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2026 Revenue

$60M

Customers

11K

Funding

$11M

Avg ACV

$5.5K

Team

300

Profits

$14M

Founded

2009

How Golf Genius CEO Mike Zisman grew to $60M revenue and 11K customers in 2026.

Golf Genius is the leading provider of tournament software to golf clubs, private clubs, public courses, tours, and associations, founded in 2009 and led by CEO Mike Zisman, a serial entrepreneur and former MIT faculty member whose first company, SoftSwitch, was acquired by Lotus Development in 1994 and then by IBM.

The company reached $1 million in ARR in 2017 after eight years of bootstrapping, then scaled to $53 million in revenue by the end of 2025, with a plan to exceed $60 million in 2026. Golf Genius serves 11,000 clubs across 62 countries at a list price of approximately $4,200 per year per club, has raised only $11 million in outside capital, holds $14 million in cash on its balance sheet, and has maintained roughly 20% EBITDA margins consistently since achieving profitability in 2017. Zisman personally funded the company with approximately $10 million of his own money from 2009 to 2020.

The single most striking strategic fact is that employees and executives together own roughly 80% of the cap table, a result of raising so little outside capital and distributing equity broadly since 2010. Golf Genius has completed 10 acquisitions, including GolfShot and SwingU in 2023 to enter the B2C consumer mobile market, and funded its 2024 acquisitions partly with $20 million in debt from Bridge Bank, all while remaining profitable and fully virtual with just under 300 employees, nearly half of whom are engineers based in Cluj, Romania.

Last updated

Golf Genius Revenue

Golf Genius reached $53 million in revenue at the end of 2025, up from $1 million in ARR in 2017, and is targeting more than $60 million for 2026. The company has been profitable since 2017 and consistently generates approximately 20% EBITDA margins.

Golf Genius revenue chart — $60M in 2026 (Source: GetLatka)
Golf Genius revenue chart — $60M in 2026 (Source: GetLatka)
YearMilestoneQuote
2026Golf Genius Hit $60m revenue in December 202613:40[1]
2025Golf Genius Hit $54m revenue in December 202511:18[2]
2017Golf Genius Hit $1m revenue in December 20176:55[3]
2009Launched with $0 revenue

The core revenue driver is a $4,200 per year subscription sold to 11,000 golf clubs across 62 countries, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of total revenue. The remainder comes from handicapping services operated on behalf of the USGA and other national golf bodies, plus a suite of products covering retail shop management and coaching. The 2023 acquisitions of GolfShot and SwingU added approximately $10 million in revenue from the B2C consumer mobile segment.

Golf Genius Valuation, Funding Rounds

Golf Genius has raised $11 million in total outside capital since its founding in 2009, and holds $14 million in cash on its balance sheet, meaning it holds more cash than it has ever raised. The company's first institutional financing round closed in 2020.

Golf Genius Capital Raised & ValuationCumulative capital raised and post-money valuation by roundCapital raised (cum.)Valuation$0$3M$5M$8M$10M$13M20092011201320152017201920202009 cumulative: $0 • 2009 Founded: $02020 cumulative: $11M • 2009 Founded: $0 • 2020 Seed: $11M$11M2009 Founded: $0 valuationSource: GetLatka.com interview on Apr 25, 2026 with Golf Genius CEO Mike Zisman
YearRoundAmountValuation% SoldQuote
2020Seed$11M--

From 2009 to 2020, founder Mike Zisman personally funded the company with approximately $10 million of his own money, structured almost entirely as interest-free debt to preserve the equity cap table. In 2024, Golf Genius took on $20 million in debt from Bridge Bank to fund acquisitions, reflecting a continued preference for debt over equity dilution.

Founder / CEO

Mike Zisman

Mike Zisman is listed as Founder / CEO at Golf Genius.

Q&A

QuestionAnswer
What's your age?-
Favorite online tool?-
Favorite book?-
Favorite CEO?-
Advice for 20 year old self-

Customers

Golf Genius serves 11,000 clubs across 62 countries, with the vast majority of customers operating a single 18-hole golf course and paying approximately $4,200 per year. Notable institutional customers include the USGA, for which Golf Genius operates the US handicapping system under a second five-year contract, and the PGA of America.

On the consumer side, the GolfShot and SwingU mobile apps collectively reach approximately 8 million users. The company's mobile scoring app is used by millions of golfers at member clubs, with players receiving a six-character ID to begin scoring without requiring registration.

Golf Genius serves 11K customers.

Golf Genius Business Model

Point-in-time figures shared on the GetLatka podcast, each linked to the exact moment it was said on camera.

Customers (2026)

11,000

Mike Zisman: We're in 11,000 courses, so we're pretty, plus, we do lots of other things, but it's certainly the most inexpensive software that club will have.

Watch at 3:19

Gross churn (2026)

6%

Mike Zisman: We probably have 6-7% attrition including in Romania for developers.

Watch at Watch

EBITDA margin (2026)

20%

Mike Zisman: My strategy is earn 20% and invest the rest. We consistently earn about 20% EBITDA margin and invest the rest.

Watch at 7:54

Gross margin

70%

Mike Zisman: It's SaaS. You know, when you're selling SaaS subscriptions back then it was like 2,500 a pop.

Watch at 8:42

Annual profit (2026)

$14M

Mike Zisman: It's actually 14 million cash. I'm like, 'What the hell are we doing sitting on 14 million in cash?'

Watch at 7:08

Golf Genius Employees & Team Size

Golf Genius employs just under 300 people and operates fully virtually with no offices. Nearly half of the team are engineers, the majority of whom work in a wholly owned Romanian subsidiary established on the first day of the company in 2009, based in Cluj, Romania.

The company reports annual attrition of approximately 6% to 7% including its Romanian development team, which Zisman attributes to broad employee equity ownership and a culture of shared incentives. Headcount has been flat recently as AI-driven productivity gains allow the existing team to build more without adding headcount.

Golf Genius employs approximately 300 people as of 2026. It serves 11K customers that rely on its solutions.

Golf Genius Team GrowthReported headcount over time075150225300375200920112013201520172019202120232025202600300300Source: GetLatka.com interview on Apr 25, 2026 with Golf Genius CEO Mike Zisman
YearMilestone
2026Reached 300 employees (April 2026)
2025Reached 300 employees (December 2025)

Golf Genius Strategy & Playbook

Strategy, growth tactics, and lessons Golf Genius's leaders shared on the GetLatka podcast, grouped by theme. Each quote links to the moment it was said.

Growth Strategy

Eight Years to $1M, Eight More to $50M

Golf Genius took eight years from its 2009 founding to reach $1 million in ARR in 2017, then another eight years to reach $53 million by end of 2025, reflecting the compounding nature of SaaS subscription growth at a low average price point of roughly $2,500 per subscription in the early years.

It took us eight years to get to a million and eight more years to get to 50 million. And I look at it, it's SaaS. know, when you're selling SaaS subscriptions back then, it was like 2,500 a pop. You got to sell a lot of subscriptions.

Michael Zisman

Four Defined Growth Vectors Drive Ongoing Expansion

Zisman organizes Golf Genius's growth around four explicit areas: the private club space where the company is dominant, public courses, international markets across 62 countries, and new product initiatives planned for introduction within the next year.

In our case, we have four areas of growth. This is what I focus on is, okay, what are we doing in each of these areas every day to drive growth? know, one is our private club space. We're very dominant. One is public courses. One is international where, although we're in 62 countries, it's hand-to-hand combat in each of these countries.

