Increasing Your Odds For On-Course Swing Success - Matt Williams, Co-Founder of Noonan Caddie

Matt Williams 01:05

Thanks Colin. It's great to be here.

ModGolfPodcast 01:06

Good to have you. So you're joining us from ah looks like sunny Kansas City today. So it looks like you managed to pull yourself off the golf course to join us today.

Matt Williams 01:15

Yeah, it's tough. It just started to be nice out and the men's league has started at the local course. Happy to be here and engaging with you and talking to your audience.

ModGolfPodcast 01:27

Yeah, good stuff. So, yes you probably learned very early on in the golf industry, Matt, when you got immersed in it like myself. I was warned that by a PGA pro, he smiled at me and said, "now you're in the golf industry, you'll give up your golf game!" And I'm like, "no, no, no, I'm going to play all this free golf at amazing courses with awesome people." He's like, "No, you're not." Although I do maake a concerted effort to play as much golf as I possibly can, even though my handicap is stuck at 17, I need to play and practice more. But I truly believe as we roll out what you're doing with Noonan Caddy that I am the perfect persona and customer and client with what you're doing to help me.

Enough holding back now. Why don't you tell us what you've created? I believe you've just fully launched or you're just about to. So explain to us what you're doing with Noonan.

Matt Williams 02:26

Yeah, you definitely hit a nerve. We are definitely playing much less golf. I thought as soon as you hang up the banner saying we're open for for business in the golf industry, all of a sudden we're going to get a Master's invite and get to get all these perks.

ModGolfPodcast 02:37

Yeah. Wrong.

Matt Williams 02:39

So I'm still waiting for those.

ModGolfPodcast 02:39

Nope.

Matt Williams 02:41

So if you're out there, feel free to hit and let hit me up and give you some new equipment all that kind of stuff. I'm sure they're not playing as much golf as I used to, but Yeah, it's great to be here. So I'll give you kind of the 30,000 foot view. So we started Noonan a couple of years ago. We've been building for two years. The backstory is we started an indoor golf facility first. So we built out a Track Man facility here in Kansas City, a performance facility and one of the things that we were thinking about when we got that project started is there's this seasonality aspect that happens within an indoor facility. As soon as it gets nice out people tend to want to go outside know certainly i do as well and we were concerned that because we're a membership facility that we would see some memberships drop off during those those nice months.

ModGolfPodcast 03:18

right

Matt Williams 03:30

I started to kind of think about how we could improve engagement during those nice months and really make our facility a true complement to that on-course play. And I come from a bit of a tech background.

ModGolfPodcast 03:40

Right.

Matt Williams 03:42

I've sold software for over a decade. I can't code. I wish I could, but I certainly know what technology is supposed to be able to do and can find the right people to put that together. So when I started to look at what was happening in the facility, people would hit clubs and really not know how far their shots went. They had these grand ideas about how good of a player they are and the data told a very different story.

And what that told to me is, "hey, if I'm mistaken how I'm actually hitting my clubs in an indoor environment where I've got perfect conditions, I'm pretty sure you're making bad decisions on the golf course as well." So if we've got all this good data, i think that can cut through all those personal biases. and really give you a true objective top recommendation, right? Based off of your actual tendency.

ModGolfPodcast 04:29

Yes.

Matt Williams 04:30

So we figured something like this had to exist. We figured somebody's already taken simulator use and overlaid it onto the golf course, right? We've got all these GPS apps out there. Somebody had to make a feature about that. Nobody had. It was pretty incredible. So got to work, built out a spreadsheet just to prove out that this could deliver the results that I thought it could. More of a statistical model.

I'm a scratch golfer. It was helping me save about shot five shots, little silly mistakes. I should have hit a sand wedge instead of taking my lob wedge or going for a green, going for and a tucked pin when I should have been playing a little bit more conservatively. and that really was the eye-opener that said hey this has value and really took off from there. I became obsessed with this idea about really a perfect shot recommendation a strategy that you can use that's going to give you the most ideal recommended club and aim point based off on your personalized data not just these grand ideas about, "hey, don't miss left or don't be short-sighted, don't attack pins". It's not really very specific. And I think the data can give you those specific insights. So happy to talk a little bit more about that, but that that was how we all got started.

