right. And then I believe, why don't you talk a little bit about the relationship with foreUP Cause certainly foreUP was a big piece of what was going on at Supreme for a while. For sure. It's funny cause Evan and Joel started foreUP about the same time we started Supreme 2011.

And so this is Joel. Joel Ragar. These guys are in Utah. Evan, is it Tashima? that Tashima? Yeah. Yeah. OK, go on. Yeah. And then was another Joel, who is the CTO as well. And just a great group of hardworking guys, right? And you talk about ramen noodles. I mean, they probably split the noodle, right? mean, in the But they did an amazing job over there. And then working with Evan, we always communicated along the way on our paths and things like that. An opportunity came up.

for us because we were looking to invest and acquire a tee sheet and point of sale at golf management software company to acquire a sizable minority position in foreUP So it took a while, six months or so, but we acquired it. And then what we did, we brought them their first multi-course owner operator. And people don't realize what's Supreme. We've always been dedicated to the owner operator. We might have not known everything they wanted in the beginning, or we might have thought they wanted something different.

But we've always been dedicated to that. So we moved Century Golf over there, American Golf over there, Arnold Palmer, which is part of Century Golf. So we brought there. So we helped grow that company, and I joined the board. And the plan was for Supreme to buy that company. I thought it was great. I thought it was a great point of where it was at and what we wanted to do with what you just said about expanding the vertical. But then you get a Club Essentials slash battery.

Ventures come along with almost twice the money and with a big sledgehammer. And what do you do? You just sell into it, right? You don't have a choice. But I- And so what Jonathan's alluding to there is, so ultimately Club Essential Holdings, but through Battery Ventures, who's in Boston, Club Essential Holdings ultimately purchases foreUP. Correct. Yeah, exactly. So we sold into it, which we didn't have much of a choice, right? And plus it was a tremendous return that we had to do.

But we still were then left without a golf management software. And it wasn't long after that I was referred to TenFore, which I'd never heard of by the way, Except in the months preceding that hearing some noise from Jarrette, some people talking about, you heard about this company in San Antonio? Things like that. But MG Orender is one of the key that came to me and GolfNow believe it or not, right? That came to me, MG came to me and he said, Hey, do you know of this company TenFore?

And I said a little bit, but not a lot. He said, I think it's the best software I've ever seen. And if you know, MG Orender he's not saying that he's not built that way. You're right. He is not built that way. Jarrette, how did you come to know MG? you, do you even know how he learned about TenFore?

No, I barely know him today. I think I've met him twice, maybe once or twice. I think you're you and a thousand other people in golf. So don't worry. Yeah. Yeah. Go on, Jonathan. Yeah. So he and I said, yeah, absolutely. We looked at it and I thought, goodness gracious. I how did this guy do this? Like, you know, under the cover, so to speak. Right. And then so I had my team and we had a tremendous team at Supreme Golf, right. That worked at Century and American and all these other companies.

And let me just touch on the century in American thing. Jonathan is some of that born out of the fact that you all like we're working in the same city. You were going to cross paths with these guys and kind of know them. And, it just made sense ultimately that you, you, you could probably help service them and help them grow their companies. sure. You know, knowing Jim Hinckley, mean, he is, you know, you know, a very large figuring golf or what he's done. And you know, and it's funny because we could spend hours just talking about how ClubCorp spurred all these.

different companies from Arcis to Advanced Golf to Century Golf to Arnold Palmer Golf to American Golf. You know, it all kind of comes from Club Corp. lot of these guys, Jim was the president there, I believe. And I always wanted to work with Jim. But we also had a tremendous advisory board, a tremendous board at Supreme Golf that pretty much anyone we needed to speak to. MG was my only golf person on the board of Supreme, believe it or not. know, Carl Sparks, former CEO of Travelocity, Sam Gilliland, former CEO of Sabre.

Why? Well, because I wanted to get golf out of just golf. I thought we're always so antiquated. Look what travel is doing. Let's get some new blood in here and some new people looking at this. And then, know, Charlie Ware, you know, that was a big funder of our company. And Charlie knows everybody. Right. So, you know, Jim was a good friend of his, which then got a serious meeting and we just knew we wanted to work with Jim Hinckley. And it just went from there. But, you know, we could offer a lot of technology. He likes to push the card as well.