Michael Zisman

USGA Partnership in 2016 Was the Company's Inflection Point

Winning the contract to replace the USGA's tournament management system in 2016 fundamentally changed Golf Genius's trajectory, and in 2019 the USGA returned to ask Golf Genius to build and operate the new worldwide handicap system, a relationship now entering its second five-year contract.

The real break for us, and every company, I often say, if an entrepreneur tells you luck wasn't part of his success, they don't know what they're talking about. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, but you need some luck. And in our case, it was building relationship with the USGA to replace their tournament management system with ours, which really put the company in a whole different trajectory.

Michael Zisman

Pricing & Monetization

Low Price, High Volume: $4,200 Per Club Per Year

Golf Genius prices its core tournament software at approximately $4,200 per year for up to two 18-hole facilities, positioning it as the least expensive software in a club's stack. The company offsets the low unit price with volume across 11,000 clubs and by selling a broader suite covering tournaments, retail, and coaching.

Our list price, which we stick very close to at a private club today is about $4,200 per year for essentially unlimited use of the product for up to two 18-hole golf facilities. As I like to say, every business is price times quantity, P times Q, you learn in economics one, we're relatively low P, high Q, high quantity. We're in 11,000 courses.

Michael Zisman

Suite Strategy Expands Revenue Beyond Tournament Software

Golf Genius sells a four-product suite to golf professionals covering tournaments, retail golf shop management, and teaching and coaching, meaning the 11,000 clubs times $4,200 calculation represents only about two-thirds of total revenue, with handicapping and other products making up the remainder.

We go to a golf pro. It's a classic suite. Go to a pro at a club and say, look, you spend your time doing three things. You run tournaments, you run a golf shop. It's a physical golf shop or retail, and you do teaching and coaching. We have four software products that do all those things.

Michael Zisman

Product Strategy

B2B to B2C Expansion via Consumer Mobile Apps

In 2023, Golf Genius made a deliberate strategic shift from selling exclusively to clubs to also selling directly to individual golfers, entering the consumer market through the acquisitions of GolfShot and SwingU, which together bring an 8 million user mobile app base and GPS functionality.

In 2023, we made the strategic decision. It was important to expand from B2B, selling to clubs, to B2C, selling directly to golfers. There's a lot more golfers than clubs.

Michael Zisman

AI Tools Boosting Engineering Productivity Without Reducing Headcount

Golf Genius equips all engineers with tools including Claude, Cursor, and Lovable, and has seen meaningful productivity gains, but Zisman's policy is to use those gains to build more product rather than reduce headcount, keeping the team flat at just under 300 while expanding output.

We are seeing productivity gains. We are not of the view, oh my God, our engineers are so productive, we can reduce headcount. My view is our engineers are so productive, we can just do a lot more.

Michael Zisman

Fundraising & Capital

Self-Funded $10M as Interest-Free Debt to Preserve Equity

From 2009 to 2020, Zisman personally funded Golf Genius with approximately $10 million, structured almost entirely as interest-free debt rather than equity, which preserved the cap table for employees and gave him tax basis from accumulated losses that helped offset taxes when the company became profitable.

The original money I put in, I put in almost all as debt because I had been through the drill. I raise money, I give you options. I raise more money, you get the litter. So I said, look, I don't need to do that. I'm going to put the vast majority in as debt, literally interest-free debt.

Michael Zisman

$20M Debt Facility Funded 2024 Acquisitions

Golf Genius funded its 2024 acquisitions partly with $20 million in debt from Bridge Bank, demonstrating a preference for debt over equity dilution even at the acquisition stage, consistent with the founder's broader philosophy of minimizing outside equity.

In 2024, we acquired two companies that have been incredibly successful for us. And we funded that partly with 20 million of debt from Bridge Bank. And they've been an absolutely fantastic partner, absolutely fantastic.

Michael Zisman

M&A / Acquisitions

10 Acquisitions Across Three Strategic Phases

Golf Genius executed acquisitions in three distinct phases: first buying customers from legacy desktop competitors starting around 2014, then acqui-hiring talent, and finally in 2023 making a strategic shift to B2C by acquiring GolfShot and SwingU to reach golfers directly, running them as separate brands under a house-of-brands strategy.

In 2023, we made the strategic decision. It was important to expand from B2B, selling to clubs, to B2C, selling directly to golfers. There's a lot more golfers than clubs. And so, you know, we entered that market with two acquisitions that, golf shot and swing you that have been put, be able to put them together. We run them as separate brands, right? So it's a house of brand strategy, if you will.

Michael Zisman

GolfShot Deal Structured as Two-Thirds Stock, One-Third Cash

Golf Genius acquired GolfShot, which had approximately $10 million in revenue at the time of acquisition, using a deal structure that was two-thirds stock and one-third cash, allowing the seller to participate in future upside while Golf Genius preserved cash. Zisman required the seller's complex cap table to be consolidated behind a single LLC entity on Golf Genius's cap table.

It was two-thirds stock, one-third cash.

Michael Zisman

Hiring & Team

Nearly Half of 300 Employees Are Engineers Based in Romania

Golf Genius operates fully virtually with just under 300 employees, nearly half of whom are engineers in a wholly owned Romanian subsidiary established on day one in 2009. The company cites Cluj, Romania, described as the Silicon Valley of Romania with 2,300 software companies, as a source of high-quality, long-tenured engineering talent.

We're just under 300 and going down, we've been flat for some time because we are seeing productivity gains. Almost half of them are in development, which is extraordinary for a company of our size. Most of them are in a wholly owned subsidiary, Inclusion Romania. We started development in Romania. The day I started the company, 2009.

Michael Zisman

Culture & Incentives

Employees Own Roughly 80% of the Cap Table Including Founders

Because Golf Genius raised only $11 million in outside capital, employees and executives together own approximately 80% of the company, with non-senior employees alone owning around 60%. Zisman views broad employee ownership as the primary driver of the company's 6% to 7% annual attrition rate.

It's not an ESOP, but it's profit units. Not counting, well, almost 80%, including me and the other executives. Yeah, because we raised so little money. We only raised 11 million bucks.

Michael Zisman

Periodic Employee Share Redemptions Provide Liquidity Without a Sale

Golf Genius has twice offered employees the ability to redeem up to 20% of their vested shares at the 409A valuation, and is considering doing so again, giving long-tenured employees a partial liquidity event without requiring a full company sale or outside financing round.

What we have done in the past, and we're probably gonna do right now, is we offer employee redemption. So we go to employees and say, we are open the window. If you would like to redeem some of your shares at our 409A valuation, we'll redeem them.

Michael Zisman

Founder Lessons & Story

Earn 20% EBITDA and Invest the Rest

Zisman's core financial philosophy is to consistently target a 20% EBITDA margin and reinvest all remaining profit into growth, rejecting both growth-at-all-costs and pure cash accumulation in favor of sustainable, profitable expansion.

My strategy is earn 20% and invest the rest. So we consistently earn about 20% EBITDA margin, invest the rest.

Luck Is Preparation Meeting Opportunity

Zisman credits the USGA partnership as a lucky break that transformed the company, and argues that any entrepreneur who denies luck played a role in their success does not fully understand what happened to them.

I often say, if an entrepreneur tells you luck wasn't part of his success, they don't know what they're talking about. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, but you need some luck.

Michael Zisman

Frequently Asked Questions about Golf Genius

What is Golf Genius's revenue?

Golf Genius generates $60M in revenue.

Who is the CEO of Golf Genius?

The CEO of Golf Genius is Mike Zisman.

How much funding does Golf Genius have?