ModGolfPodcast 05:47

Nice, nice. So, so that you said you have a tech background, even though you don't code and I'm similar to that. I have more of a design background, but I don't code. I'm more in product and architecture design. And I found as an entrepreneur, I always struggled, even though I had a really good partner to get things going, but we had these huge gaps. So let's talk about that, the infancy. Once you came up with the idea and you wanted to build your first prototype, you wanted to build your first iteration, 1.0 Noonan. So how did you go about doing that? Because i know talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, people with ideas, and they don't know where to start up. And there's all kinds of companies that are more than willing to take zero risk and and you have to pay them thousands and thousands of dollars to maybe get something that kind of works better.

or doesn't. And then you're just basically pouring money down the drain. So talk about that, because that's tricky to find that right team as a co-founder.

Matt Williams 06:34

Yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 06:36

I'd love to hear about your friends and co-founders, and the skills that they brought and experience that made the sum greater than the parts.

Matt Williams 06:49

Absolutely. I think part of this is me being frugal. I think part of this, I'd like to say I was a scrappy resourceful entrepreneur, but maybe I'm just cheap. So I wanted to make sure that we could, you know, prove out the concept before we poured thousands of dollars. We bootstrapped our first facility, bootstrapped Noonan really up until we did a fundraise. So in a year and a half, we completely funded this ourselves. So I wasn't going pour a bunch of money down something that I didn't think actually would have some legs.

So the first prototype, like I said, it was a spreadsheet. I spent a ton of time, during nights and weekends, researching, trying to do Excel and come up with some pretty elaborate formulas and was eventually able to come up with something where I could literally put in my shot data from a simulator And then, I would have to key in some certain distances because it wasn't automated in any sense. We didn't have a GPS background or anything like that.

But it would allow me to be on the golf course and I could say, "hey, I've got 150 to the center. It's 140 to the front, 180 to the back. Here's some winds", you know, projections. And then it would spit out what the club is that I should hit and where I should aim relative to the center of the green. And those just indicators were good enough to show that, hey, This tool is actually making better decisions than I am.

And that was the proof point. So once we had kind of gotten that MVP, which was free, Excel is free and it was just a use of my time. Then we started to build out one of my co-founders has a an offshore tech team, a set of developers that have been great in getting us essentially an MVP. And that really was funded ah in a, in a lot by some of these entrepreneurship competitions that we did. So I started to go around and through the resources here in Kansas City, I applied for a program called Pure Pitch Rally, where you get on the stage with eight other entrepreneurs.

You give a three minute pitch, which is not a lot of time to try and get your entire point across.

ModGolfPodcast 08:53

no

Matt Williams 08:55

in a crowd of a hundred sharks. And at the end of it, they pick who they like and they pass the mic around and give a thousand bucks to the person that they like. So we, we raised 6,000 bucks doing that. Apparently we had enough golfers in the audience to give us some money. And then another thing was a a digital sandbox grant that we got, which helps fund entrepreneurs to get them to that MVP state. So those were the only sources of funding that we got. And I was just trying to be resourceful and use any kind of free equity that we can we can pull out of the ecosystem.

ModGolfPodcast 09:28

Yeah, that's some great insights and advice that you'd have given all the entrepreneurs in waiting, in training that are out there. People watch Shark Tank and get over-romanticized and think that's how entrepreneurships and startups work.

Matt Williams 09:42

Yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 09:44

And as you and I know, that's not necessarily... It isn't the way that it works. And some people focus so much time on fundraising rather than their product or even seeing if there's a market for it. So, and you've definitely done that. So how did you discover that product market fit that customer validation early on that you weren't building something awesome on time on budget that nobody wanted?

Matt Williams 10:12

Yeah, great question. I definitely believe that you've got to do a bunch of research before you really invest a ton of resources into it. So we did a few things. One was just taking a look at the market. So we looked at a lot of industry reports. National Golf Foundation has a a great library of resources you can look into. So some of the things are really popping out at us was this, vast expansion of off course participation. So the amount of participation that's happening off the golf course has far exceeded what's happening on the golf course.

ModGolfPodcast 10:41

Yes. Yes.

Matt Williams 10:47

If you look at you know some of the drivers behind that, you've seen a 40% increase in golf participation is since 2019 and the golf course supply has remained stagnant.

ModGolfPodcast 10:59

yes

Matt Williams 11:00

basic economics right? Supply and demand. Where is that demand going to go? A lot of people are going off the golf course into these screen golf facilities. We had Golf Trak so if all of these people are starting to use this technology wouldn't it be great to have a complementary tool to those people in order to bring that data and all that practice time that they put in and use it on the golf course. Because frankly, it just sits as dead practice data in a simulator. But if you can bring on the golf course, it's actually giving you some utility from it.

