Entrepreneurs Are Putting the Golf Business on Notice

There are a number of things that California is known for producing in abundance, with tech innovation and memorable golf experiences being at or near the top of the list. Now, a startup company called Noteefy is using technology to make memorable golf experiences more accessible to the public. Launched just over a year ago by co-founder and Los Angeles native Jake Gordon, Noteefy is poised to become one of the most successful tech startups the golf world has ever seen.

Like many Southern Californians, Gordon had a love of sports from a young age. “I grew up playing baseball, which is what you do out here in L.A. I’m still a fanatical Dodgers fan.”

As a youth, Gordon moved from baseball to wrestling, a perfect fit for his tenacity and work ethic. “What I fell in love with was the fact that [wrestling] was 100 percent meritocracy. The harder you work the better you get.”

While earning his B.A. in Business Administration, Gordon was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. “I just fell in love with entrepreneurship, with emerging technology,” he said. “The concept of having an idea and then creating something in the digital world that other people used was the coolest thing in the world.”

Gordon went on to earn his Masters in management science from Lehigh University. Seeking a career in consulting and technology, he took a position with Accenture, leading their Ventures team in the Eastern U.S., another perfect fit for a guy with energy, intellect and a drive to make his mark in the world. Technology was firmly entrenched in Gordon’s life, and golf entered soon after.

Jake Gordon (left) and Dathan Wong (right)

NEW TO THE GAME

“Full transparency, I never even picked up a club until 2019-2020. My girlfriend’s father, who is now my fatherin- law, said, ‘Hey, you should pick up the game of golf. It’s good for business.’ I told him I didn’t think golf was for me, but I guess I was in the market for a new hobby … no one really wants to wrestle.”

“We a played a round on vacation; I’d only had one lesson and could barely get the thing off the ground. I was thinking it might be time to move on. But what got me into the game was when I went to the driving range with a few buddies, and the pressure was off. Every one of my friends fell in love with golf at the same time. That’s where I really was like, ‘Wow! Golf is now my thing.’ It didn’t matter that we weren’t very good. It was just so fun to keep getting out there.”

Gordon and his friends were among the millions of people who were looking for a safe form of recreation during the pandemic and discovered or returned to golf. He became the guy in charge of getting tee times for his cohorts, and it was that experience that led to a brainstorm that became his brainchild, Noteefy.

In his role as organizer for his group, he found that there was no existing technology that matched recently canceled tee times with golfers looking for lastminute slots.

Gordon learned about a National Golf Foundation study that showed the ratio of public golfers to golf courses in California at 5,000 to 1. He also discovered other factors that existed in county and municipal golf courses in Southern California: high demand, fixed price structures and environmental constraints that prevented an increase in supply. And when he found out that golf course operators were losing millions of dollars per year due to last-minute cancellations, he had his epiphany.

PUTTING THE IDEA INTO ACTION

He did his due diligence with golfers, course operators and tech companies in the golf industry and decided that he could create a platform to solve the inefficiencies between golfers seeking tee times and golf courses with perishable inventory that notified golfers when tee times became available.

“I called up Brian Reid, the general manager at Simi Hills GC,” recalled Gordon. “I said, ‘Brian, I can’t find tee times at your course.’ He said, ‘Welcome to the club.’ I asked, ‘If there was a technology that could alert golfers when a cancellation occurs, would you use it?’ And he said, ‘Call me when it’s ready.’”

Gordon partnered up with Dathan Wong, a fellow L.A. native, SCGA member and golf fanatic who Gordan calls “the smartest guy I’ve ever met.” Wong had 10-plus years in software engineering at Microsoft and Boeing, along with experience at a range of tech startups.

“We kind of locked arms and said, ‘Hey, let’s go attack this problem with a unique, fresh approach. And if we solve this for the operator, we can solve it for the golfer,’” Gordon explained.

Noteefy signed Simi Hills in November of 2022. In the ensuing 18 months, the company has experienced explosive growth that is virtually unheard of in the golf industry. As of June 2024, Noteefy has signed on more than 360 courses covering a range of properties that include some of the busiest courses in the country, along with some of the most prestigious owners and operators in the business.

As promised, the company has made thousands of potentially unused tee times available to a grateful market and has simultaneously brought back millions of dollars in revenue that would otherwise have been lost to operators that can ill-afford it.

That dual benefit has fueled remarkably rapid market penetration in an industry that is notoriously slow to adopt new ideas. Gordon, Wong and Noteefy are changing golf across the country, but remain committed to golf in California and spreading the benefits of Noteefy in their home state. “We have about 30 courses in California … but we’d like to add to that.”

Given Noteefy’s track record thus far, there is no reason to doubt they will do just that.