Golf Genius raised $11M.

How many employees does Golf Genius have?

Golf Genius has 300 employees.

Where is Golf Genius headquarters?

Golf Genius is headquartered in United States.

Full Interview Transcripts

Apr 25, 2026

Nathan Latka (00:00) Hey, folks, my guest today is Mike Zisman. He's the founder and CEO of Golf Genius, launched back in 2009. He is a serial entrepreneur. Mike, I don't want to age you here, but first company back in 1979, formal faculty at MIT, over 40 years of experience building software companies. Mike, ready to take us to the top? Michael Zisman (00:17) I am. Great to be with you. Thanks for inviting me. Nathan Latka (00:21) you bet. Tell us more about what you're selling at golf genius. Then we'll go back and get your backstory. Michael Zisman (00:26) Sure. So Golf Genius is the leading provider of tournament software to golf clubs, private clubs, public courses, tours, associations. ⁓ We provide sort of the very high end software for, you know, creating tournaments, doing registration, payment processing, live leader boards, broadcast feeds where we're working with, you know, like PGA or USGA tournaments. So it's a very deep product for providing. ⁓ the capabilities that golf professionals need. Typically our end user is a PGA golf professional in a private club or a public facility. Nathan Latka (01:05) And is the group at the private facility, is that the owner of the facility or it's a player at the facility? Probably the owner, right? Michael Zisman (01:12) No, so you think about a club I belong to, Marion Golf Club, right? It's a member-owned club. We have a golf staff, typically a head golf professional, assistant golf professionals. Our user is that director of golf or assistant golf professional. But we're really B2B to see Nathan in a sense that all the live scoring is done by the players at that club using our ⁓ live scoring app. So we provide, think about it, provide software Nathan Latka (01:40) Interesting. Michael Zisman (01:42) for the ⁓ pro to set up the tournaments, they say, hey, let's go. Then the players themselves are typically using our mobile app to actually do the scoring. So the beauty is when the last guy walks off the course, click a button to resolve ties. We know what all the results of the tournament are and it may have been many different tournaments all going on at the same time. Nathan Latka (02:07) So just to put that all in a sentence, you're selling to the director of golf when they have a tournament, they're emailing all the players saying, down to the mobile app before we start. Yep. Michael Zisman (02:14) Correct, exactly. Most of them already have. mean, millions of people at this point have our mobile app. So typically they don't have to, but say at a charity tournament, you're absolutely right. There's people show up to play at a charity tournament. They'll literally get something that says, download this app. We don't make them register. They're going to have a six character ID and they enter that ID and you know, they're scoring. Nathan Latka (02:36) Very cool. Help me understand how you've thought about pricing, then we'll get the backstory here. What's the average director of golf paying you for the software? Michael Zisman (02:42) So our list price, which we stick very close to at a private club today is about $4,200 per year for essentially unlimited use of the product for up to two 18-hole golf facilities. So if you're a Pinehurst with seven different courses, that's all custom price. But it's actually, as I like to say, every business is price times quantity, P times Q, you learn in economics one, we're relatively low P, high Q, high quantity. We're in 11,000 courses. So we're pretty simple plus we do lots of other things, but it's certainly the most inexpensive software that club will have because they also need software to you know Do their point of sale to manage their t-sheet to do their website to do? ⁓ Member billing and things like that So we're we're one component in in that software stack that a clubber of course is running It's a very high-end like the US the United States Golf Association. You know, we're doing all of their tournaments. We do all the handicapping in the United States. So the USJ is responsible for handicapping. One of the things that makes golf unique, Nathan, I if you're a golfer not, but golf has handicapping. So what it means is that a really poor player and a great player can go out and have a very fun round of golf. Let's say that that really good player has to give me 15 strokes. So he has to beat me by more than 15 strokes to win. So we have, we can come down literally the last putt on the 18th hole. Compare that to something like tennis. If you have a really good tennis player and a really poor tennis player, no one's having fun. So what makes golf unique is this handicapping, which is very precise, and we do all of that in the US and 20 other countries. Nathan Latka (04:19) 11,000 courses across how many clubs? Michael Zisman (04:23) It's 11,000 customers, so 11,000 clubs in 62 countries. Nathan Latka (04:29) Okay, got it. So 11,000 clubs, 62 countries, but one of those clubs might have on average three 18 hole golf facilities. Michael Zisman (04:35) The vast majority of them have one. Most clubs have one golf course. Some have two. And then resorts like a Desert Mountain in Arizona or a Pinehurst may have six or seven or eight golf courses. Nathan Latka (04:48) I see, okay, but it's fair to say on average, your customer's gonna be paying you then about that 4,200 per year price point, because the majority have one course. Yeah, okay. Give me the backstory here. How do you go from MIT professor to golf guy? Michael Zisman (04:54) Almost all the time. Almost all the time. Yeah. ⁓ Well, I always loved software. think my happiest days were programming. They're still my happiest days, but I don't do it anymore. I love coding. It's magical for me. Like some people, I think when some people appreciate a great poem, I appreciate great code. So I've always loved programming, very technical. ⁓ As soon as I got to MIT, I realized I did not want to be an academic. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I was there for two years, moved back to Philadelphia where I was from. I went to graduate school, started the first company, SoftSwitch, which was in the communication software business. It was very low level communication software, sold to Fortune 500 companies. That was acquired by Lotus Development in 1994. And then lo and behold, 11 months later, IBM came along and acquired Lotus. So in 11 months, I went from a company of 450 people, my company, to Lotus, which was 6,000, to IBM, which was a quarter million. They were different. Trust me, they were different. Not good versus bad, because it's amazing what you can accomplish when you have a quarter million people trying to do something. And I stayed at IBM for a while. I worked with Lou Gershner, who was a just fantastic CEO. He turned around to IBM, absolutely. And then that kind of ran its course. Nathan Latka (06:04) the Michael Zisman (06:24) and ⁓ left IBM in 07, you know, I really don't want to retire. I love what I do. And I was always the guy organizing the buddy golf trip. know, 12 guys go off some place to play golf. And, you know, I'd come back from the trip and I was the organizer. And, you know, you come up to me and say, you know, you had me play with John three times and you know I don't like John. And I didn't play with Sam at all. And I have a, my PhD is really in operations research and scheduling. I sort of love scheduling problems. So I that's an interesting problem. And so it all started with, let's build a scheduling system to get everyone in the right foursomes over five, six, seven rounds. ⁓ It was called, in fact, the original name of the company was Golf Trip Genius for Buddy Golf Trips. And then ⁓ that turned out to be a very small market, but still serviced it. It's a small market, very price sensitive market and moved from that to golf leagues, right? And so instead of... 12 guys playing six rounds of golf, you got 60 guys playing 20 rounds of golf, and then move from that to selling to clubs. But