So that was one key proof point. Obviously that's more abstract, right? It says, okay, macro trends are there. We wanted to prove this on an actual, will people be interested in NUNA? So we spent a little bit in paid ads on Meta, gave the little elevator pitch, put up some reels and we got 1500 people to sign up for early access program.

ModGolfPodcast 11:52

Nice.

Matt Williams 11:53

So that that told me that, hey, at least we're getting some good traction and people respond well to our Meta ads. We get some cost per lead metrics that we can use for fundraising and understand what it's going to ultimately cost to acquire those customers. But yeah, we wanted to make sure that we were doing as much due diligence as we could. And I think those were pretty instrumental in making sure that there was going to be a product market fit once we actually built the thing.

ModGolfPodcast 12:17

Well done. Well done. Okay, let's run through the customer, player, user journey. I myself have downloaded the Noonan app.

Matt Williams 12:25

Yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 12:27

I haven't had a chance to go to the golf course. I've been traveling the last while since we talked last week. But let's use me as an example here. Let's say I now have access. I'm going to go to an indoor entertainment venue with a Track Man where I can hit 10 shots for each one of the clubs. So run us through, now that i've got I've got the app, I'm going to an indoor facility later today. And I want to get that data set into Noonan to start using it. And then get on the golf course. So walk me through the user journey for myself.

Matt Williams 12:59

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty simple. It's three steps. So number one, go to ah a golf simulator facility, or if you've got a golf simulator launch moderator at home, that works great too. We want it to be agnostic. We're going to work with every simulator out there or every kind of technology that measures that ball flight data. So go to one of those and you hit 10 shots with each club.

ModGolfPodcast 13:16

Yes.

Matt Williams 13:18

So 10 shots is the minimum that we would recommend. Essentially what we're trying to do is build out your dispersion pattern. So it's a true statistical model of not just your good hits, but also your miss hits as well. So we create a statistical model that says if you aim at a certain location, 95% of your shots will land kind of within this oval shape.

ModGolfPodcast 13:39

yes

Matt Williams 13:39

So if you go into a simulator, you hit 10 shots with each club, you know what we want to capture is the carry distance, the total distance, and your offline distances. Those three data elements for each shot, most simulators will allow you to just export that to a CSV, or in the case of TrackMan, you can save it to the app. And then we make it really easy to upload that data to the app. So that's step two, upload your data to the app. We can take that CSV, upload it, and then pull all that data in automatically. Or you know if you use a track band app or maybe a top tracer app, you can just take the screenshots right from the app of that data itself. Again, we just need to see and what the club was, the carry total offline.

And then we scrape the data right from it. So you're not having to plug in a bunch of numbers on a phone or anything like that.

ModGolfPodcast 14:22

Right.

Matt Williams 14:23

And then step three, we're done, right? Go to the golf course you're ready to start playing. So when you're out on the golf course, Noonan is going to give you a recommendation for the most optimal club and aim combination, right? Both things are really important. There's some tools out there that'll give you what they think you should hit from a club recommendation standpoint, but it's more or less just matching, here's your distance to the flag or here's your distance to the target.

You told me you hit your three iron, 210 yards, these kind of match up. It's not really the best way to go about that. We want to take a very scientific approach to it. So what we're actually doing is we are combining the GPS data of the golf course. So the area where the greens, the fairways, penalty areas, bunkers are, Overlaying that with your shot pattern, your statistical representation of your shot pattern, and then calculating your shot odds.

And what I mean by that is, if I were to hit my next shot and I aim at the target aim line, what is your likelihood that next shot will land somewhere in in those different areas?

ModGolfPodcast 15:27

Yes.

Matt Williams 15:27

And If you study like Scott Fawcett and the decade program, which which I have great admiration for, they will tell you, look, you can never predict where that next shot is going. you can The best you can do is predict the area in which it will go. So what Noonan does is it looks at all the different dispersion and aim line combinations, calculates the shot odds for each, and then says, this is the ideal one because this gives you the highest chance to hit your target, whether it be the fairway or the green, while also minimizing your risk of hitting into penalty area.

So if your risk to hit a penalty area is greater than 5%, it's either going to move you away automatically, or it's going to club you up and down to give yourself the the best odds to pull that off. Because ultimately, if you hit it into penalty area, you hit it to your short side of things like that, that's what actually derails your score more than anything. it's more important to avoid those than it is to to get your birdies.