So what we were building and then what he wanted us to build to, you know, to service his courses and his own ones and the least ones, et cetera, or the managed ones, it was just a great fit. So yeah, that was a wonderful relationship. And, know, again, he's another person, Jim Hinckley, I couldn't say enough about in this world about what he did for us and how he helped us grow. That's great. So, okay. So Jarrette, you still have this issue. You want to grow the company, you're looking for somebody to grow the company.

it's kind of like that. I just liked Jarrette the minute I met him. And the reason is,

How does, I still say it, how does one person build this level of software? API driven, my dreams of building a compound company, which we'll talk about in a second, right? I just couldn't believe it. And I'll give you one more thing. on to that one. So anyway, so I wanted to buy Jerrette at Supreme. Why wouldn't I, right? I mean, it was the best technology we'd ever seen. And I'm a big everything's for a reason type guy, right? So I'm like, hey, wait a minute.

I wasn't supposed to buy all of foreUP. I was supposed to buy TenFore and we were as a company is static about buying TenFore, But what happened, You get the lawyers involved. You have some managing part. mean, some majority partners have a part of the foreUP sale, foreUP sale would equal non competes. Should we really do it? So it was a shock. I just knew I wanted to work with this guy. I think is the way you should look at it.

So I called him one day and to walk about shock, I'm not sure if he talked to me for 24 hours. I said, I'm going to leave Supreme. And he's like, what? I said, I want to help you build your firm. What you've done is ridiculous. And I want to be a part of it. I I've been, I co-founded Supreme. I funded Supreme in the beginning and I'd been there 12 years, but I didn't, I had a great operator in Ryan. Ryan's a tremendous operator. was perfect for him to take my role.

Operate the company as the president and Ryan is the co-founder your co-founder, correct? Correct. Yeah, I'm out if you want to hear yeah, he's like a brother to me and he's a great operator, right and so He he it was perfect. So I talked to him about it he's like a little bit nervous, right? And he said, alright, so I said to Jarrette I'm leaving I'm gonna come with it to you and so I talked to my board I'm not saying they were the happiest that I left even maybe today

It was the right thing. So that's more of the story is I wanted to work with him, you know, and I knew I know how to build business. I've done it successfully several times. I have the ability to fund so we don't have to take and give away the farm, so to speak. And now to one last thing. The day I told M.G. Orender I left M.G. Orender was on my board at Supreme. In the next couple of weeks, he resigned from Supreme, joined TenFore, he said,

with their software and you leading the company, I want to be involved and then became an investor. And in 11 years or 12 years at Supreme, he never put a penny in. So I think it says a lot about what he thought about TenFore as well. So it's actually kind of a cool story. And you know, I love Jarrette and what he does. He's just driven. And just as a little shout out for MG too, for people that don't know MG and like, what are his chops and that kind of thing, you know, very, very successful operator. One of the

first operators in the United States that understood the potential of having a top tracer range at your facility. There were a lot of people that needed a lot of convincing. MG saw that before just about anybody did. And so that'll give you an idea of this guy can see some things that other people don't see. A hundred percent. And he owns Hampton Golf, right? They have 32 courses building some new courses. He really does push the card. And if you've ever been to Blue Sky where he put that,

range. It's crazy. I mean, it's like a mini top. They're sitting by the fire pit. They're sitting in chairs up by the court waiting and he doesn't want to rush anybody out of there because what are they doing? They're drinking, they're eating, they're hitting golf balls. Yeah. So he can see things like that. Yeah. And today I don't think Hampton has TenFore installed everywhere, but I'm guessing that's the plan over time or something like that, that Hampton would become a pretty big customer of TenFore.

100%. We already have a few of their courses on. and can tell you my plan is all of them, right? You know, we have to work with, they have a great team over there run by, you know, I'm Travis and Ashley and Justin. but we work closely with them. and, so yeah, that's the expectation and the hope. So Jarrette, Jonathan calls you and now you've, probably get off that call and think, am I going to do this? Is this crazy? What, what's going through your mind at that point, Jarrette?

Yeah, a lot of things are going through my mind. You know, and, you know, I've never been one that is afraid of big moves, but, know, I wanted to take my time with this one. I'd put, you know, I had definitely aged, you know, quite a bit since starting the company and it took a lot out of me and I wanted to make sure that whoever I partnered up with was going to be the right person. And I think for me, a big thing for me is just trust.

you know, trust and attitude to me are, are what I look for just when I'm, even when I'm hiring anybody, a program or anybody. And, I think Jonathan and I just had really good chemistry. I mean, we, we met what six months, Jonathan, over six months in meetings. So, I knew he was the right guy. I knew, I knew he was the hunter that I needed. I knew that he was the missing piece, to make, to, to, take the next evolutionary step in the company.

And I was happy with the product the way it was. And I knew it was ready to, I knew I was ready for a team. I was sick of doing all the coding and, you know, handling all the, you know, the operators and yeah. So I needed help and I needed money. You know, we, had only, only hired the people that I could afford from the money we were bringing in. Like I had no investor.