the real break for us, and every company, I often say, if an entrepreneur tells you luck wasn't part of his success, they don't know what they're talking about. ⁓ Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, but you need some luck. And in our case, it was building relationship with the USGA to replace their tournament management system with ours, which really put the company in a whole different trajectory. Nathan Latka (07:48) What year was that? Michael Zisman (07:49) That was 2016. So it started in 2009. As I like to say, we wandered in the desert, entrepreneurs wander in the desert till you, today we say product market fit, you do you have a product market fit? And we went from buddy trips to leagues, to servicing clubs, and then, you know, really, really enter a relationship with the USGA to do tournament management. And then they came back in 2019 and said, hey, Nathan Latka (07:51) Okay. Michael Zisman (08:15) We also want you to build the new handicap system. There was a new worldwide standard for handicapping ⁓ and we want you to build that and operate it. So we did that. And in fact, we just entered the second five-year contract to do that. So we have a very close relationship with the USDA as well as the PGA of America. Most of the England golf, the Ireland golf, do all their tournaments and almost all the the PGA associations around the world. So it really isn't an international company today, very focused on golf. It's probably the largest pure play golf software company in the industry. Nathan Latka (08:49) Bye. ⁓ measured by revenue or something else. Can we take 11,000 clubs times 4,200 to back into a revenue range? Michael Zisman (09:05) ⁓ no, that would get you to about two thirds of our revenue, but then we do all the handicapping. We also have other products. You know, we go to, we go to a golf pro. It's a classic suite. Like I grew up in the days of Microsoft office and what a smart suite. go to a pro at a club and say, look, you spend your time doing three things. You run tournaments, you run a golf shop. It's a physical golf shop or retail, and you do teaching and coaching. We have four software products that do all those things. We're very, very focused on coaching. And so we can sell an entire suite to that club more than just handicapping. So when you roll it all up, it's a good deal more than the 44 million. It's been, the company's been profitable since 2017. I'd like to say we have more cash on our balance sheet than all the money we've ever raised. Literally, 11 million. That's all. That's all. Nathan Latka (09:54) How much have you raised? That's great. So as a capital allocator, you're just sitting on these profits now you have over 11 million cash sitting in your bank today. Do you just what do do with that? How do think about reinvesting it? Michael Zisman (10:06) That's a very good question. And I had that conversation with someone today. Like, what do we, it's actually 14 million cash. Like, what the hell are we doing sitting on 14 million cash? We can fund out, it can fund acquisitions. We've done 10 acquisitions. And right now, you know, my view as an entrepreneur at our stage is there's always, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with rule of 40, right? Revenue growth plus profit margin. But there's a strong bias towards growth. If you want to get really good multiples, you gotta be growing. I mean, people don't pay high multiples for companies that are just flat. They'll pay six or seven times cash flow, right? ⁓ And so, you know, we are very focused on growth and investing into it. So my view is, I've never believed in, ⁓ you know, ⁓ growth at all costs, losing money. It's very hard to make the transition from losing money to making money. ⁓ And you're, you know, the fuse is on, right? If you keep losing money. You know, eventually you've burned out and, you know, bad stuff can happen. So my strategy is earn 20 % and invest the rest. So we consistently earn about 20 % EBITDA margin, invest the rest. We're, you know, incredibly excited about what AI does for us. I mean, believe it or not, my PhD thesis in 1977 was an artificial intelligence thesis. In fact, if you go... Ask Gemini or Chet CPT compares thisman's augmented Petri Nets to agentic AI. It says, wow, they're very similar. And that was 50 years earlier. So, you I've been around AI literally since 1975. And so can see how we can use it. All of our engineers, you know, are fully equipped with Claude and cursor and lovable and all the other tools. Our marketing people are using it like crazy. It's just, you know, There's a lot of problems with agentic AI in terms of accuracy and things like that, but ⁓ it's an amazing tool. It's amazing tools. And I often say, I view prompting as just the next national level of programming language. And we went from machine language, I'm almost on you. put ones and zeros to assembler language, which had nothing to do with the application, load this register with that thing. From there, I'll call them third programming languages, procedural languages. which we've had for years. So Fortran was introduced in late 50s, right? And then we had all sorts of other, you know, procedural languages and programs like, you know, C++. So it's been a long time where we've had these ways of programming and, you know, fairly low level and prompting to me is just the next evolution of that, where you can just speak at a much higher level. it generates source code that then generates machine code. It's fantastic. Nathan Latka (12:58) Well, you're clearly using that and getting the efficiency if you're printing 20 % EBITDA margins consistently. So congratulations. What's the team size today, full time? Michael Zisman (13:03) Yeah. We're just under 300 and going down, we've been flat for some time because, you we are seeing productivity gains. are not of the right now. We are not of the view. my God, our engineers are so productive. We can reduce headcount. My view is our engineers are so productive. We can just do a lot more. So right now our view is we're not looking and interestingly enough, surprising out of our 300 employees. Almost half of them are in development, which is extraordinary for a company of our size. Most of them are in a wholly owned subsidiary, Inclusion Romania. We started development in Romania. The day I started the company, 2009. So we get enormous labor savings and fantastic people. Many of those people have been with us for a long time. When I started working with the USGA, they said to me, you know, Mike, We can find people who know software and we can find people who know golf. We just can't find people who know golf software until you. So we have people who know golf software. I've been with us a long time and some of it's, you know, very, very intricate. You know, when I started to come, I focused on the scheduler. I mean, that scheduler runs thousands of times a day and can literally generate and score 50 million schedules a second, you know, running on 10 big processors and Amazon. Some people would call it AI, I call it mathematical programming, it's sort of my background. But we're still, there's just so much you can do with the AI tools today. And as I'm sure you're aware, the market has taken a real hit because people think that AI will put SaaS companies out of business. I think for the large part, that's just very naive. It will make SaaS companies radically more productive. And there'll be more competition, which is good. Because I like to say to people, competition accelerates innovation and reduces costs. Which of those two don't you like? So we relish competition. And that's what I do. As much as I have you. Nathan Latka (15:09) They're both good things. So give us the growth story. Mike, give us the growth story here for a second. So you get going in 2009. What was your first year where you broke a million of revenue? Michael Zisman (15:23) It took us eight years to get to a million and eight more years to get to 50 million. And I look at it, it's SaaS. know, when you're selling SaaS subscriptions back then, it was like 2,500 a pop. You got to sell a lot of subscriptions. It took a while. I funded the company personally, but