A few weeks ago, myself and my team at Handicaddie attended the PGA Show in Orlando Florida, where we had the pleasure to meet team Noteefy.
In the last 12 months, Noteefy have taken the US golf industry by storm.
Through providing a digital assistant to ensure that golfers never miss out on tee times at their favourite courses, Noteefy have gained serious traction.
Well, here’s the story how!
In this episode of The Future of Golf Podcast, I spoke with Dathan Wong, Co-Founder of Noteefy to learn more about their meteoric rise.
In additon to providing a service for golfers, Noteefy have partnered with many notable venues in the US including Chambers Bay, Sand Valley and many Kemper Sports venues to maximise green fee revenues through recommending their service to golfers.
In this episode, we dove into:
– How Dathan met Jake his co-founder through a Facebook ad
– Being one of the first members of the public to play Cabot Citrus Farms
– The journey on how Noteefy have scaled to golf clubs throughout the US
This was a fun one, thanks for the time Dathan!
You can check out Noteefy below:
https://noteefy.app/noteefy-courses
You can check out my project Handicaddie here:
#golfpodcast #golf #golfer #golfclub #startup
Everyone welcome back to another episode of the future of golf podcast this is the podcast where we interview the brightest Founders in the game of golf this week is no exception we’re joined by dethan Wong who is co-founder of notify which if you were the PGA show
Last week was the app that was taken uh the place by storm last week um dethan it was a pleasure to meet you and your team I’m sure you had a crazy week since the show our things yeah hey was great to meet you and your team as well um
Thanks for thanks for reaching out originally um yeah everything’s been amazing since the PGA show very busy as as one might expect but it was just such a it was such a great event for our team to to show up to and kind of be rewarded
For all of the hard work you know hearing all of the validation from all of our customers our partners supporters like you um really just hearing that from people was was so great for the team morale and it was great to just meet every everybody and be together and do things
Together yeah and we had a little chat before we went live here you obviously had a really busy week played cabus cabat Citrus Farms newly launched course um if anyone was there at the PGA show it seemed like everyone was at the event at Top Golf that night where you held
The party as well um what what was that week like in general just it seemed like so much was going on do you want to maybe touch on maybe Citrus Farm first what that was like yeah absolutely um you know we we came into that week
Really just like our our goal as a team was just to like Bond as a team we’re a fully remote company um we haven’t all met in person we’ve all met individuals in different places but never been all together so that was a really great bonding experience um we got in like
Saturday night and Sunday uh we got to play cabat Citrus Farms they’re one of our our newest customers that launched uh a month or two ago they just opened to the public January 27th and it was it was such a it such a treat for us they
Invited us out to play before it opened to the public we were one of like four groups that were out on the course at the time so it just felt like a like a private course experience and obviously this beautiful place um so so that was
Awesome that was that was a really great time we all we all bought like so much merch from the pro shop too so easily easily covered the fees for the round I think um but yeah after that it was just a lot of of team building and and and team stuff
Trying to figure out our plans for the for the upcoming year the upcoming quarters and then just grinding at the PGA show working the booth talking to people talking to Partners setting up meetings with past customers uh potential future customers and and like you alluded to that that party at the at
At Top Golf was amazing too sure yeah it’s interesting you you mentioned about the remote working culture I think you know for a lot of people they might not be able to relate to that right like I mean from our perspective our whole team is remote as
Well so it’s just like the normal to not see people day to day um maybe touch on that like what it was like to be able to be in person for each other that week and also use that as a bit of a Launchpad going into
2024 yeah I mean we’re a tech company and personally I I I could never see myself in an office again I you know you got you got errands to run you got you got things you need to do like at home um so obviously remote work has been
Pretty nice little treat since covid um you know a good thing I guess as well as the golf boom that has that has come out of covid but because we don’t get to spend a lot of time in person one we’ve never seen each other play golf and
We’re a golf company and we all love golf so that was really cool to kind of you know uh rip each other’s swings a little and and and bet a little money against each other other um but just really just it’s it’s those moments you know when you’re just like eating lunch
Together or post round we’re just talking about the round um having a drink together those kind of things you just don’t get in a remote environment so being able to build that like that that team culture was just so valuable and it was so cool to just see like how
Everybody is so different but how how everybody has their unique strengths and how people get along and interact with each other and it’s those you know it’s those like PR conversations that you’re having with somebody like I’m I’m on the engineering team obviously and talking to some of the business guys like you
Don’t really have these little private conversations all the time in a remote company yes it’s super interesting that you mentioned that it’s it’s the gray areas that you often miss over so your efficiency as a remote team might be awesome but it’s the little personal parts and it’s interesting you mentioned
