Golf has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of Netflix’s Full Swing documentary series. More than 531 million rounds of golf were played in the US in 2023 alone, according to National Golf Foundation. Because of this increase in interest, golfers are finding that spending time on a public golf course has become more and more difficult.
Loop Golf wants to make the process easier by working as a digital matchmaker. Finds and books golfers whenever they’re available — even if one opens in the middle of the night.
Users tell Loop Golf their criteria for a tee, such as when they want to play, how much they want to pay and how far they’d be willing to travel to a course, among other things. Loop Golf will then browse the Internet and book a tee time that fits that criteria as soon as it becomes available. The company makes money by taking a 10% fee from each booking.
Loop Golf founder and CEO Matt Holder told TechCrunch he’s well aware of the problem. Most golf courses only allow golfers to book up to seven days in advance, which means there is always a lot of competition for tee times. He told TechCrunch that he decided to launch Loop Golf because he couldn’t take the frustrating process anymore and knew he probably wasn’t the only one.
“I was staying up late, looking at a bunch of websites, trying to find a place to play,” Holder told TechCrunch. “I would spend hours just looking at all the different options and trying to do all the multi-factor problem solving to find a place to play for me and my team. Eventually, I got fed up with it, my wife certainly got fed up with it. There is a better way to do this.”
Holder drew on his background working in product management at several startups in the market, including Houzz, CarGurus and Autolist – which was acquired by CarGurus – to build Loop Golf. Although similar to a marketplace, Loop Golf is a little different because it’s more of a concierge service, Holder said. Users don’t scroll through options and select a course, but rather the platform uses a layer of “secret sauce” software to automatically track, find and hold race times for its users.
“They can take 30 seconds to set their preferences with us and save hours of searching,” Holder said. “We find and keep them tee time and just give them more opportunities to play golf.”
The startup currently has more than 3,000 public courses on the platform. That number includes more than half of Golf Digest Top 100 Public Courses. The startup recently raised a $1 million seed round led by Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH fund, in addition to XST Capital Group, Friends and Family Capital, SparkOffer and The Rideshare Guy. Holder said Loop Golf approached Harry Campbell, The Rideshare Guy, after noticing he was an early adopter and booked a storm on the platform.
Holder said the company could have raised more for this round, but decided not to because they didn’t want to raise more money than they needed and didn’t want to give up the extra percentage of their company to do so. He added that the AI developer tools also allowed them to avoid hiring a huge team – as well as save time and capital.
“I think it all depends on the capital dynamics you need to grow,” Holder said. “We don’t have a capital-intensive business at scale. I think our margins are very large. Sure, we’d like to raise, you know, $10 million plus? Yes, that would be awesome. But at the same time, we have to balance dilution with our ability to use capital.”
While most golf courses don’t know they’re on the Loop Golf platform, the startup has started working with them. Holder hopes to entice them to work with him, pointing out that up to 20% of reservations are canceled and that Loop Golf helps fill those empty course reservations.
Holder said as Loop Golf grows, it will become even more of a resource for golf courses. As its user base scales, the startup will have a database of information about golf courses, such as how many people would be willing to pay for an hour on their course, which times are most popular, which days, and more.
Loop Golf isn’t the only startup looking to tackle the issue of finding time for tees. Noteefy is another that looks to help golfers find tee times but from a different angle, working with the golf courses themselves and providing other services like revenue tracking. There are other golf-focused startups raising money. GolfForever, a startup that makes an at-home golf training system, has raised $10 million in venture funding. Swag Golf, a golf accessories company, has also raised $10 million.
Loop Golf went into beta last December and is now fully open for business. Holder said the company already has users booking two to three times a month and is growing its gross merchandise value by 100% month over month.
“We are already on pace to generate millions of tee time demand over the next 12 months,” said Holder. “This happens with limited activity. So we’re really excited to see how much these balloons when we take all the training wheels off and see where this goes.”