from 2009 to 2020, I find I funded the company with about $10 million. My own money mostly is debt. What I love about our company is. Most of the stock is owned by employees. Very widely distributed. Nathan Latka (15:56) how much, if I looked at the cap table today, how much would be ESOP or employee owned? Michael Zisman (16:00) It's not an ESOP, but it's profit units. Not counting, well, almost 80%, including me and the other executives. Yeah, because we raised so little money. We only raised 11 million bucks. Nathan Latka (16:08) Wow. Okay, that's including you though. You plus employees, 80%. Michael Zisman (16:14) That's including me, but if I take away the really senior people, it's still 60%. My biggest thrill, I tell people honest to God, I will measure the success of this company by how many of our employees make a significant amount of money when we sell or when we exit or do a recap. To me, I was successful in my first company. wasn't really focused on the money, so I was able to spread the equity out quite widely. And we have people who joined us in 2010. Nathan Latka (16:19) Wow, that's great. Michael Zisman (16:44) got what were significant slugs of stock because it was not worth very much. And we have incredible retention because of it. We probably have 6%, 7 % attrition, including in Romania for developers. I like the people. I say, well, it's either because they really like me or they own a lot of stock. I'm not sure which. Nathan Latka (17:08) They tend to go together, don't they? Michael Zisman (17:10) Maybe, maybe, but to me, I want to make sure, my philosophy at company is we're all in this together. We're all in this together. I like to say, I couldn't build a company with 300 Mike Sissmans at different skills. I couldn't build a company with 300 Alex's who runs development. What I love about an entrepreneurial company is bringing together a bunch of people with different skills to accomplish something none of them could accomplish on their own. That's what a company is about. Can you bring together a set of skills, marketing skills, sales skills, finance skills, development skills, support skills, to accomplish something together as a team that none of us accomplish on our own? To me, that's where the juice is in being an entrepreneur. Nathan Latka (17:52) So just to summarize that cap table, which I'm so impressed by again, we'll take 100%, subtract down about 20%, which investors own. Employees, including you, own 80%, but even when you take out Mike, you, plus other senior folks, all the other employees still own about 60%. So you and seniors own about 20%. Incredible. Michael Zisman (18:07) Absolutely. Yeah. Well, ⁓ that's probably not quite right. That's probably not quite right. ⁓ Let's say me and the other seniors own 30%, 40%. It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. To me, it's what's very gratifying is that, you know, and so we're all, you know, as I like to say, we're all pulling on the same side of the rope. We all have the same motivations. ⁓ Nathan Latka (18:18) Still, still, same concept. A lot of employee ownership, that's awesome. Yep. Okay. I love this. Michael Zisman (18:37) We're all in this together. Nathan Latka (18:38) I always joke, Mike, I say first time founders chase the equity raising valuation, second time founders keep equity and use debt. So you mentioned you self-funded 10 million with your own money, including debt. Can you tell me how much debt and how you structured it? Michael Zisman (18:50) Well, the original money I put in, I put in almost all as debt because I had been through the drill. I raise money, I give you options. I raise more money, you get the litter. give you more. It's like hamster. give you that. So said, look, I don't need to do that. I'm going to put the vast majority in as debt, literally interest-free debt. I didn't really care. Let me finish it. when the company became, so as a result of that, by the way, I had basis. and how they'll had all those losses over the years that helped me from a tax perspective. When the company became profitable, started paying down the debt to cover the taxes. And then when we did our first round of institutional financing in 2020, there was like a 1.25 million left and paid it. But we now have debt. In 2024, we acquired two companies that have been incredibly successful for us. And we funded that partly with 20 million of debt from Bridge Bank. And they've been an absolutely fantastic partner, absolutely fantastic. Nathan Latka (19:55) Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's great. So just to summarize again, you said it took you eight years to get a million, another eight to break 50 million. That will put you at 1 million ARR in 2017 and about 50 million is where you wrapped up 2025. Michael Zisman (20:07) Little more than that, yeah, more like $53 million. Nathan Latka (20:09) Little more, little more. And what do you think you'll break at the end of 2026? Michael Zisman (20:12) Our plan right now is little over 60. Nathan Latka (20:15) Okay. So that plus your profit margin, you still think you can hit the rule of 40. Michael Zisman (20:22) We will not hit the role of 40 this year. Our growth is to get bigger and bigger, it's harder and harder. If you look at SaaS companies, it's fascinating. It makes perfect sense. If you look at SaaS companies, as the companies have got larger, the growth rate's gone down. The average growth rate for a SaaS company, 50 million and above, is like 10%. It's big, it's harder. We're more than 10%, but you have to be mindful that You know, it's one thing, as I like to say, it's one thing to grow a $5 million company 50 % a year. It's a little harder to grow a $5 billion company 50 % a year, right? Or even a $50 million company. So we are, you know, we don't have the, you know, we're not growing at 30 and 40%, but we're growing at a very manageable rate, very close to rule of 40. Nathan Latka (21:12) Yeah, Mike, the last thing I want to touch on, because there's a lot of founders I talked to that think they can't even think about buying up other companies until they have, you know, a hundred million of revenue. But I see sort of three phases with your acquisition strategy in 2020, you were rolling up sort of legacy desktop tools to lock and supply courses and tournaments in 2021. You expanded into leagues to increase, think probably engagement and recurring usage. And then 2024, you got really aggressive with consumer and mobile GPS apps, coaching and data. Please correct me if your strategy was different than that, but if that is accurate, why that pattern? Michael Zisman (21:44) Well, so when we came into the market and really started selling to clubs in 2014, there were some existing desktop suppliers who provided a very simple product, but they had customers. As I said, when you do an acquisition, it's some combination of technology or product, talent, and customers. The best acquisitions are all three. Some of them, you're just buying customers. So our first goal was let's go get those customers. We had no interest whatsoever in their old desktop software, but we acquired a whole bunch of customers. And then after that was really an acquihire, a guy who wanted to be in the business. It was clear, like, just come join up with us. And then we acquired a few other firms. And then, you know, in 2023, we made the strategic decision. It was important to expand from B2B, selling to clubs, to B2C, selling directly to golfers. There's a lot more golfers than clubs. Right. And so, you know, we entered that market with two acquisitions that, um, you know, golf shot and swing you that have been put, be able to put them together. run them a separate brands, right? So it's a house of brand strategy, if you will. Uh, most of the companies who have acquired, we've kept their brands because they had brand equity. Uh, disappointment to me in 2025 was he didn't do any acquisitions. We looked at some, but we couldn't get together on price. I think things are probably getting a little more reasonable now. ⁓ I acquired my first company in 1984. I've been on both sides of the table many, many times and hope to do some acquisitions. Nathan