Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page, here across
all 44 shows. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the hosts' own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q 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?
A So our list price, which we stick very close to at a private club today is about 4200 dollars per year for essentially unlimited use of the product for up to, ah, two 18 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, A 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 T-sheet, to do their website, to do member billing, and things like that.
AI assessment note: “about 4200 dollars per year for essentially unlimited use of the product”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Give me the backstory here. How do you go from MIT professor to golf guy?
A Well, I always loved software. I think my happiest days were programming. They're still my happiest days, but I don't do it anymore. I love coding. I, it just, it's magical for me. I think when some people appreciate a great poem, I appreciate great code. So I've always loved program, very technical. As soon as I got to MIT, I realized I did not, 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 to Sold to, you know, 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 6000, 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, you know, Trying to do something. And I stayed at IBM for a while. I worked with Lou Gershner, who was a just fantastic CEO. Turned, he turned around IBM. Absolutely. And then that kind of ran its course, uh, and left IBM in oh seven. You know, I really don't want to retire. I love what I d…
AI assessment note: “As soon as I got to MIT, I realized I did not want to be an academic.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Can we take 11,000 clubs times 4200 to back into a revenue range?
A 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. It was a smart suite. 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. So when you roll it all up, it's a good deal more than the forty four million. It's been, the company's been profitable since 2017. I'd like to say we, we have more cash on our balance sheet than all the money we've ever raised.
AI assessment note: “No, that would get you to about two thirds of our revenue”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q That's great. So as a capital allocator, you're just sitting on these profits now. You have over eleven million cash sitting in your bank today. What do you do with that? How do you think about reinvesting it?
A That's a very good question. And I had that conversation with someone today. It's actually fourteen million in cash. Like, what the hell are we doing sitting on fourteen million 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 want to get really good multiples, you got to be growing. I mean, people don't pay high multiples for companies that are just flat. They'll, they'll pay six or seven times cashflow, 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, right? If you keep losing money, you know, eventually you're, you, 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.
AI assessment note: “It can fund acquisitions... My strategy is earn 20% and invest the rest.”