You’d never seen them golf either which I’m sure would have been a fun experience um but daan so I mean this whole project hasn’t really been running for that long really and I’m sure a lot of people are aware that you’ve made quite a mark in uh Resort courses
Especially and really becoming kind of like the go-to personal assistant for booking tea times so I would love to know maybe the origins story first of all in terms of like how you guys met what was like the initial pain point and what was your kind of first steps to
Actually make in this reality yeah it’s a it’s a great question I mean the origin of this was really Jake and I trying to solve our own problems right we actually hadn’t met until we TR started working on notify um but obviously post covid both of us living
In La just impossible to get a tea time we just we we knew there had to be a better way um something like this was actually something that I was going to build just for myself and me and my friends you know as a software engineer
By trade I was like look this is easily solvable Problem by software like let me just do it for myself and so I can play golf um then Jake was actually running like Facebook or Instagram ads I forgot which one it was for what would eventually become notified um I
Responded to one of the ads being like hey you know I’ve been thinking about this myself I’ve been wanting to build something like this like I don’t really care who does it like I just want this thing to exist so I was like I sent them this whole whole email of probably like
20 or 30 things that his current product needed to be better um you know we we got on a couple calls together played some golf together um just got to talking about you know about the problem and how we wanted to solve it and it just really hit it off from
There that’s awesome and actually just before this podcast I caught a bit of Jack’s podcast I think it was like six months ago um and so he kind of described the problem of him being a golfer he had all these courses to play and he would spend like an hour
Or two like flicking between tabs to kind of check that his tea te um was bookable now I guess maybe being Irish I can of take this for granted um there’s only a finite number of courses you can play in Ireland even though there is a
Bunch and also being a golf I was a member of a golf course so I was kind of like guaranteed my tea time every Saturday um do want maybe paint that picture of like what it was like to book a tea time in LA I’m particularly
Interested in that oh my gosh so first thing to know about LA and I guess the US in general but La in particular is if if there’s traffic and you’re trying to go like maybe it’s 10 miles or you know what is that 15 kilometers 16 kilometers
Like that could take you an hour so my my pool of which golf courses I could play in even though there are kind kind of a lot within a 20 30 mile radius if I don’t want to spend two hours driving home on the way back like it’s a very
Small number of golf courses so what I would have to do is nine days before the tea times are released I have to wake up at like 5:50 a.m. and they get released at 6: am so I’m just waiting and if my internet’s not fast enough or I like I
Fall back asleep for one minute you know I’m not getting a tea time um but inevitably there’d be a lot of cancellations throughout the week right people the way people seen the book here is everybody’s just booking right when they get released and then they’ll start dropping them as they figure out okay
Their friends can’t come or or whatever we can’t get a fourth for this time so to get those notification or to get those tea times I would have four or five tabs I’m I’m trying to work I got a full-time job I I need to do some coding I got
Meetings but I got four or five tabs just refreshing them every five minutes or whatever it is to see if something popped up even just for a single for myself um and it it just didn’t make sense right like this is this is a software problem and and that’s what we
Have created was a software solution for this to help busy people like you and I um be able to just book tea times and not worry about like just refreshing Pages or calling the pro shop that it’s it’s so interesting and it’s I can really clearly see the story
Now um the only comparable I can think of is actually my co-founder Jimmy you might have met him when we were out there um every Saturday um there was a competition on at our home Club so you you basically had to book your tea time for the Saturday by Wednesday night so
The tea times would go live at like I want to say it was like 7:30 something like that so all the members would sit on their key Pods at 729 ready to go but Jimmy being a software engineer built a little algorithm which would pre-book
His tea time it was all going well for him he got his tea times booked for him and his four ball for like a year and then I think the golf club found out eventually that he was doing that and it didn’t go down too well with the Cil and
Uh unfortunately had to stop but really interesting like this is obviously a lot more ethical way of doing things and this is purely above board but interesting that it was the same problem point but the LA traffic is also something I didn’t consider as well like where most of the courses you’re wanting
To play like is there only a certain amount you can really play inside your radius I suppose look I mean I can I’ve I’ve driven out two or three hours before to go play round of golf with some friends like I’ll I’ll do it but I
Mean I got I got a wife and dog at home like I can’t be gone all day every weekend you know and it’s just just there’s so many golfers here too especially if you’re playing some of these munis if you don’t get out between like 6:00 a.m. and like 7:30 a.m. it’s a
Five six hour round on top of the one hour two hours in traffic you’re driving home so your whole morning or whole day is just shot from from that and as a busy professional that’s just not how I want to live my life so obviously the points we’ve