Latka (23:07) Yep. Well, is why I want to dive deep on this. mean, you're glazing over it, but this is something I want younger entrepreneurs to learn. I mean, I'm looking at golf shot on my phone right now. You guys, I don't know that we'll be able to see this. We'll edit it into the post-production. This is not a small deal, okay? This is like 71,000 five-star reviews. I'm gonna guess it's probably four, five, six, eight million users when you bought it. How'd you negotiate the deal? Michael Zisman (23:45) ⁓ There's a market, know, people like to think that I think what I have learned over the years that I think sometimes younger entrepreneurs don't realize is there's a market. The market is very different than it was six months ago, right? Typically for entrepreneurial companies like this, you're talking at multiples of revenue because often they're not profitable. it's multiple, you know, enterprise value over revenue. And, you know, back in 21, as you know, companies are trading at 10 times revenue, you know, which is, which implies extraordinary growth. At the end of the day, a company's worth the present value for its future cash flows. I mean, that's what I learned as a PhD at the Wharton School, right? At the end of the day, a company is worth the present value for its future cash flows. ⁓ So the markets come down, but I think it was a ⁓ market rate. We had been talking to them a few years early because we were very interested. So GolfShot, the product you just put up, they acquired a company called CoachNow. which was a very high brand equity in the coaching video analysis space. We wanted that company, talked to them and we couldn't get a deal together, came back. And they were a company that had been around a long time, a complex cap table. It was time for them to do something. And in that case, interestingly enough, what they said is, hey, look, we're not real thrilled with the pricing you're talking about, but if we could do it as an all stock deal with you and ride your stock up, we would do that. And I said, well, we're sitting on too much cash to do that, but we'll do part of it in stock. And so, but I said, we'll get part of it in stock, but I don't want, I don't want, I don't want your cap table. I don't want your cap table. You go form an LLC, you put your cap table behind the black curtain and you're one line entry on my cap table. It's the, you know, XYZ Holdings LLC. I don't, I don't want to know what's behind, I don't want to, I don't want to know what's behind the iron curtain. Nathan Latka (25:36) your 100 shareholders that own 0.001 % on your cap table. Michael Zisman (25:39) Exactly. Exactly. I don't want to know about it. You're just... And they saw the wisdom of that and they'll do very well. They'll get another turn on their ARR because the stock, when the stock goes, it was a really good deal. And I say to people all the time, if you're a seller, if you're selling your company, ⁓ don't take all stock because you're relying on that buyer to make good on you. But if you take all cash and the thing takes off, you're to feel like you missed the boat. So if you're willing to take some risks, take a combination of cash and stock. And I think that's how a lot of deals get done. Nathan Latka (26:13) If you looked at the total deal value paid for golf shot, like the dollar value, what percent of the dollar value did you do equity versus cash upfront? Michael Zisman (26:20) It was two-thirds stock, one-third cash. Nathan Latka (26:23) Okay, pretty cool. And how much did golf shot add to your revenue? The second you acquired it? What were you talking like 5 million or 10 million or something smaller? It was about 10. Okay. Okay. And my research says that they were bootstrapped. Was that true? Michael Zisman (26:30) And yeah. I think so. I really don't even know the history. were started actually, so they were started by two entrepreneurs in the Phoenix area. Ben Adams then came in and bought the company. He was the CEO and we bought it. And so he runs our whole B2C business. Ben, as I like to say, Ben, every time I talk, you get humble because you use acronyms I've never heard of. And I've been in the IT business longer than you've been alive. But there's the whole B2C world. Average return on ad spend, this, that, media mix. ⁓ Ben literally sold his first company to Excited Home in the 90s. you know, he's been in the B2C software business forever. It's an absolute thrill working with him because he knows the stuff so well. Nathan Latka (27:19) I'm like, this is why I love doing this show, right? Because if I asked my audience, just look at this website and guess revenue with all due respect, like it's not sexy web 2.0, it's none of that. And the reason is because you've got all these other go-to-market motions that are really sexy, 8 million user mobile apps for consumers and sort of other things, but 60 North is, know, approaching 60 million bucks of revenue here is obviously an impressive story. How do you think about sort of your legacy, right? If someone came to you today and offered you 400 million all cash upfront to sell the business. you sell? Michael Zisman (27:52) Would you? Nathan Latka (27:54) Well, you're growing from 50 to 60 million year over year. You're printing cashflow. I don't know your personal life situation. You have employees that have been on the cap table, potentially some of them for north of 10 years. I don't know if you've offered them liquidity in the past with the raises that you've done. If you haven't, it could be an opportunity to do that. Michael Zisman (28:10) Yeah, we do. So it's something, look, you have to think about, you have to do what's best for your shareholders. There is some number at which you say, okay, I don't know what that number is. What we have done in the past, and we're probably gonna do right now, is we offer ⁓ employee redemption. So we go to employees and say, we are open the window. ⁓ If you would like to redeem some of your shares at our 409A valuation, we'll redeem them. to get liquidity, because some of these people have been on the cap table for 15, 16, 17 years and say, I've had a chance to get a bite at the apple to redeem something. It's not a lot. Most people go like, you know, it's only going to get better from here. I always say, take something off the table. When you have a chance to take something off the table, I always recommend to people, just manage your risk a little bit. And so we've done that twice. We're probably going to do it again. We're considering a minority recap where we would bring in a substantial amount of money. ⁓ to provide liquidity for our investors. They're not very anxious, but ⁓ you know, and people like me who, you know, have been at this for a long time. But, you know, right now, you know, we're very, very excited about our prospects. I'm like, I told someone the other day, I'm more juiced up than I've been in years. I look at all this AI stuff. I'm a geek. I'm a certified geek. love... helping people build these things, giving them the ideas. You come back a day later and you go, oh my God, you did that last night? I mean, look at that. Nathan Latka (29:40) That's the beauty of a Romanian engineering team, right? You give this back at 6 PM, you wake up at 6 AM and it's done. Michael Zisman (29:45) Well, you know, we're adding social features to our products. know, typical, like a face, and I literally laid out, said, here's what we need to do. Here's, we need a feed where clubs can broadcast, we need chat, and that, that, that. Literally 48 hours later, a VP of engineering says, look, I use Lavaboo, I built this whole thing out. says the whole thing, I said, yeah, my God, and it's like, beautiful. I said, God, we could go compete with Facebook. Oh wait, they have two billion users. Okay, probably not going to do that, but it is a need. We have product managers, we have product managers who literally started their careers as assistant PGA professionals who on their own went out and got lovable. And they say, rather than explain to development what want to do, it's easier just to build the user experience and say, here, you know, we were using Figma for a long time. We still use...

