How Golf Genius Reached $53M ARR and 11,000 Clubs Across 62 Countries (Interview with CEO Mike Zisman)

Cold Open: Revenue Math and Key Metrics

Nathan Latka

00:00Can we take 11,000 clubs times 4,200 to back into a revenue range?

Mike Zisman

00:04>> That would get you to about two thirds of our revenue. It's a good deal more than the 44,000,000. It's been company's been profitable since 2017. We have more cash on our balance sheet than all the money we've ever raised. 14,000,000 in cash. Like, what the hell are we doing sitting on 14,000,000 in cash? It can fund acquisitions. We've done 10 acquisitions.

Nathan Latka

00:21What was your first year where you broke a million of revenue?

Mike Zisman

00:24>> It took us eight years to get to a million and eight more years to get to 50,000,000.

Nathan Latka

00:27If I looked at the cap table today, how much would be ESOP or employee owned?

Mike Zisman

00:30>> Almost 80%, including me and the other executives.

Nathan Latka

00:33Someone came to you today and offered you 400,000,000 all cash up front to sell the business. Do you sell?

Guest Introduction: Mike Zisman and Golf Genius

Nathan Latka

00:40Hey, folks. My guest today is Mike Zisman. He's the Founder and CEO of golfgenius launched back in 2009. He is a serial entrepreneur. Mike, don't wanna age you here, but first company back in 1979, formal faculty at MIT over forty years of experience building software companies. Mike, you ready to take us to the top?

Mike Zisman

00:56>> I am. Great to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.

What Golf Genius Sells and Who Buys It

Nathan Latka

00:58You bet. Tell us more about what you're selling at golfgenius, then we'll go back and get your backstory.

Mike Zisman

01:03>> Sure. So golfgenius 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 creating tournaments, doing registration, payment processing, live leaderboards, 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

01:35>> facility.

Nathan Latka

01:36And 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?

Mike Zisman

01:41>> 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. What we're really B2B2C 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 software for the pro to set up the

B2B2C Model and Mobile Scoring App

Mike Zisman

02:08>> 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, you know, many different tournaments all going on at the same time.

Nathan Latka

02:26So 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.

Mike Zisman

02:33>> Correct, exactly. Most of them already have, 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 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.

Pricing: $4,200 Per Club Per Year

Nathan Latka

02:52Very 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?

Mike Zisman

02:58>> So our list price which we've sank 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 eighteen hole golf facilities. So if you're a pine hearse 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

03:23>> in 11,000 courses, so we're pretty plus we do lots of other things. It's 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.

Backstory: From MIT to Softswitch to Golf

Nathan Latka

03:39Give me the backstory here. How do you go from MIT professor to golf guy?

Mike Zisman

03:43>> Well, I always loved software. I think my happiest days were programming. They're still my happiest days, so I don't do it anymore. I love coding. It's magical for me. 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 realised I did not want to be an academic. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I was there for two years,

04:04>> moved back to Philadelphia where I was from, I went to graduate school. Started the first company, Softswitch which is in the communication software business. It was very low level communication software sold to you know fortune 500 companies. That was acquired by Lotus Development in 1994 and then lo and behold eleven months later IBM came along and acquired Lotus. So in eleven months, I went from a company of four fifty people, my company, to Lotus which was

04:31>> 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 just a fantastic CEO. He turned around to IBM, absolutely. And then that kind of ran its course and left IBM in 'seven. You know, I really

04:55>> don't want to retire. I love what I do. I mean, I was always the guy organizing the buddy golf trip. You know, 12 guys go walk some place to play golf, which still services. It's a small market, very price sensitive market, and moved from that to golf links. 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.

The USGA Partnership and Product Market Fit

Mike Zisman

05:16>> But the real break for us in 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, 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.

Nathan Latka

05:35What year was that?

Mike Zisman

05:36>> That was 2016. So it started in 02/2009, as I like to say, we wandered in the desert, entrepreneurs wander in the desert till you today we say product market fit. You 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. And then they came back in 2019 and said, hey, we also want

05:58>> 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 the largest pure play golf software company in the industry.

Nathan Latka

06:09Measured by revenue or something else?

Mike Zisman

06:11>> Revenue. Measured by revenue.

Revenue Breakdown Beyond Club Subscriptions

Nathan Latka

06:12Yeah. Can we take 11,000 clubs times 4,200 to back into a revenue range?

Mike Zisman

06:17>> 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 a golf pro. It's a classic suite. Like I grew up in the days of Microsoft Office or a smart 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, just a physical golf shop,

06:36>> 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. So when you roll it all up, it's a good deal more than the the 44,000,000. 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

06:57>> we've ever raised. Literally, we have

Nathan Latka

06:58to be raised.