And we still don't have really any big investors yet. And we haven't had to have that. And I thought Jonathan was just the perfect piece. So we went ahead and made it happen. know, one of the things that Jonathan brings to the table, don't think this is something I have been exposed to more and more since I've kind of filled into this seat of talking to all these different founders and builders and whatnot. Jonathan has the perspective of the golfer.

as well as the operator. And there's few people in golf that have that. And what I've learned in talking to a lot of builders like yourself, Jarrette is yes, we, talked to golf course operators, owners, whatever, and we heard from them what they wanted, but very often we maybe forgot about the golfer and the, the booking experience for the golfer or how the golfer goes through workflows when they're, they don't even know they're going through workflows. Actually, Jarrette, early on you were thinking about the golfer more than the operator.

Right. You were thinking about how do I solve this problem for the golfer and getting a beer quicker on the golf course? And I do think that that is one of your superpowers. Jonathan is you understand both sides of that equation, I think, you know, really well. And so hopefully that helps TenFore to strengthen and deliver products to the operator that resonate with the golfer as well. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the course is the seller, right? And the golfer is the buyer.

Right? So there has to be a very good marriage between the two. You got to make it easy for the golf course to sell and easy for the buyer to buy. You know, and then if they buy something, what else can they buy? What else would they do? Can we do some predictive analytics so we can get ahead of their thoughts? Right? And things like that. And I think that's what drives us into being a compound company. You know, you know, I'm a big fan of the company Rippling. Right. And if you read about what he's done, you know, we look at golf courses and I equate it to golf. You know, you have golf course owners, operators, pros, staff.

that they have five systems to run or six systems to run. I mean, how do they do that? You know, we were talking to one the other day, you know, about email. So if I cancel an email, someone cancels their email, I got to go into this system and update the email. I got to go into that system and update the email or they're going to continue to get to holy smokes. What are we doing here? Right. So as a compound company, we're the core software, right? You golf management software is your core software, integrated payments, all that. And we believe in partner networks.

Right, so it doesn't matter if our integrations with Gallus, Golf Genius, Oracle Opera, Hotel Key, Springer Miller, Metolius, who I love, know, Noteefy, who's killing it, you know, things like that. We want those to be part of, because if we can get to single sign-on, if we can get to part of, imagine the data touch points, right? So if I know everything they're doing and I'm absorbing all of that data into my GMS system, it makes me just smarter. makes, not me, the golf course, smarter, right? So now I can communicate.

So yeah, so with what Jarrette said and what we're doing when you talk about the golfer and the golf course is bringing tools and solutions that can satisfy both, which is to create a more efficient organization and drive revenue. So tell us about the company today. What are the problems you all solve? You have a kiosk. mean, that's the, we're talking hardware now for a moment, but you have a kiosk that not a lot of the people talk about or introduce certainly to customers.

I'd like to learn more about the kiosk, but you know, what separates TenFore why are you better at solving these different problems than, than other systems, cetera? I, Yeah, no, I just wanted to real quickly just said the genesis of the kiosk thing was it was something that it was the one thing that it was one time I really took the Steve Jobs approach and thought.

It wasn't something I had heard from operators, but it was something that I thought would be really cool, you know, and I would have fun doing it was to build because I would go to the grocery store. I was like, why can I do this here? But I can't do this at the golf course. It has a line out the door. Right. That's right. Why can't I do this on the first hole of the golf course? Not even go into the pro shop. Right. Like an ATM machine almost an all weather kind of

So I started looking up, I mean, even like the corner sushi place in my neighborhood had one, you know, and I was like, why, why are we not doing this in golf? And so I built that in 2022. And then I thought that there was just so much potential there. Right. And even if you hear like a small golf course that, that wants to save money on staff on certain hours of the day, you just stick a kiosk in there. Right.

So, you know, the kiosk can be really good at upselling. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Go ahead, Jonathan. No, I was just going to say when you said what's different about us, you know, it's that all in one feature, right? And not just the all in one of the system, but all in one is in a compound company that come to us and we will help you. Right. You don't have to manage seven contracts and seven bills going out from, you know, your accountant every month.

you know, what are you looking for? And then we help as well. This is what, you know, we think, what are you trying to tell us? But when you just said about hardware, that's equally important as important to us because how many times, you know, Mike people getting software that can probably do a lot more than their system allows them to do, right? Cause it demands more memory, more usage, et cetera. know, so software and hardware to us have to integrate and work together.