ModGolfPodcast 16:20

I've had more than my fair share of derailments. Believe me. I know. I get it.

Matt Williams 16:24

and the Ego gets you.

ModGolfPodcast 16:25

Right? So, When you're out on the course, are you able to manually put in or perhaps talk, let's say I'm on the first hole now. I managed to hit the fairway, hit a good drive, and I've got, let's say, 162 left to the pin.

Matt Williams 16:37

Sure.

ModGolfPodcast 16:43

On the green, if you can see where the pin position is or know beforehand, are you able to then put that in for the green so it can make even a better decision rather than thinking, well, it could be anywhere on the green or the or hitting to the middle position? So also things like temperature, elevation change, and wind, are those things with the GPS or the data set that in real time you're able to bring in, or is that a feature you're looking at later on?

Matt Williams 17:08

Really good questions. So yeah, I'll kind of break it down for pin position, because we get that question a lot. What the app will do by default is it's going to prioritize hitting the target, right?

ModGolfPodcast 17:19

Right. Right.

Matt Williams 17:19

And in many cases, it's going to potentially even aim you away from the pin because you have better odds to hit the green if you aim away from a flag than if you do to aim towards it. So it's going to prioritize hitting the green. That's going to be what it uses as the main driver. Now you have the ability to change clubs and change your aim line. And the really cool thing about Noonan is when you do that and I'm kind of toggling between different aim lines or I'm trying to pick different clubs, it's actually showing you what your shot odds are and how they change as I change those different variables.

So if I say, hey, I want to go attack this left pin, I'm not going to aim at the right side of the green, I'm going to aim at left side of the green, and I move it over. Well, now with my shot odds to hit the green have gone from an 85% down to a 50%. So sure, you can go after it, but just understand what your risk reward is for doing so. And to me, like that that is the most pure way of actually making some of these decisions. You truly know what these risk reward elements are. So again, I don't know what where that next shot is going. All I know is on a stat statistics basis. And if you look at beyond just that individual shot and you look at your round overall, if I'm playing the highest percentage shot every single time, I am able to stack the odds in my favor.

as opposed to going to try and pick and choose which ones I go after. Maybe a whole lot, maybe not, but on the aggregate, you're certainly going to play worse. It's a lot of averages. Math is not going to lie. I'm going to play worse than if I would just take the high percentage shot every single time.

ModGolfPodcast 18:49

Yes.

Matt Williams 18:49

So, Yes, by default, Noonan will make the recommendation for the highest percentage shot, but you can always overrule Noonan. You can always overrule your caddy and be more aggressive you're feeling in the moment. But we're going to tell you what your risk was and in pulling that shot off. In terms of weather and terrain, yes, we can pull all that data in. where What's really interesting about wind is it actually changes the shape of your dispersion pattern so most right-handed golfers your dispersion pattern is kind of on this right tilt um it goes a little bit longer off to the left and it's a little bit shorter off to the right so it's an oval kind of tilted um that way and if you were to have actually you know a left to right wind it might actually tilt that a little bit more vertically

Or if it's into the wind, it's actually going to make it flatter. If it's down, it'll make it more narrow. So it actually deforms your dispersion pattern and reorients it based off of the direction of it. So that's the really cool thing that we're actually implementing is being able to not only see, yes, it changes maybe how far on average you hit it, but how your shape of your dispersion changes, what that does to your shot odds in order to, again, help you make the highest recommendation club that than anybody can make because we can't do these advanced math calculations. We have literally two particle businesses who are who are building out some of those algorithms and i'm certainly not smart enough and i can pretty much assure you most golfers are not smart enough to run through all these calculations in real time in the moment so um this is for sure the most sophisticated thing i've ever seen be able to make some of these shot recommendations

The wind will be implemented in a couple of weeks. We're still working towards getting that fully in place, but I'm really excited to be able to see some before and afters of here's with win, here's without wind. It's going to really change how people think about how they play their shots in different conditions.

ModGolfPodcast 20:45

Absolutely. Well, I live in Vancouver, even though I'm in Toronto this week, that the last couple rounds that I played were very windy and I am going to Ireland. I think I mentioned to you for a golf business conference that I'm going be speaking at and playing some rounds before and after. So I've been told, there's going to be a bit of wind over there too. So that'll definitely affect some of the decisions that I'm going to be making.