Mike Zisman

06:59>> 11,000,000. That's all. That's all.

Nathan Latka

07:01That's great. So as a capital allocator, you're just sitting on these profits now. You have over 11,000,000 cash sitting in your bank today. What do do with that? How do you think about reinvesting it?

Capital Allocation: $14M Cash and 10 Acquisitions

Mike Zisman

07:08>> That's a very good question. And I had that conversation with someone today. It's actually 14,000,000 in cash. And I'm like, the hell are we doing sitting on 14,000,000 in cash? 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

07:29>> want to get really good multiples, you've to 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're very focused on growth and investing into it. So my view is I've never believed in 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.

07:52>> If you keep losing money, you know, eventually you're burned out and 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.

Nathan Latka

08:04Guys remember, am not just a YouTuber. I'm investing into my third fund. We've deployed $250,000,000 into five fifty 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. So sign up at founderpath.com, and when you get the onboarding email, I reply and I see all those. Just reply and say, Nathan, I found you through YouTube,

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

Nathan Latka

08:27and 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 of revenue?

Mike Zisman

08:37>> It took us eight years to get to a million and eight more years to get to 50,000,000. And I look at and it's SaaS. You know, when you're selling SaaS subscriptions, back then it was like 2,500 a pop. You gotta sell a lot of subscriptions. It it took a while. I funded the company personally, but from 02/2009 to 2020, I find I funded the company with about $10,000,000, my own money, mostly is debt. What I love

08:59>> about our company is most of the stock is owned by employees, very widely.

Cap Table: 80% Employee and Founder Owned

Nathan Latka

09:03How much? If I looked at the cap table today, how much would be ESOP or employee owned?

Mike Zisman

09:06>> It's not an ESOP, but it's profit. Not counting, well, almost 80%, including Wow. Me the other Yeah, because we raised so little money. We only raised $11,000,000.

Nathan Latka

09:15Okay, that's including you though. You plus employees.

Mike Zisman

09:17>> 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, do a recap. To me, I was successful in my first company. I wasn't really focused on the money, I was able to spread the equity out quite widely.

09:38>> 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. We have over, we probably have 7% attrition, including in Romania for developers. I like that 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

10:00They tend to go together, don't they?

Mike Zisman

10:01>> Maybe, but to me, I wanna make sure my philosophy at company is we're all in this together. What we know, I like to say, I couldn't build a company with 300 Mike Zisman. I have 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

10:22>> 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

10:36So just to summarize that cap table, which I'm so impressed by, again, we'll take a 100% subtract down 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%.

Mike Zisman

10:52>> Yeah. Well, I'd say it's probably not quite right. Let's say me and the other seniors own 30%, 40%.

Nathan Latka

10:58Still. It's still a lot.

Mike Zisman

10:59>> It's concept.

Nathan Latka

11:00>> Yeah.

11:00A lot of employee ownership. That's awesome.

Mike Zisman

11:02>> Yeah. It's a, 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. We're always I

Nathan Latka

11:12always joke, Mike. I say, so just to summarize again, you said it took you eight years to get a million, another eight to break 50,000,000. That would put you at 1,000,000 ARR in 2017, about 50,000,000 is where you wrapped up 2025.

Mike Zisman

11:21>> Little more than that. Yeah. More like 54. 53.

Nathan Latka

11:24And what do

11:25you think you'll break at the end of 2020

Mike Zisman

11:26>> Our plan right now is a little over 60.

Nathan Latka

11:28Okay. So that plus your profit margin, you still think you can hit the rule of 40?

Mike Zisman

11:33>> We will not hit the rule 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 that got larger, the growth rates gone down.

Nathan Latka

11:46But 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.

Mike Zisman

11:54>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

11:55Top years expanded

Mike Zisman

11:56>> a very simple product, probably engagement

Nathan Latka

11:58and 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?

Mike Zisman

12:09>> Well, so, you know, when we came into the market and really started selling to clubs in 2014, 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 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

Acquisition Strategy: Desktop Rollup to B2C Mobile

Mike Zisman

12:32>> that was really an acquihire, a guy who wanted to be in the business. It was clear, 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 b to b, selling the clubs to b to c, selling directly to golfers. It's a lot more golfers than clubs. Right? And so, you know, we entered that market with two

12:52>> acquisitions, you know, Golf Shot and Swing U that have been able to put them together. We run them as separate brands, right? So it's a house of brand strategy, if you will. Most of the companies who have acquired, we've kept their brands because they had brand equity. Disappointment to me in 2025 was they didn't do any acquisitions. And we looked at some, but we couldn't get together on price. I think things are probably getting a little