You know, and I need to be very clear here because we use the Clover family of devices as well. Our software is 100 % proprietary. We do not use any of the Clover software, right? You know, now Jarrette as a tech, might say, well, we do integrate, we're into the system, but I'm talking about our tee sheet, point of sale, booking engine, e-commerce, that is ours. We don't use, not, I think Whoosh uses Square, right? I think, you know, Chrono Golf, is Lightspeed Golf, uses Lightspeed.

We are one system. Right. mean, another way to say that is you could use everything that TenFore has and not have a relationship with Clover. is another way to look at that. % and a great way, much quicker than the way I said it. So yeah, exactly. But even to our systems, right, and our hardware, 22-inch touch screen computers in the pro shops or 15-inch, whatever they prefer, handheld devices, tablets, anything we can to make the golf course better.

and more efficient and make it easier for staff, right? Touch, grab and drop everything. So when we do almost every single course, even if we have to pay for it, which sounds crazy, we want them to have new hardware because what Jarrette's developed and what he's built, it's so good. We want you to maximize your use of it and to do that, having a touchscreen, then we can pass tabs through the entire facility, right? So if Mike comes in, you want to put any cards on file, you never have to bring your credit card to our course again.

Right? So you're out on the course and whatever your rates are based on your type, you know, you, have a tab out there. Well, I'm in the pro shop now. Well, I want to get some balls, throw it on my tab. now I moved to the restaurant. So it's ease of use all in one. That's why we look at, I mean, at a TenFore golf, as a needed solution in the market. It's all, it's almost like, you with TenFore golf, every golfer can be a member for the day. That's what, that's what it sounds to me like a little bit right there when you explain it that

100%. You know, but even as we look at the system and when we work with MCOs or we work with resorts, cause that's important to understand with us, what Jarrette built is a Private, Public, Muni, Resort software. He doesn't need four different softwares, right?

We have an MCO that joined his Spirit, great owner. He has a public course and a private course. Well, he wanted, can I get one system so I can have reporting, everything above, all these things? Well, Set that one for public, this one for private. Resorts, we do room charging. They would come to us, can you do this? Now we're looking to work with Oracle about their Oracle Opera. Springer Miller, Hotel Key, et cetera.

So let me touch on the resort piece for a minute, because actually when, when you all landed, Tullymore and St. Ives that's a high end facility in Michigan. And it was kind of one of these white whales I always used to chase that did get my attention. so clearly it said to me like, Hmm, TenFore must be able to work with some other operational software because I know a St. Ives is going to have to use it in conjunction with some other things.

For sure, and that's the key to our integrations, right? And an open API and the way that Jarrette built this software, right? It has no limits. I can take a nine-hole course that simply wants someone to be able to swipe. We have a course that uses minis, which are, if you're familiar with Clover, they're Clover minis, little eight-inch screens, right? So people come in, your name, your information's in that, you can put your tee time, whatever you want, you your card's already in the system. That's how they operate their course. It's so automated.

And all the way up, you said, Tullymore and St. Ives, Matt Golden, great CEO, GM, the way he runs that facility, he pushes us, right? I mean, he pushes this system. Perfect. Keep pushing it. You know, we have other resorts, you know, we'll announce shortly, but it's, fit that mold for them and we make their job easy. Cause again, it goes all the way back, all in one. It's an all in one, easy to use software. I don't care if you're Tullymore and St. Ives.

or if you're a municipality and if you're an MCO that has specific needs and we talk a lot, we have a lot of experience with MCOs obviously from my past as well. will, you every says you don't do custom develop. We will do custom development. You know, let's talk about that because I think, and you never know what you don't know. I think you were the first point of sale tee sheet company who respond to this Reserve with Google situation that, that I was able to, you know, kind of uncover through some of my web checks.

And, you know, today, as I see it, TenFore is actually live with Reserve with Google. And I know from talking to some different people, you had to have been nimble there. You had to have had some kind of culture within TenFore that said, Hey, we can do this quickly and do it the right way. And it's going to matter to our customers. Talk a little bit about how you were able to kind of, swallow that frog, so to speak.

Yeah, well, I'll pass that one to Jarrette. But I think that says a lot about Jarrette, right? And he said something earlier that he gets excited about technology. He gets excited about delivering for our customers and our clients. And Google, when they did with the GolfNow you know, no matter what you think, I GolfNow broke that door down. I tried to get Google to handle Supreme's inventory for five years and there was just no interest. Right. But what it did, it created an opportunity to golf and golf management software companies.