Golf Genius interviewFeb 4, 2026

How He Bootstrapped to $53M/yr Selling to Golf Clubs - YouTube

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//www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnBA_jV3CBU Hey folks, my guest today is Mike Zisman. He's the founder and CEO of Golf Genius launched back in 2019. He's a serial entrepreneur. Mike, I don't want to age you here, but first company back in 1979. Former faculty at MIT. (00:53) Over 40 years of experience building software companies. Mike, you ready to take us to the top? >> I am. Great to be with you. Thanks for inviting me. >> You bet. Tell us more about what you're selling at Golf Genius. Then we'll go back and get your backstory. >> Sure. So, Golf Genius is the leading provider of tournament software to golf clubs, private clubs, public courses, tours, associations. (01:13) We provide sort of the very high-end software for, you know, creating tournaments, doing registration, payment processing, live leaderboards, a broadcast feeds where we're working with you know, like PGA or USGA tournaments. So, it's a very deep product for providing the capabilities that golf professionals need. Typically, our end user is a PGA golf professional in a private club or public facility. (01:36) >> And or is the group at the private facility, is it the owner of the facility or it's a player at the facility? It's probably the owner, right? >> No. So, you think about a club I belong to, Marion Golf Club, right? It's a member-owned club. We have a golf staff, typically a head golf professional, assistant golf professionals. (01:54) Our user is that director of golf or assistant golf professional. But, we're really B2B to C Nathan in the sense that all the live scoring is done by the players at that club using our live scoring app. So, we provide software for the pro to set up the tournament. They say, "Hey, let's go." Then the the players themselves are typically using our mobile app to actually do the scoring. (02:16) So, the beauty is when the last guy walks off the course, click a button to resolve ties, we know what all the results of the tournament are, and it may have been, you know, many different tournaments all going on at the same time. >> So, just to put that all in a sentence, you're selling to the director of golf. When they have a tournament, they're emailing all the players saying, "Download the mobile app before we start. (02:33) " >> Correct. Exactly. >> Most of them already have it. I mean, millions of people at this point have our mobile app. So, typically they don't have to. But say at a charity tournament, you're absolutely right. There's people who show up to play at a charity tournament. They'll literally get something that says, "Download this app." We don't make them register. (02:47) They're going to have a six-character ID, and they enter that ID, and you know, they're they're scoring. >> Very cool. Help me understand how you've thought about pricing. Then we'll get the back story here. What's the average director of golf paying you for the software? >> So, our list price, which we stick very close to at a private club today, is about $4,200 per year for essentially unlimited use of the product for up to two 18-hole golf facilities. (03:10) So, if you're a Pinehurst with seven different courses, that's all custom priced. But it's actually, as I like to say, every business is price times quantity, P times Q, you learn in economics one. We're relatively low P, high Q, high quantity. We're in 11,000 courses, so we're pretty Plus, we do lots of other things, but it's certainly the most inexpensive software that club will have because they also need software to, you know, do their point of sale, to manage their tee sheet, to do their website, to do member billing, and things like that. (03:40) >> the back story here. How do you go from MIT professor to golf guy? >> Well, I always loved software. I think my happiest days were programming. They're still my happiest days, though I don't do it anymore. I love coding. It's just it's magical for me. I think when some people appreciate a great poem, I appreciate great code. (03:57) So, I've always loved program, very technical. As soon as I got to MIT, I realized you know I did not want to be an academic. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So, I was there for 2 years, moved back to Philadelphia where I was from, and went to graduate school. Started the first company, Softswitch, which was in the communications software business. (04:13) It was very low-level communications software to sold to, you know, Fortune 500 companies. That was acquired by Lotus Development in 1994. Uh and then lo and behold, 11 months later, IBM came along and acquired Lotus. So, in 11 months, I went from a a company of 450 people, my company, to Lotus, which was 6,000, to IBM, which was a quarter million. (04:34) They were different. Trust me, they were different. Not Not good versus bad, because it's amazing what you can accomplish when you have a quarter million people, you know, trying to do something. And I stayed at IBM for a while. I worked with Lou Gerstner, who was a just fantastic CEO. Turned He turned around IBM, absolutely. (04:51) And then that kind of ran its course, uh and left IBM in '07. You know, I really don't want to retire. I love what I do. And I was always the guy organizing the buddy golf trip, you know, 12 guys go off someplace to play golf. We still service it. It's a small market, very price-sensitive market. Uh and moved from that to Golf Leagues. (05:08) Right? So, instead of 12 guys playing six rounds of golf, you got, you know, 60 guys playing 20 rounds of golf. And then moved from that to selling to clubs. But, the real break for us, and every company, you know, I often say, if an entrepreneur tells you luck wasn't part of his success, they don't know what they're talking about, you know. (05:24) Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, but you need some luck. And in our case, it was building a relationship with the USGA to replace their tournament management system with ours, which really put the company in a whole different trajectory. >> What year was that? >> That was 2016. So, it started in '09. (05:39) As I like to say, we wandered in the desert. Entrepreneurs wandering the desert till you Today we say product market fit. You know, do you have a product market fit? And and we went from buddy trips to leagues to servicing clubs, and then, you know, really entered a relationship with the USGA to do tournament management. (05:55) And then they came back in 2019 and said, "Hey, we also want you to build the new handicap system." There was a new worldwide standard for handicapping, and we want you to build that and operate it. It's probably the largest pure play golf software company in the industry. >> Measured by revenue or something else? >> Revenue. Measured by revenue. Yeah. (06:13) >> Can we take 11,000 clubs times 4,200 to back into a revenue range? >> No, that would get you to about 2/3 of our revenue, but then we do all the handicapping. We also have other products. You know, we go to a golf pro, it's a classic suite. Like I grew up in the days of Microsoft Office, the SmartSuite. (06:31) We go to a pro at a club and say, "Look, you spend your time doing three things. You run tournaments, you run a golf shop, it's a physical golf shop, a retail, and you do teaching and coaching." We have four software products that do all those things. We're very very focused on coaching. And so we can sell an entire suite to that club, more than just handicapping. (06:47) So when you roll it all up, it's a good deal more than the 44 million. It's been Company's been profitable since 2017. I'd like to say we we we have more cash on our balance sheet than all the money we've ever raised. Literally. >> How much have you raised? >> 11 million. That's all. That's all. >> That's great. (07:03) So as a capital allocator, you're just sitting on these profits now. You have over 11 million cash sitting in your bank today. What do you do with that? How do you think about reinvesting it? >> It's a very good question, and I had that conversation with someone today. It's actually 14 million cash. I'm like, "What the hell are we doing sitting on 14 million in cash?" We can fund acquisitions. (07:17) We've done 10 acquisitions. And right now, you know, my view as an entrepreneur at our stage is there's always you know, I'm sure you're familiar with Rule of 40, right? Revenue growth plus profit margin. But there's a strong bias towards growth. If you want to get really good multiples, you got to be growing. (07:32) I mean, people don't pay high multiples for companies that are just flat. They'll they'll pay six or seven times cash flow, right? And so, you know, we are very focused on growth and investing into it. So, my view is I've never believed in you know, growth at all costs losing money. It's very hard to make the transition from losing money to making money and you're you know, the the fuse is on like if you keep losing money, you know, eventually you're you you've burned out and you know, bad stuff can happen. (07:58) So, my strategy is earn 20% and invest the rest. So, we consistently earn about 20% EBITDA margin and invest the rest. >> Guys, remember I am not just a YouTuber. I'm investing in my third fund. We've deployed $250 million into 550 software companies so far. Again, at founderpath.com. If you're interested in capital, I would love to cut you a check because I know you're investing in your education. You watch my show. (08:21) So, sign up at founderpath.com and when you get the onboarding email, I reply and I see how those just reply and say, "Nathan, I found you through YouTube." and I'll make sure to prioritize you. I would love to cut you a check. Check out founderpath.com. >> So, you get going in 2009. What was your first year where you broke a million in revenue? >> It took us eight years to get to a million and eight more years to get to 50 million. (08:42) And I look at him, it's SaaS. You know, when you're selling SaaS subscriptions back then it was like 2,500 a pop. You got to sell a lot of subscriptions. >> It it took a while. I funded the company my personally but from '09 to 2020, I find I funded the company with about $10 million my own money mostly as debt. What I love about our company is most of the stock is owned by employees. (09:03) >> Very widely How much? If I look at the cap table today, how much would be ESOP or employee owned? >> It's not an ESOP but it's it's profit. You know, not counting well, almost 80% including me and the other executive. Yeah, because we raised so little money. We only raised 11 million bucks. >> Okay, that's including you though. (09:17) You plus employees. >> That's including me but if I take away the really senior people, it's still 60%. My biggest thrill, I tell people honestly, God, I will measure the success of this company by how many of our employees make a significant amount of money when we sell or when we exit or do a recap. (09:33) To me, I was successful in my first company. I didn't wasn't really focused on the money so I was able to spread the equity out quite widely and you know, we have people, you know, who joined us in 2010 and got what were significant slugs of stock because it was, you know, not worth very much and we have incredible retention because of it. (09:52) We have over we probably have 6 7% attrition including in Romania for developers. I like the people it's I say well, it's either cuz they really like me or they