Touched on there Dayan is very much focused on the I guess con side of the problem so not being able to book Tea Times um frustrations with having to drive hours um from my research on you guys it seems that you are um operator focused and you’re more focused on the
Golf clubs was there an equivocal pain point that the golf clubs were facing as well and if so what was it yeah AB absolutely so you’re right our our primary customer really is the the golf course they’re the ones paying us it’s totally free for any golf offers and um
The pain points we solve for them right are one efficiencies in the Pro Shop how many times are are they picking up the phone because somebody’s asking about a 6 AM tea time on a Saturday that there’s like well no like it’s never been available like stop calling but what is
The operator supposed to do other than just have that conversation every single time notify comes in and gives them an option now the operator can be like hey like sorry nothing available right now but get on this automated wait list you’ll be the first to know one of the
First to know whenever the tea time becomes available and then you can book that makes sure that the golfer stays at your golf course and doesn’t go somewhere else or just maybe just doesn’t golf at all right so that’s that’s one of the pain points the other
One is obviously there are last minute cancellations um those add up to quite a lot of lost Revenue if they cannot be filled so there’s a revenue play here where we’re just driving more last minute bookings we’re driving more revenue for the golf course as well as an efficiency
Play makes a ton of sense um yeah I mean it makes a ton of sense if you can satisfy golfers as well I think that’s that’s a big point that I maybe didn’t pick up on because if you’re a golfer and you ring up and you don’t get a t
Time then you’re almost your instinct is to boycott that course and then look elsewhere um and I I’ve actually been there a few times now um I guess maybe what I would like to dive into is obviously you had this idea and now I’ve seen you know your success
In the PGA show and um you know that big week that you had maybe let’s dive into like the middle part so what did the like acquiring your first customers look like what was that Discovery phase looked like before things actually started ramping up for you dethan yeah um
It’s it’s a great question I think at this point there’s definitely kind of a a critical mass right we are feeling a lot of momentum and there’s a lot of maybe fomo from other golf courses seeing their Partners down the streets using notify um but my my co-founder
Jake Gordon is just an amazing people person he’s a he’s a great connector he’s he’s very he’s very Analytical in in that sense of being able to like find who we need to talk to find who we need to sell to and just like he’s just a
Good guy so people want to talk to them people people want to get to know him um and and that’s where it really started was he was just doing cold LinkedIn messages um sending emails to to whoever would listen and um he really did a great job being able to connect us with
Some of these multi-course operators as well as some local courses around the LA area that really were willing to give us a chance and really believed in our team and and the vision that we were selling and I’m intrigued as well that’s a cool story in your team by the way but
Um so you saw a a link or a Facebook ad was it that Jack was running and you responded to it um what were the things that you picked up that were were not in the product currently that you thought hey there’s an opportunity here and this
Is this is not a dig at Jack by the way this is more to see you know what you identified Jack if you’re watching no on um no it’s it’s a great question you know I’ve I’ve been in the startup world for a while I’m I’m a tech I’m a product
Guy like I’ve like this is what I do right I I build products I I solve problems um I think you know Jake Jake comes more from the the finance and the business world and Consulting world so um when I initially saw the product there were a lot of particular like UI
Ux things that needed uh Improvement that’s a user interface and user experience um so like the flow of the data um you know I got on on a call with the team that he was working with originally and asked a lot of like AR like deep technical architecture
Questions like how do you handle these scenarios how do you scale for these kinds of this kind of traffic um how do you avoid these security holes things like that so those are the kind of things that I were I was asking about um on top of just like hey you know when
I click this button nothing happened like can you you guys should probably take a look at that right yeah yeah it’s so funny in our journey I mean I have a similar story so obviously I’m the non- technical hat of our team and uh you know myself and Ryan
Were working on some wireframes and then there was just a giant I would call debugging process to like and gme came in and really simplified things for because we had a very wide product that wasn’t particularly functional in any one element for golf clubs and Jimmy had
The technical knowledge to come in and and simplify our app and it seems like you were able to do the same there um now obviously you’ve been on it seems like a meteoric journey over the last you know 12 1 months there is there any moments because you say you’ve reached a
Critical mass right where there is some sort of referral mechanism that’s not happening gol CL want to be involved with you was there a particular moment where you went aha we’re on the right track or was it just a gradual rise of demand yeah um it’s a good question I
Think we we had always been getting a lot of good feedback from golfers right we would we would do user calls we would just reach out to we would see somebody hey had like 20 searches for this golf course you’re like okay this guy seems