So Jay Karen had come to me and he said, hey, is there any way you can get us with Google so we can talk to them? One of our advisors, David Young, used to be the head of digital for Expedia. Well, they happened in the past, right? They spent a lot of money with Google. So he knows who to talk to. Within a day or two days, we were on the phone with Andy at Google, and they've been nothing but helpful. And we said, can we participate? Jay, we got Jay on the call and everything. We had 20 plus CEOs, GMs of

tee sheet and point of sale, GMS companies all on a call after that filling everybody in because it's a good for the market thing. Everybody should be on that for that golf course. They should own that book online, but, but, but Jonathan, we've not seen that happen. We've only seen TenFore and that's part of my point is there must be something different at TenFore. Cause clearly there are some, you have competitors with, with deeper pockets or more resources, but the fact that you guys kind of got to it first,

And let me just back up for a second. So I'm talking to MCOs today. There are people, seasoned people in this industry that think this deal with Google and how Google has now been exposed to tee times might have a bigger impact on our industry than anything that's happened in the last 10 years. That's how big some people believe this can be. But again, I go back to, but you seem to have gotten to it before other people did.

Well, that I'm going to pass to Jarrette because it's how he's built the software, right? And how he's built us that we have that ability to be nimble, to be quick, to be front of the line. We're in pilot programs now with Google, which the information hasn't even out what they're where they're going next. Right. But we're at the front of that line. We were on the phone with them yesterday. But I'll leave that to Jarrette as to why we're able to do things like that when others struggle. Well, Jarrette, why don't you pick that up? Yeah. So I think.

The genesis of TenFore is a little bit unique in a few different ways, right? So one of the ways is that normally when you start a technology company, you have a business person that has an idea or buys an idea from a founding team. And then there's money injected and then the developers are hired. With TenFore, this was a side hustle of mine, right? And I'm passionate about software. That's all I think about. So when I started the company, I could do whatever I wanted on the technology.

use all the tools that I had acquired over 20 years building software and make the company a tech-first company, a product-first company, instead of a business-first company. Right? Like, the furthest thing from my mind was how to, you know, add additional revenue streams or how to, you know, develop relationships with investors or whatever. That was like the least. What I wanted to do was win.

Right. I wanted to win because I had the best product and I will never get like, I will die before I let this company not be constantly pushing the envelope with not only software, but the ideas that kind of take us to the next level. Right. And, and Google's just one example of a lot of things that we're working on. But with Google, the second I knew that it was a possibility, I said,

This could be the new, the future of the marketplace, the golf online marketplace. And yes, it could for right. Because to me, if I get on my phone and I want to get a, find a barber shop near me, right. And if I can just hit a button and I've paid the barber and I have the appointment and all that with, with Google pay online or whatever, you know, we're working on stuff behind the scenes with

you know, being a member at a country club. If I have, if I'm a member, you know, I can just tap my phone on the front desk and just go and play golf, right? All these things are like, Hey, why aren't we doing this yet? Right. And, so speaking to the nimbleness is my, my coders are my brothers. I'm a, a coder. I'll always code for this company. And so I'm on every standup call.

And I know how programmers think, right? I know they want to be left alone. They don't want to be jacked with. They don't want to meetings all day. Right. My last big corporate job I had, I left the day they had a meeting about how to best have meetings. I like, I should be in my cubicle coding, right? Not talking to business people. So we're always going to be a tech first company as long as I'm here. And I plan on being here for a long time because I plan on being the best.

the number one company in golf. And there's no way. Why would you have any other goal? Right? It does, you know, like these people that say like, yeah, we want to be in the mix or whatever. No, the goal should be to be the best. Why would that not be the goal? Yeah, right. 100 % Yeah. And then Google back, he said can be mean, two trillion searches a year, right? 90 what, 2 % of the search business, right?

I got a feeling, you know, by putting golf in the front of the, you know, the page, it could do some great things. Yeah. I think it, well, listen, at the end of the day, where, where you all sit, you just provided an extra service to your, to your golf courses. And now it's a matter of getting more golf courses to appreciate that that service exists and, and, take advantage of it. But I, but I did think it was great that you all got to that. And we should mention to Jonathan, your former company.

also got in the game, right? And so Supreme can facilitate that, GolfNow can facilitate that. And now of course, TenFore can facilitate that. The only little blip in there for people that aren't aware, GolfNow did it en masse and kind of forgot to tell their customer about it, right? And so that was the part that we called out. But I want to give them credit. I've been a guest on a couple of shows and I have said consistently,

At least the minute they realized it, you know, that they kind of made a mistake that they did step up. And so what else can you do once you make a mistake? You can either hide from it you can step up. And those guys at GolfNow stepped up. So that was good. thought. Yeah. think at the end of the day, what did they do? They broke the door down. That's right. The door was broken down now to the benefit. were the first GMS provider to integrate and we're doing some really fun stuff that we'll talk about on another podcast. but they're doing some really cool things where they're going in golf.