Matt Williams 21:02

Yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 21:07

So I'm Really curious to learn about the player experience when you're out on the course also. You talked about real-time data and feedback because this is one thing.

Matt Williams 21:15

Yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 21:18

You don't want rounds to be even slower. You don't want people to be overwhelmed with information. People that struggle overthink golf shots. So how do you strike that balance, balance that whole UX, that user experience that if I'm in the fairway and then once again, I've got 168 to the pin and I pull up my phone with Noonan and I look and get the recommendations. So tell us about that as far as that experience so that I can put my phone away immediately, grab the club and pull the trigger.

Matt Williams 21:49

Yeah. Really good question. I had three main goals when we got this started. Number one was, can this actually make good shot recommendations really better than anybody else? And using this model was a huge win. Number two is, will this actually improve my score? Because so many things that we try to improve upon, is more aesthetics. I want my swing to look prettier, but does it actually translate to lower scores?

And without a doubt, playing with just simple, better strategy is going to lower your score without ever having to make a swing change. We talked to a couple of coaches and, and one gave me a really good line that I'm going to repeat. He called during the Olympic golf coverage. I can shoot lower scores without changing my swing while I sit on the couch. That is absolutely true. I'm just simply learning to make better decisions and it will inevitably lower my scores because i'm actually playing the high percentage shot. The last component is it's got to be easy to use. I am not a person who likes to track a whole bunch of stats. I keep very little stats.

In terms of like greens in reg, things that really actually move the needle. I'm not looking at a detailed analysis of left versus right misses and things like that. There's so many different things going into that. So I didn't want people to be bogged down by it. I really wanted to create a digital experience of some of the most fun I've had in the golf course, which is walking with a really good caddy.

I've had the fortunate to play Pioneers number two, great caddies. They would hand you a club, say aim right there. And all you have to do is focus on swing. And I think that's such an incredible experience when you clear your mind and just focus on swinging and just know that you are giving yourself the best odds for success. nothing else matters. Right. And that's what we've created. So literally a single click of the button, I don't think about it. I don't need to get a distance. I don't need to look at, you know, the surrounding areas of the hole and figure out my minimum carry distance and what's my maximum it can go. Those are all just means to an end, right? So it all comes down to what club do I hit and where do I aim?

So Noonan takes all of that, automates it, makes all the decisions for you, and then spits out a very simple, this is what club you hit, this is your aim line.

ModGolfPodcast 24:01

Mm-hmm.

Matt Williams 24:11

So when I'm using Noonan on the golf course, what I'm doing is I'm getting tunnel vision. It says, I need to hit this club and it gives me an aim line. So I pick that target and I block everything else out. Because what it's also shown me is my dispersion pattern. And what that dispersion pattern says is if I aim there, 95% of my shots will land somewhere in that circle. And that's entirely based on my personal data, which is backed up by Trackman and these other really, really accurate tools.

So I'm to tunnel vision. already know that even if I mishit this, it's still going to be fine because it's already mitigated the errors. So just go up and swing and let what happens, happen.

ModGolfPodcast 24:49

Now, myself as a 17 handicapper, and also I'm a few years older than you, that as far as my driver and longer clubs, I definitely don't have the carry and the rollout distance that you have. I figure that as far as wedges and go, we're pretty much the same on distance, but it is the dispersion rate. as a 17 handicap as compared to you as a scratch, yours is much tighter than mine so when you bring in the data set it doesn't even have to know what your handicap is. I guess it can figure from overall distance and dispersion rate in all the clubs it just does the algorithm and the math, figures out doesn't even need to know what your handicap is. But my question here is let's say now we're both left we leave ourself a number we've left ourselves 105 yards into a green with a pin. And it may be the same club for you and I hitting the same distance, but the fact that your dispersion rate is much smaller or tighter than mine, will it give me a different recommendation and perhaps a place to hit it to be a bit safer?

The fact that I can't hit the shot on a regular basis as much as you can, I may be able to hit that shot two out of 10 times and you can hit it eight out of 10 times.

Matt Williams 26:03

Yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 26:06

So i don't know if I'm explaining this well enough, but I think you don't know what I'm talking about here.

Matt Williams 26:09

No, no, I got it. Yeah, yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 26:11

The fact that it's not equaled me as a 17 handicap that has a different dispersion rate for a one hundred yard wedge into the green. Will it give me a different recommendation at the exact same pin placement on the same hole?