To like notify like what can we ask him and just get feedback from there and it was always very positive which was great from the golfer perspective um once we felt very validated from the operator perspective was when they’re like hey especially with some of the MOs that
Were partnered with they’re like we want to go out to more courses like this it killed it at you know we’re in Chambers Bay um Black Gold golf course near near La um a lot of other courses across the country we’re just seeing so much success and we were able to validate
That success as well with a like a confirmed booking Revenue number um like how much revenue do we feel was attributed to notify based on the data that we had um so once we could see those numbers and give that feedback to these operators I think that really was
Like look we’re on to something they need this they’re getting a lot of they’re getting a lot of their golfers going to them and and saying how much how how thankful they are that notify exist now because it was so annoying before we had GMS that were reaching out
To other GMS proactively for us and just giving us these glowing reviews um yeah it was you know I I don’t know if there was a moment but it was just all of this constant feedback that we were really listening to and really in tune to um
Getting that feedback from all of these different parties like all of these different people that we we we want to serve was just so validating we’re like all right this is it like this this one feels different you know yeah yeah that’s awesome and I mean everything from your story seems
Incredibly positive right like it seems that you know you had an idea you guys met through the the Facebook ad and then it just kind of took off from there now being in the startup world as well I know that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows there are tough times was there
Any has there been any challenges so far when you’ve building this product now that can be technical challenges that can be team challenges um obviously whatever you’re comfortable going into but maybe some of the more difficult parts of your journey would be interesting to hear Look I think I think
You make a really good point as a as a Founder whenever you’re talking about it you always emphasize the good stuff but look it was a lot of work it was it was just really Jake and I at the start of this whole thing um it was just me on
The technical side so if there were any issues like I’m working and I had a full-time job when we first started I was I was doing this this was like a side hustle I didn’t necessarily realized that it was going to be what it was what what it became but like it was
Just a lot of long hours you know it’s stressful especially you know in your in your personal life you’ve have other family responsibilities you have to do chores you have you have things that you just need to take care of and and and that was definitely a struggle at the
Start um but now that we’ve able to build a team we’ve seen we’ve been seeing some success we have money to hire more people like a challenge that I’m running into now obviously being somebody who used to do everything is being more comfortable delegating things you know trusting the team and we have
An amazing team like it’s it’s it’s a it’s a me problem if I don’t trust them to to deliver and to do what needs to get done um but that’s you know that’s another struggle that I struggle with and I don’t know I’m sure you’re the
Same way as a as a Founder as a probably a very competitive person like you want to be a part of everything you want to have control over everything and that’s a that’s a big struggle for me yeah so relatable what you mentioned there in that last sentence like maybe
Some of the people watching this podcast have wore the finder hat as well and I I think from it being birthed of your idea you kind of want to have your hands and everything but there does reach a point especially where you’re at where that just doesn’t scale it just doesn’t work
So you have to build a team to trust them and yeah that’s something I’m still working working on myself as well now luckily I’m not technical so me putting my hands at something technical is absolutely pointless so it’s easy to discipline myself in that one um but I
Appreciate you sharing some of the challenges because um it it can be very OB you know it can be very alluring to see you know you guys holding these parties but people might not appreciate the hard work that has went behind this as well and uh the story you mentioned
There of of working as a as a part-time founder and and balancing a full-time job is um is something a lot of people can can relate to as well and you know I think everybody a lot of entrepreneurial people have this dream right but you
Have to be practical at the end of the day you know you got you got to make money to take care of the people you care about um you can’t always just just take that leap but um you know I will say as somebody who just loves golf it
It definitely makes all of the stressful times a lot better like I’m working on something that I truly love and truly care about and the people I’m helping I’m I’m helping myself for one but I’m helping my friends who also love to golf I’ve I’ve tried to start other companies
In the past but what was always missing was that founder market fit and I just didn’t really care about those problems but caring now about this so much it just makes it makes it so much easier it makes it worth it staying up until 400 am. troubleshooting some bugs or or
Whatever that is it’s just there’s a lot of you know I wake up every day just excited to to work and to do what I need to do it’s a good point and even going around the other booths in the PGA show and hearing the background stories of founders of other companies
Golf’s a cool one because usually they’re golfers and they’ve solved something forsel you know whether they uh they worked at a Drivin range and they didn’t want to pick up golf balls all day so they built a robot to go around and pick it up um or various