And I think what it said, I think it's representative of our entire firm, right? TenFore golf with what we're doing, what the level of our development, what Jarrette's built, we will be at the forefront. We're just going to be. It's just how it works. And I think, you know, I'm a big put your money where your mouth is, right? Well, we were the first to integrate with Google. You know, I've talked to others, they might get it done this year with some of the changes they have to do internally. It might be next year. But I'll tell you, there's a good group of golf management software companies out there working for their customers and their clients.

And they all want to do things that, know, that, you know, that help benefit and grow their entire industry as well. So, Jarrette, explain to, you know, what are the problems that you think that TenFore addresses today that maybe some of your competitors struggle with? Like, why does the operator appreciate using TenFore more than using someone else? Yeah, going back to, I would say the number one thing that operators love about us is

the ability to customize the software, right? which is our hook right now, right? And as we scale, obviously that's might change a little bit. And it should. So for what that's worth, but can you, mean, cause this is interesting. We don't have this conversation, Can you talk us through like, what does that mean? You can customize the software. I think that means someone picks up the phone and calls you all and says, I need this. But, but walk me through a little bit of like,

What does that look like or sound like when you say customize the software? Yeah. Thank God. It's mostly not me anymore. They're calling, but yeah, we have, we have PGA professionals as CSMs, right? So that means that every golf course has their own assigned PGA professional that, that they can pick up a phone and call. think that's super smart by the way, go on extra email. Cause the thinking early on for me was golf people want to talk to golf people, right? They don't want to talk to me.

So that's a big key one. I wanted to go back just one paragraph. We are, one of the main differences, going back to the Google and all this other stuff, one of the main differences for us is that since we are our number one ally, our number one teammate is our operators, right? Not golfers, not the market, right? We are on a team with our operators. That's the number, that's who,

If they call at five in the morning, we're answering the phone call, right? Those are our people. And so, for example, our booking engine product, it doesn't siphon them off into some other competitor, right? It's not a marketplace. This is a siloed booking engine for our operators, our number one people. with that paradigm, what I love with the Google integration is if I do

search on Google golf courses near me. And there's some secret stuff going on with phase two with Google that you'll really like. But right now it'll show, the, I like this golf course. You see the list of ways to book, right? So TenFore will actually say by the end of this year, well, actually instead of saying TenFore golf, it'll say the name of the golf course and it will always be the official, it'll have a little official badge.

And it's the first result in Google. And then you have the GolfNow and the Supreme and all that. And what I love about that is that these operators are investing in TenFore and they're investing in a product that's theirs. It's not the markets, it's not the customers, it's theirs. And with Google, we're able to make them the top of the list. This is Kings Gate Golf Club, top of the list.

Yes. And that's important to me, right? That we always recognize who our teammates are. Other than that, I think that our technology, to me, is already the best. mean, that's, of course, subjective, But the things were with Clover, for example, I've always I've been using Fiserv and Card Connect as my processor for a long time.

We used to be with Stripe and a couple of others, but I finally landed on Fiserv and Card Connect, mostly for their tech stack and the way that credit cards are processed securely. But when Fiserv acquired Clover about three or four years ago, one of my things I'm always looking for is the best hardware to couple with my software. So with our kiosk, we use ELO, which is industry leader in commercial grade tablets.

And I built software that's called Jackrabbit that only runs on it's a kiosk exclusive software. So it's a completely different product than our point of sale tee sheet, then then our booking engine, right? And so by serve bought Clover, and I was like, my gosh, if I could just put my software on those awesome devices, mean, you got to see these things, right? my whole time at TenFore. I've been looking for a solution where

Bartender or a server or or bev cart can have a device that can fit in one hand That's one unit that has a credit card tapper has a printer has a scanner has a screen has has everything you need in one hand and a complete system the whole thing right even a pro shop clerk can have it or a starter and It all runs on a single device. That's about as bit. It's it's like a phone, but it's fatter right and it has everything in it and

So they announced this program called Clover Connect where companies like mine could actually put my software, not use Clover software and run it all. So what happens is we have our product, Birdie, which is our point of sale tee sheet, but it basically, it knows when it's running on a handheld device and it completely morphs the tee sheet, everything. So it looks good on that small portrait device.

So yeah, I'm going on, but I think we have the best product. I think that's why people want to spend money on this, right? It's not because they like John or they like me or whatever. They want something that makes going to work a little easier. And maybe finding new ways to make a little bit more money, right? And get you a little bit more in the black as a golf course.