Matt Williams 26:22

Yeah, so the answer is it depends, right? Because the other thing we haven't factored in is what surrounds the green, what obstacles around it, right?

ModGolfPodcast 26:26

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Williams 26:31

If there's water off to the left and you've got a really big dispersion, let's say your dispersion goes beyond the green itself. so now i've got water off to the left that i've got a factor in so if that's the case what it would do is it may still say you should hit you know your your sand wedge but you're going to have to move that target over to the right by a little bit whereas me, i maybe don't need to do that because my big left miss isn't that big and i can just kind of attack right towards towards the center there the other thing that .it will look a little bit different obviously the the size of this person is going to look different

your odds to hit the green might be a little bit lower but generally speaking, based on the distance it sounds like both would be the case and it would recommend the same club the other thing that's really interesting is it's going to give you an aim line and that aim line could be different depending our tendencies. So I talk about the difference between accuracy and precision. Accuracy is how consistently can I hit that same area. I can be accurate by hitting it 50 yards to the right, but I'm always hitting that same exact spot. So if that's you, for example, it may say, hey, in order for you to hit the target that I want you to hit, your dispersion, you need to aim 50 yards left.

ModGolfPodcast 27:47

Yes.

Matt Williams 27:47

So your aim line is going way over to the left, but the end result will be all your shots will end up in that same area.

ModGolfPodcast 27:47

Yeah. Yes.

Matt Williams 27:52

That's accuracy. Precision would be how close to that intended target that I'm trying to hit. Can I actually hit it? So that would be more matching your swing in the middle of your dispersion to your aim line.

ModGolfPodcast 28:00

yes

Matt Williams 28:04

But those would be the main differences. And again, that's the nice thing about statistics. It's going to make a recommendation that gives you the highest odds. It really doesn't matter how big your dispersion is. You may have a lower odds to hit the green, but it's still that's still the best shot for you.

ModGolfPodcast 28:20

Right, right. All right, I'm just getting warmed up here. I have so much to ask you.

Matt Williams 28:24

Let's do it.

ModGolfPodcast 28:25

and we're going to ask a lot more on our ModGolf YouTube channel because after we finish up our conversation here in a few minutes, Matt, you and I are going to jump over for a video call where we're going to be able to bring up the the app. We'll bring up some other visuals. We'll bring up the Noonan website where we can run through a couple of things with some videos. So i really encourage all of you listeners right now to join us.

For a bit more with Matt, the ups and downs and everything in between, we'll be a different conversation so I'll include as i always do in the show notes for this ModGolf podcast episode the link to the YouTube video to make it nice and easy for us. So yeah, after you're finished here, come and join us over on YouTube. So let's keep going here. So one of the things I've really noticed the way you're talking here is as an entrepreneur. It's not your first startup, and what you've learned is even though you're creating something new that someone hasn't done exactly like you've done, that isn't necessarily something you want.

I learned that very early on our first golf venture about 13, 14 years ago. And we were very new in the entrepreneurship game. And we thought it was such a virtue talking to potential investors and partners and saying that no one's ever done this before. And realizing that is a big red flag is like, "Well, why not? Is that because this is such a bad idea that no one's ever done it or you'll lose a lot of money or all the above?"

And there are other products out there and some I've used and we've had on the podcast like Arccos with their sensors, completely different because that's a physical product and some things that you are doing beyond that with the Aimpoint Optimizer and all the good things. But there are certain elements that are similar, but that's not a bad thing. The fact that there are others in the market that are doing similar things. You're all moving each other forward.

That, to me, it would be a validator, not being worried that, "oh, that's a competitor against us."

Matt Williams 30:26

Yeah.

ModGolfPodcast 30:28

The fact that the boat is rising with the tide, that pie keeps getting bigger and bigger and Noonan's now part of it.

Matt Williams 30:36

Absolutely. I definitely look to folks like Arccos, 18 Birdies, the apps that have been there before that have done extremely well. they are great proof points that there's a market for these things. And even when you start to break it down, there's different segments that are going to be interested in different aspects. Arccos lends itself to the more serious golfer, the people are really interested in the data.

I think our markets are very similar from that aspect. I see a lot of synergy between the two. Arccos is all about the on-course data and how can I understand how I play and use that to inform where I need to practice and improve different aspects of my game.

ModGolfPodcast 31:14

Yes.