own a lot of stock. I'm not sure which. >> They tend to go together, don't they? >> Maybe but to me I want to make sure my philosophy of company is we're all in this together. (10:07) What we you know, I like to say I couldn't build a company with 300 Mike Sismans. I have different skills. I couldn't build a company with 300 Alexes who runs development. What I love about an entrepreneurial company is bringing together a bunch of people with different skills to accomplish something none of them could accomplish on their own. That's what a company is about. (10:23) Can you bring together a set of skills, marketing skills, sales skills, finance skills, development skills, support skills to accomplish something together as a team that no none of us could accomplish on our own. To me, that's where the juice is in being an entrepreneur. >> So just to summarize that cap table which I'm so impressed by again, we'll take 100% subtract out 20 about a 20% which investors own. (10:45) Employees including you own 80% but even when you take out Mike, you plus other senior folks, all the other employees still own about 60% so you and the seniors own about 20%. >> Yeah, well that's probably not quite right. Let's say me and the other seniors own 30% 40%. >> Still. >> It's It's a lot. It's the same concept. Yeah. >> Lot of employee ownership. (11:02) That's awesome. >> Yeah, it's a to me it's what's very gratifying is that that you know, and so we're all you know, as I like to say we're all pulling on the same side of the rope. We all have the same motivations. We're all in this >> joke Mike. I say so just to summarize again, you said it took you 8 years to get a million another eight to break 50 million. (11:18) That would put you at 1 million ARR in 2017 about 50 million is where you wrapped up 2025. >> Little more than that. Yeah, more like 54 >> And what do you think you'll break at the end of 2026? >> Our plan right now is a little over 60. >> Okay. So that plus your profit margin, you still think you can hit the rule of 40? >> We will not hit the rule of 40 this year. (11:37) Our growth is it's getting bigger and bigger. It's harder and harder. If you look at SaaS companies, it's fascinating. It's It makes perfect sense. If you look at SaaS companies, as the companies have got larger, the growth rate's gone down. >> But I see sort of three phases with your acquisition strategy. In 2020, you were rolling up sort of legacy desktop tools to lock in supply, courses, and tournaments. (11:57) In 2021, you expanded into mobile and increased engagement and recurring [clears throat] usage. Then in 2024, you got really aggressive with consumer and mobile, GPS apps, coaching, and data. Please correct me if your strategy was different than that, but if that is accurate, why that pattern? >> Well, so, you know, when we came into the market and really started selling the clubs in 2014, as I said, when you do an acquisition, it's some combination of technology or product, talent, and customers. (12:22) The best acquisitions are all three. Some of them is just buying customers. So, our first goal was let's go get those customers. We had no interest whatsoever in their old desktop software, but we acquired a whole bunch of customers. And then after that was really an aqua-hire, a guy who wanted to be in the business. It was clear, like just come join up with us. (12:38) And then we acquired a few other firms. And then, you know, in 2023, we made the strategic decision. It was important to expand from B2B, selling the clubs, to B2C, selling directly to golfers. It's a lot more golfers than clubs, right? And so, you know, we entered that market with two acquisitions, you know, Golfshot and SwingU that have been put available to put them together. (12:57) We run them as separate brands, right? So, it's a house of brands strategy, if you will. But most of the companies we've acquired, we've kept their brands because they had brand equity. Disappointment to me in 2025 was they didn't do any acquisitions. We looked at some, but we we couldn't couldn't get together on on price. (13:12) I think things are probably getting, you know, a little more reasonable now, and kind of what I I mean, I I acquired my first company in 1984. So, I've been on the both sides of the table many, many times, and hope to do some This is why I wanted to dive deep on this. I mean, where you're glazing over it, but this is something I want younger entrepreneurs to learn. (13:26) Like, this is why I love doing this show, right? Because if I ask my audience just look at this website and guess revenue with all due respect, like it's not sexy web 2.0. It's none of that. And the reason is because you've got all these other go-to-market motions that are really sexy 8 million user mobile apps for consumers and sort of other things, but 60 north is, you know, approaching 60 million bucks of revenue here is obviously an impressive story. (13:48) How do you think about sort of your legacy, right? If someone came to you today today and offered you 400 million all cash up front to sell the business? Do you sell? >> Would you? >> Well, you're growing from 50 to 60 million year over year. You're printing cash flow. I don't know your personal life situation. (14:04) You have employees that have been on the cap table potentially some of them for north of 10 years. I don't know if you've offered them liquidity in the past with the raises that you've done. If you haven't, it could be an opportunity to do that. >> Yeah, we do. So, it's something you look you have to think about it. You have to do what's best for your shareholders, but you know, and and people like me who you know, have been at this for a long time. (14:22) But you know, right now, you know, we're very very excited about our prospects. I'm I'm like I told someone the other day I'm more juiced up than I've been in years. I look at all this AI stuff. I'm a geek. >> It's great. I want to see more entrepreneurs build their company in a profitable way where they keep full control. (14:36) I mean, you are the definition of that. Now, everyone is not as wealthy as you are when they launch their company, right? You already had success, but there's still some good lessons here. I want to round out that employee sort of liquidity offering for a second. If they joined in, you know, 2010, I'm making these numbers up, okay, at a dollar exercise price and your most recent 409A, let's just make it up was 10 bucks. (14:54) And let's say I've got a thousand shares. There's some town in Romania that you're making very rich. Everyone's the real estate market's going up. All these people these hundreds of these dozens of engineers, you're just making very rich, which is great. >> something. You'll find this hard to believe, Nathan. (15:07) In Cluj, Romania, there are 2,300 software companies. >> It's unbelievable. All of Romania? Just in Romania? >> In Cluj. >> In the town of Cluj. >> Just think about Cluj as the Silicon Valley of Romania. So, you have Bucharest in the south. Cluj is the kind of the university center. It's where many of the universities are. An enormous number of, you know, outsourcing firms and things like that. (15:25) And And so, we're able to still maintain, you know, very high retention. One other thing I would say is at 300 people, we're still totally virtual. We've no offices. You know, I just think, you know, to me it it's it's one big team. We're We're all in it together. >> Yeah. Well, I'm predicting sometime in the next 6 months I'm going to read a headline like Susquehanna or MainSail has come in and, you know, bought a 30% sort of minority stake for whatever 200 million bucks, and you're going to keep control, and then they're going to say, (15:50) "Michael, you've bought Mike you've bought 10 million you've bought 10 companies today. I need you to buy 10 per year going forward." Cuz that's the private equity playbook. And uh we'll see what you do. >> that is that that is the playbook. And you know, fortunately, when I sold my first company to Lotus, the venture capital firms that had financed Softswitch invited me to become a limited partner in their firms. (16:10) So, I've been a limited partner in venture capital and private equity firms for like 25 years. And so, I know the drill. I know the model. I've been on both sides of the table. And yes, I mean, the big PE firms want you to be a platform and an aggregate. We are a platform. I mean, we have eight over 100 companies interface to our software through our APIs. (16:31) And, you know, I just see really just keep doing what we're doing. Yeah, and what you have to focus on as an entrepreneur, in my opinion, is growth. Profitable growth, right? And because if you want to get real multiples, someone has to believe the growth is there, right? Have to believe the growth is there. (16:44) And so, you really In our case, we have four areas of growth. This is what I focus on. It's okay, what are we doing in each of these areas every day to drive growth? You know, one is our private club space. We're very dominant. One is public courses. One is international, where, although we're in 62 countries, it's hand-to-hand combat in each of these countries. (17:00) They're all different. And it's a struggle. And then we have some other I wouldn't call them moonshots by any stretch, but really interesting things we're doing that will be introducing in the next year, but needs to care How How are we grow Where's the growth come from? >> Well, Mike, if people want to follow your story after they're done listening to this, and if you work, where can they find you online? >> I'm Mike or I'm on LinkedIn, you know. (17:18) >> Guys, there you have it. He had a lot of success in the 90s at his first company. Ultimately in 2009, you know, he was sick of his golf buddies complaining after work trips if they got stuck playing with the annoying guy and they wanted to play with the cool guy. >> Mike. No one likes playing with Nathan. (17:30) No one likes playing >> likes playing No one likes playing with Nathan. They all want to play with Mike. So, he said, "You know what? I'm going to do something about this." His first customers were his golf buddies back then. In 2014, he started selling to courses and a big contract in 2016 got going with the USGA. (17:43) They He's now handling the full handicapping out with them, PGA of America, etc. Profitable in a million bucks of revenue in 2017. By 2020, it obviously scaled, self-funded 10 million of his own money, did over 10 acquisitions. Last year in 2025, broke 50 million of revenue. Now, today, we're recording here in March of 2026, 14 million cash in the bank, 20% EBITDA margins, 300 folks full-time including a massive team in Cluj, Romania. (18:05) 50% of the team are engineers. They're targeting over 60 million of ARR this year as they continue to scale. Again, 11,000 clubs across 62 countries using them. On average, he bills 4,200 per year plus sell some other things on the side and he gives back to his employees. They're all invested. Cap table today is roughly 50% of it goes to an his employees, 20% are to investors and the other 30% roughly to Mike and his senior folks. Mike, what a story. (18:28) >> You did a better job summarizing the company than I could. You want to come work for us? >> I appreciate you. This is great. Thanks for taking us to the top. >> Take care. Bye. >> You won't believe this CEO's revenue. Click here to watch the next episode right now.

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Golf Genius Revenue 2026: $60M ARR, $11M Raised