And if we're not doing that, then what are we doing? Right. And can you, I think, well, talk to me a little bit about the booking engine. Either the booking engine recently went through an update or it's about to go through an update. I'm just curious about the booking engine and maybe roadmap and what's to come. Yeah. So with the booking engine, one of the struggles we were having was, think, what every booking engine runs into at some point is how do we scale this thing? How do we make it to where

you know, X thousands number of users can be on it simultaneously. Right. Beautifully. Right. And one of the big things was optimizing these tens of thousands of lines of code that I wrote in a hurry six years ago. Right. So everything at TenFore is constantly being rebuilt. And I know it probably drives Jonathan crazy, but it's important to me that like all the stuff I built is all getting rebuilt right now.

right into brand new tech stacks. that you can support scale. think is the way to think about that. Right. Yeah. Last week we actually made a complete re we went live with a production version of our booking engine that instead of it loading in 1.1 seconds, it now loads in 0.1 second. That's right. That's right. That's one of the things that we noticed. We were looking at some of this two days ago. Yeah. Cause we're always thinking about our booking engine rankings.

And we could see a difference and we could see a difference in speed and experience. Yep. And you at UX UI is next. And our entire back end portal, which is hundreds of pages of functionality, right? Everything from marketing tools, SMS marketing to inventory tracking to planning weddings has full events. In fact, one of my favorite operators in Florida, Sandhill Crane, and they just recently opened a

course next to them. It's really innovative that kind of has that like a par three. Yeah. think a par three with that final hole that joins both the 18 and the nine hole par three. Yep. Do a 19th hole. So they've been with us five years. I think they were one of our earliest courses and they were like, Hey, like, can you build this thing? Like, can you build a clinic system? What's a clinic system?

Well, we have we do all these clinics we do, you know driver clinics for girls only and we do you know Couples clinics or we do private lessons and we do this and we do that we'd like to Do what you do with the booking engine, but for like clinics and we want to be able to implement all these rules Right, right. There's a person have to be is it girls only or boys only is it? Do they need equipment and and

We want to enforce those rules on sign up and we want the customer to be able to pay in advance for the clinics. And we don't want to have to keep rebuilding the clinics on the back end every time we do a new clinic. Right. And so this is where the customization I think comes in that you can have that conversation with them and that you are all nimble enough to make that happen to maybe I don't know if that's the right way to say to squeeze it into a roadmap, but make it be part of what you're doing over the next, I don't know, 30 or 60 days. Yeah. And I loved it.

because it, everything, all those types of things make TenFore so much better. Right. And it gives us a competitive advantage in the market, but also it just makes it better. And that's what, like I said, that's what gets me up in the morning. Right. I want to just never stop being better. and so, so to wrap up Jonathan, obviously, I would think sales is, a major focus at this point, right? The product is in this really good place.

You probably want to go from X amount of clients to two X amount of clients and then to exit again. And I would think that that's probably a major focus over the next what, six to 18 months? Yeah, for sure. We got a great product. All the sales today have been by word of mouth or through relationships. We do some marketing through HubSpot and things like that. But where we are is there's such an inbound at the moment in time.

But I am building out the sales team, right? Because when I look at future growth and where we're looking to go with this company, for sure, we're going to build that out. You know, and I think, one thing you had asked about is, you know, part of our, it's part of our sales approach when we have discussions is the custom development plan, you know, because, you know, how do we do that? Well, A, there's a core timeline for this company that's untouchable, right? That just moves, But it doesn't mean you can't have an integration specialist.

Well, you can't have someone over here that looks at things and works with Jarrette about how we can design this or do that or integrate with Google, et cetera. Like when people wanted surcharging, when we did some research, we learned they want to surcharge. everybody, but select amount of course want to surcharge, but they're worried about the government regulations, the taxes, the laws, et cetera. So what did we do? We go ask Fiserv because they're a monster. They're biggest in the world in terms of transactions. And they say, well, that's funny you ask because we actually have a pilot program for surcharging, which will automate.

everything. We're like, okay, wait a minute, we want to be a part of that, right? So we already have courses on it. But it knows where the credit cards from they notice the zip code, it knows all those things, right? All those things that other people have kind of wanted to make the roadblocks. Ultimately, we all knew technology was going to fix that right? Technology was going to take care of the operator and make sure that they were never even going to be able to break a law. Right. And then what's the key here? It's us as TenFore always being at the forefront.

always pushing the edge. We didn't stop core development to do that. We have a person that works on that with Jarrette, right? So they work on that and now that's in our portfolio. Integrations that we're working on will be in our portfolio, et cetera. So back to the sales side, and then where I think we're extremely valuable to resorts, MCOs, et cetera, is we say, okay, what are your gaps? Tell us your gaps. sometimes we'll get, Mike, I'm not kidding. We'll get two pages of gaps.