Matt Williams 31:22

where we focus is more just on the real-time shot recommendation so i don't get bogged down in the stats, the tracking of all of that data i really just want to give you the best shot recommendation in the moment as i possibly can And to me, the only way to do that is by taking a very clean data set and using that as kind of my source of truth in order to kind of build things off of. Whereas there's tons of shot tracking in general. It's looking at what you did. It's measuring two points of I hit one shot, then I hit the next shot. It's kind of measuring the distance between those two and

can identify where on the golf course that shot was hit to. Ross fairway and can make some inferences to say, okay, you missed left, missed right. But there's a few problems with that underlying data set. If I'm going to use that to make shot recommendations, right? Number one is I didn't know what my intended aim line was. So where were you trying to hit it? Right. I could assume you were trying to hit the green. I could assume you're trying to hit the fairway, but like every hole is different. There's no possible way unless I, as a user and I inputted it, which again, bad experience,

you're going to be able to understand when the intent line was. So I'm never going to get my aim line optimizer, right? Flat out. The other thing is, how do you factor in all the different conditions from an on course, right? A simulator is a lab. It's a clean environment. There's no wind. There's no rough. There's no nothing like that is, I should be able to hit my shots as best as I possibly can within that environment. As soon as you go on the golf course, if I hit an eight iron 150 yards into the wind and it records, that's how far it went.

What happens the next time when you have a downwind environment? Right. It's not going to make a good recommendation except things you hit 150 yard eight iron. But that was just because it was into the wind. So like how do you normalize for all those different conditions that happen in a real world environment?

ModGolfPodcast 33:03

Right.

Matt Williams 33:07

It's really hard to do that. So I think like the use case for these different things is just very different. And that's solving different challenges for the market. And where I think there was a huge gap is. creating this real experience for creating that digital caddy. And what I love about this is it ties so well to people who use golf simulators. And I think you've already seen this in the professional ranks.

watch the Masters coverage. Did you see a single person not have, not just one launch monitor? I saw a ton of people had two launch monitors hitting on the range for every single shot.

ModGolfPodcast 33:44

Right.

Matt Williams 33:46

Like these guys are so drawn into that data and it's so important. And now we're starting to see that permeate into the amateur ranks. And what I will say is I can virtually guarantee you at some point, tech technology will just get cheaper and cheaper. Every single golfer will be using a launch monitor as part of their practice. It is just, You can't not do it. To get real-time feedback of every single shot is so important, especially as it takes more and more time to practice.

You've got to be efficient with those practice sessions and technology allows you to do that. So if that's the case, everybody's using a launch monitor. Guess what goes really well with launch monitors? Noonan.

ModGolfPodcast 34:25

Yes.

Matt Williams 34:25

So I can take all that data, I can put it into Noonan. Now I've got my personal caddy to use on the golf course, giving me those shot recommendations, all based off that specific data. So like we're going to build out a phenomenal partnership network of indoor facilities, just like ours, who want to extend that value to their customers. We already have people signing up. And it works as a revenue share where If you go out and promote Noonan and your customers subscribing to Noonan, we'll give a rev share kickback to that facility, to that coach, to whoever, you know, wants to be part of this, of this program. And that's really being able to make a big impact in the game golf.

ModGolfPodcast 35:01

Yeah, yeah. So one of the really exciting things I can see is just this explosive growth with simulators, not just in in enter golf entertainment facilities like you own in Kansas City, ah but across North America and the world, but this this explosive growth with home simulator facilities and setups.

Matt Williams 35:21

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

ModGolfPodcast 35:22

The fact you can now put this together for under $10,000 or even less than that.

Matt Williams 35:27

yeah

ModGolfPodcast 35:28

The quality keeps getting better. The price point keeps going down just like flat screens many years ago and all that technology. It only gets better, more robust. And then yes, it becomes cheaper. So you and I had touched on this in an earlier conversation I'm more than happy to make the introduction to Jeff Testa and that is with Neighborhood National. Now they've linked together and they've got about at least 50 members or club pros I believe they call them so people that own whether it's in their garage at their home and you know suburban Kansas city or wherever across the country. And now they're all linked together and they're having tournaments. So it is becoming more this Airbnb situation and they're forming their own clubs and it's super exciting and the growth he has there.

So I'm interested for you to elaborate a little more on this one, Matt, as we finish up. It's not just for on course experiences, me playing around, and having Noonan in my pocket for recommendations. But if I'm playing around with friends on their simulator or playing a certain course, can I also use Noonan for that experience for playing on a simulator?