Other stories I heard there’s usually a pretty cool origin story and at least you know golf is something that people do genuinely really enjoy like you wouldn’t go out in a golf course for five hours and spend your entire day doing it if you didn’t have a degree of
Enthusiasm around the sport or maybe drive through three hours of LA traffic to to play as well your in your specific scenario but you don’t need to know because you got notifi of course um go there you go um obviously we mentioned there the challenges that you
Faced I would love to know H in this journey so far maybe excluding uh the PGA show because that was obviously incredible was there any moments where you felt just you know Euphoria and just incredibly incredibly grateful for for what you’ve created oh man yeah you know
It’s you know it’s it’s kind of cliche but I but I guess every day but um actually I got I got a better one it’s you know as as we’ve been hiring um building the engineering team building the kind of what we’re calling our go to market team the the business side of
Things just like hearing from the people people that we work with that they love what they do as well and that this company also feels different you know I’ve been at a lot of companies big companies small companies so culture is really important to me and making sure
That people enjoy what they’re doing and people don’t feel like they just have to grind at work all the time is really important to me so just hearing that from from our people at the PGA show or you know in our in our weekly one-on ones that they do feel different about
This company and they do enjoy coming to work every day that that makes me feel good because I mean at the end of the day like obviously we’ love to make money and have a good exit and whatnot as a as a startup but at the end of the
Day for me it’s all about people man and just helping people and and just I don’t know just trying to leave the world in a better place than than than you know you came into it so no better Mission than that yeah I was that’s an interesting one as far as
Culture because you’re not in person right so like the obvious thing for a golf company would be install a simulator in your office and you know like play 18 holes at Pebble Beach every morning that’ll be a real obvious one um how how are you guys tackling building a
Great culture around a golf company while all being in different locations do you have any strategies you’re trying yeah you know we we obviously are going to try to get together as much as we can and just play golf right like get get together and just have fun together
Instead of trying to get together and work like we’ll we’ll work when we’re remote it’s probably a little easier that way as well um but also we we have a $100 per month um golf like stien so you can spend it on on anything you want
Golf related I mean we have a chat where we’re just kind of roasting each other about you know we follow each other on 18 birdies or whatever apps that are out there and you can see their scores and we’re just roasting each other’s handicaps and whatnot
Um but but I think you know those are those are like the perks of the job of working in golf right being able to play golf for free or having it subsidized whatever that means but but to me the culture comes more about like those day-to-day interactions like I I like I
I truly believe that like hey the everybody’s an adult like if you need time to do whatever you need to do maybe you’re sick you got to take care of some personal business I don’t I don’t need to know about it just let me know that
You need that time and we’ll work around it I think just having that trust in in people and and giving them that giving that giving them that space to do good work is that is really all it takes to build kind of a good culture yeah and I think I I mean I’m
Seeing this reflected in other of my friends growing companies as well it seems the the modern approach of trust first and Trust until proven otherwise as opposed to micromanagement and then people don’t have autonomy to make decisions or like try and and maybe feel it things they don’t have room to
Experiment um so it’s interesting to hear you’re also approaching it in in the same way yeah absolutely I think it’s it’s a great Point like look we’re a small company like you’re going to be responsible for a lot of different things like at the end of the day I have
To trust you right or because because you need to do 20 different things it’s not it’s not just coding but really giving giving people the space to fail whatever that whatever that means to you um I think is really important like it’s okay to make mistakes like it’s fine you
Know it’s your first week on the job or your first month on the job you’re gonna make mistakes whatever that is like it’s totally fine that’s awesome um so daan I think that was a fascinating insight into your story uh with notify I think a lot of people have really enjoyed that if
There’s any either golfers or Golf Course operators who want to have a little check into what you guys are doing right now um where should they go online to find more information or connect with you yeah absolutely um so if you go to notify doapp um if you’re
If you’re a golf course interested in in bringing this to your golf course um there’s a request a demo section go ahead and just fill out that form and and one of our our teammates will will reach out to you um you can always feel
Free to reach out to me directly as well I’m just day at notify doapp that’s d a notified. apppp um but yeah always always happy to talk and and share and and learn more about other people in the industry also awesome wonderfully fot um yeah
Daan if I don’t see you before the PGA show next year I hope that there’s continued success for you and your team and uh yeah maybe next year we can get a round of golf somewhere as well in Ro each other’s swings maybe let’s do it man yeah let me know
Um stay in touch I’m happy to help in any way that I can