And some of them are so rudimentary, and you're like, well, how does that not talk to that? So we start filling. And normally, Jarrette, correct me if I'm wrong, we probably handle about 70 % with what we're doing. Because even on our online booking, you can even, on our software, book a tournament and pick your spot of where you play. So you can reserve it or pay it, or you can say, hey, listen, us three are playing. I don't know why, but Jarrette picked the 13th hole so let's jump on the 13 with Jarrette. Or if we want to hit into him, let's jump behind it.

You know, so you're able to do that. But to us and to his mind, these are things that golf should have already. So with the sales, it's providing the all-in-one, the differentiation, the ability to fill the gaps that they already have in their existing software today, and to be able to, you everything's rip and replace, right? I'm not ripping out an Everest accounting system and putting in an Oracle accounting system. On the surface, I could literally provide you my phone and it's the equivalent of opening a different app.

And where the key is for us, the amount of data that we will transfer for them from their existing system so they're not starting at zero. And you remember, it's not that, well, there's some systems that still do it. You start at zero when you go over to that system. So we want them to run, to walk, crawl, and then, boom, the day they hit it, and we want to be on site. Training is key. We love two days before, two days after, or a day after. Because what happens on launch day, people are a little nervous. Hey, where's that button? Right? It's right here.

Okay, perfect. That's our selling points. And you know, like I said, we have great peers in the market. Everybody's working hard. But we know we have a great software, but it's why I wanted to be a part of his team, right? And what he's doing. You know, one thing I'll say that I think you all kind of proved and maybe it wasn't intentional, but talk if I'm an operator, and I said, Look, I want to partner up with somebody that is on the forefront. It's interesting that you mentioned surcharge. It's TenFore

that got the surcharge piece automated, I think before anybody else did. And it's TenFore that got the Google piece taken care of before anybody else did. So now you all of sudden are starting to have a track record where you can say to prospective clients, if you want to be with someone on the forefront, we've proven that's where we are. And let me walk you through these two different scenarios and how we solve those. I just think, and again, maybe it wasn't intentional. Maybe that wasn't a strategy.

but it actually now can become part of your go-to-market piece because it turns out that it's you guys that did that. It's a hundred percent part of our strategy. And the reason is, as you know, courses are told things every day, right? Yeah, we can do that. Sure. We can do that. We believe in putting our money where our mouth is, right? You know, Google integration, we felt there was a priority because every single course that we have in our portfolio wanted to be on it and they wanted to go direct. Let me just throw a piece of Google out there.

So we track every review for every golf course in North America on Google and GolfPass. And just for what it's worth, everybody out there, Google has more than double the amount of golf courses. We're not talking about individual reviews. The amount of golf courses that have ever been reviewed, Google is more than double GolfPass. So that you start to get an understanding of just how stinking important Google is. It's critical, right? I 92 % of the searches are done on Google.

So we want to be there and for them to invite us to be in that game with them and they love it, right? Because Jarrette pushes the card, right? We have a core operating system that's stable, it's scalable, it offers everything they need for the course, but these are the fun things, right? We get to add that and I think it demonstrates how he's developed this technology. It's API driven, it's nimble, it's secure, right? And we can add these to the portfolio and that's the key I think you hit on it is that

If you want to join someone that is going to continually bring you the best products and service and support, we're proving it. And we're just scratching the surface with those two. You'll wait over the next six to 12 months what we have that's coming, even down to full room charging, itinerary management at the hotels, integration with these PMS systems. That's all coming because it's important to resorts. And it's always been just that one company that handled it. if it's a resort, needs to go to this one or that one.

Well, listen, lots of different takeaways. I know we're, kind of short on time here, but it's cool that Tullymore and St. Ives is pushing you. And then really one of my takeaways is, and it feels like you're pushing the heck out of some other people in this space as well. Some of the things you're doing. and, and now, you know, I'm going to root for you guys that it bears fruit for you, right? Because ultimately it's got to, you know, I mean, you, two really smart guys and you're doing some really cool things.

and so like I say, here's to some fruit for, for TenFore, hope it, I hope it goes that way. So, I can't thank you enough for, for coming on. feel like it's overdue. the Google thing kind of pushed me over the top. thought, wow, that, that, that is impressive that you guys got that done. So congrats on that. Jarrette, I hope your kids are doing great in school or if they're out of school and I hope all this feels like it was worth it. because you are now one of those builders that's there's something here today that wasn't here yesterday and that's because of you.

Thanks, Mike. Agreed. Yep. All right, Jonathan, Jarrette, thanks. This has been the Tech Caddie podcast. We'll see you soon.

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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

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