Matt Williams 36:36

We're not quite there yet. I definitely see an opportunity to integrate Noonan as that same shot recommendation tool into a virtual environment. So you can imagine just like I'm doing within an app setting and I'm on the golf course and I get a shot recommendation and I see my distribution pattern I see that aim line. Noonan could certainly do that same thing in a virtual environment, probably a little bit easier and better kind of user experience just because I'm projecting a screen with all the data right in front of me.

we're going to have to work with these simulator manufacturers and simulator software companies in order to incorporate that. So we have gotten a patents filed for this, basically the technology and the AI that we have developed in order to make these shot recommendations of how we go about that.

ModGolfPodcast 37:12

Yes.

Matt Williams 37:22

So that is absolutely something that we can peel off and start to integrate it into other technologies. So um anybody that... You know, as listening, GS Pro, Trackman, people who are developing the Simulacian software call us. I'd love to work with you to incorporate it. this is going to be a major value add. We are also working on things that are going to help specifically improve those practice sessions. So I'm a huge believer in working on specific things that are going to improve outcomes. And one of the things that I see as a major gap in the market is how do I understand and improve upon my dispersion pattern. And the more accurate my dispersion pattern, the more accurate I'm going to be able to score.

It's as simple as that. I am the first person to say I have wasted so many hours just chasing that perfect swing, kind of ignoring where the ball goes. And I think that's a huge mistake. So how could we maybe gamify that a little bit in order to help people really understand how specifically their shot patterns are progressing or getting worse. So that when you finish up a swing lesson or you finish up, you know, a clinic, you're able to go back and to say, okay, did this actually move the needle to something that's going to improve my scores on the golf course?

Because if you spent all this time chasing the swing that looks aesthetically pleasing, but has, you know, maybe he hits a really good shot one in 10 times, you get a really good feel, but everything else is scattered out. You're never going to be able to score that way. There's some really cool things that we can do from a gamification standpoint in order to really drive the needle in terms of helping people improve like dispersion scores and things like that.

ModGolfPodcast 39:07

What I love about your response there is it shows that you did not fall into this trap of then waiting and waiting. No, we need to build this feature on. No, if we don't have the simulator market also as part of the first release of noon and we're not going to do it. And I've fallen in that trap a little bit. I'm over that now, this whole idea of just ship it. Obviously you've got to test it and make sure that it's out in the market so that it the quality of the product is there, but it's not going to be perfect.

And you're going to be learning that feedback loop and that design iteration as you go. You've actually said, hey, we're now focusing on a particular market and on-course experience. And that's what we're focusing on right now. And yes, the simulator market is massive. It's only getting bigger. And that's something we're go to tap into, but we need other partners. So you haven't just held back and waited and waited and waited and said, we're not going to release until we're going to be able to do everything. Because there is no perfect and there is no everything. So I love the fact these core features you've talked about already with smart dispersion patterns, the shot odds, which are going to get into more on the video for our YouTube channel, and also the Aimline Optimizer and the Simulator data integration.

Matt Williams 40:10

Thank you.

ModGolfPodcast 40:12

This is more than enough to get you guys going to add even more value. And on the video, yeah, I want to hear some stories of people from scratch golfers like yourself to 17 handicappers like me and beyond as far as those success stories. So hold off on those because I want to encourage people again to become viewers over there on the ModGolf YouTube channel. But as we finish up here, Matt, why don't you let everyone know best way to learn more about Noonan and also download the app. So yeah, tell everybody how they can get ahold of you and get Noonan on their smartphone.

Matt Williams 40:48

Yeah. if you want to follow us on social media, we're at Noonan Caddie on Instagram and Facebook. Obviously, download the app. Just search Noonan Caddie and you can go in. We've got a seven-day free each trial, so no risk. Go ahead, get started. Use it. See how you like it. We'd love any kind of feedback that you all have. And then our website is N-O-O-N-A-N.ai.

ModGolfPodcast 41:10

There we go. think that'll do it for now. so Love this conversation. Anything to do with, like I said, anytime I can bring together startups, golf, entrepreneurship, I'm a happy guy. So I'm leaving here happy and I'm going to even but be happier when we jump over onto our ModGolf YouTube channel, as I mentioned. So with that, Matt Williams, president and co-founder of Noonan, Noonan AI and Noonan Caddy, all those good things, which are all the same thing. Thanks so much for joining us and sharing the story of Noonan on the ModGolf Podcast today.

Matt Williams 41:44

Thanks, Colin.