13:12>> more reasonable now. 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

Nathan Latka

13:21And this is why I wanna dive deep on this. I mean, we're you're glazing over it, but this is something I want younger entrepreneurs to learn. I'm like, this is why I love doing this show. Right? Because if I ask my audience to just look at this website and guess revenue, with all due respect, like, it's not sexy web two point o. It's none of that. And the reason is because you've got all these other go

13:38to market motions that are really sexy 8,000,000 user mobile apps for consumers and sort of other things. But 60 north is, you know, approaching $60,000,000 of revenue here is obviously an impressive story. How do you think about sort of your legacy? Right? If someone came today today and offered you 400,000,000 all cash up front to sell the business, do you sell?

Mike Zisman

13:55>> Would you?

Nathan Latka

13:56Well, you're growing from 50 to 60,000,000 year over year. You're printing cash flow. 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 ten years. I don't know if you offer them liquidity in the past with the raises that you've done. If you haven't, it could be an opportunity to do

Mike Zisman

14:11>> Yeah, we do. So it's something, look, you have to think about it. You have to do what's best for your shareholders, and people like me who have been at this for a long time. But you know, right now, we're very, very excited about our 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.

AI Excitement and Future Growth Areas

Nathan Latka

14:29It's great. I wanna see more entrepreneurs build their company in a profitable way where they keep full control. I mean, you are definition of that. Now everyone is not as wealthy as you are when they launched their company. Right? You already had success, but there's still some good lessons here. I wanna 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

14:49dollar exercise price and your most recent 409A, let's just make it up, was $10. 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.

Cluj Romania Engineering Team and Virtual Culture

Mike Zisman

15:03>> I'll tell you something. You'll find this hard to believe, Nathan. In Cluj Romania, there are 2,300 software companies. To believe

Nathan Latka

15:09it.

Mike Zisman

15:10>> In Romania. See 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 kind of the university center, it's where many of the universities are, an enormous number of outsourcing firms and things like that. And so we're able to still maintain very high retention. One other thing I would say is at 300 people, we're still totally virtual.

15:31We have

15:31>> no offices. You know, I just think, you know, to me, it's it's one big team. We're we're all in it together.

Nathan Latka

15:37Yeah. Well, I'm predicting sometime in the next six months, I'm gonna read a headline like Susquehanna or Main Sale has come in and, you know, bought a 30% sort of minority stake for whatever $200,000,000 and you're gonna keep control. And then they're gonna say, Michael, bought, Mike, you've bought 10 companies today. I need you to buy 10 per year going forward. Because that's the private equity playbook. And we'll see what

PE Playbook, Minority Recap, and Growth Focus

Mike Zisman

15:58>> they do. 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. So I've been a limited partner in venture capital and private equity firms for like twenty five 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

16:21>> you to be a platform and an aggregate. We are a platform. I mean, we have over 100 companies interfaced to our software through our APIs. And you know, just see really just keep doing what we're doing. 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.

16:42>> And so you really, in our case, 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? 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. They're all different. And it's a struggle. And then we have some

17:02>> other, I wouldn't call them moonshot by any stretch, but really interesting things we're doing that we'll be introducing in the next year. But how how are we growing? Where's the growth come from?

Nathan Latka

17:10Well, Mike, if people wanna follow your story after they're done listening to this interview, where can they find you online?

Mike Zisman

17:14>> I'm mikegolfgenius dot com or I'm on LinkedIn. You know?

Nathan Latka

17:18Guys, there you have it. He had a lot of success in the nineties 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 cool.

Mike Zisman

17:29>> Like playing with Nathan.

Nathan Latka

17:30No one like playing with Nathan. Like playing with Nathan. They all wanna play with Mike. So he said, you want me 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. They he's now handling the full handicapping algorithm, PG of America, etcetera. Profitable in a million bucks of revenue in 2017. By 2020, he'd obviously scaled,

17:51self funded 10,000,000 of his own money, did over 10 acquisitions. Last year in 2025 broke 50,000,000 of revenue. Now today, we're recording here in March 2026, 14,000,000 cash in the bank, 20% EBITDA margins, 300 folks full time, including a massive team, includes Romania. 50% of the team are engineers. They're targeting over 60,000,000 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

18:15sell some other things on the side, and he gives back to his employees. They're all invested. Captable 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.

Mike Zisman

18:28>> You did a better job summarizing the company than I could. You wanna come work for us?

Nathan Latka

18:32I appreciate you. This was great. For taking

Mike Zisman

18:34>> Take it to care.

Nathan Latka

18:35Bye. You won't believe this CEO's revenue. Click here to watch the next episode right

Mike Zisman

18:39>> now.