Feb 18, 2026 · 25m · top-founders
He Turned Pickleball Software into a $3M/yr SaaS
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this interview, Podplay co-founder Ben Borden discusses how the company evolved from autonomous ping pong venues into an $8 million Series A-backed vertical SaaS platform reaching $3 million in ARR across 2,000 sports courts.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 26.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.0 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 1.5 Nathan pushing back 3.5
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 20:05 Ben rejects the 'ghost gym' framing
Ben pushes back against Nathan's suggestion that PodPlay creates cold 'ghost gyms' that destroy the social fabric of sports for higher margins.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 3:31 Nathan pushes on the hedge fund drawdownNathan refuses to stick to benign origin stories, directly questioning Ben about the hedge fund's black swan event and capital losses.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 22:33 Ben breaks down fatal facility real estate trapsBen educates prospective venue operators on why structural renovation delays and lag to revenue are far more lethal than imperfect locations.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 18:38 Nathan outlines AI defensibility and alternative business modelsNathan demonstrates SaaS expertise by analyzing proprietary data moats against frontier AI models and pitching debt-financing strategies.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Highlights and Key Metric Teasers | 4 | 2 | 1 | 4 | Nathan introduces the guest and digs past the marketing pitch into Ben's hedge fund background. He brings up research on a past black swan drawdown at MM Capital, prompting Ben to explain how they managed LP relationships during the crisis. | |
| The Origin and Autonomous Unit Economics of PingPod | 6 | 3 | 1 | 4 | Ben explains PingPod's origin and autonomous unit economics in NYC. Nathan actively performs real-time unit math, multiplying hourly rates and 70% utilization across 360 days to calculate the single-location revenue run rate. | |
| Sponsor Message: Capital Opportunities with FounderPath | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | Following an ad read, Nathan and Ben discuss the evolution of PodPlay from PingPod's internal tool to external SaaS. Ben outlines the technical integration of hardware and software point solutions, citing engineering pedigree from R/GA. | |
| Pickleball Expansion, Pricing Tiers, and Reaching $3M ARR | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Nathan presses on ARR figures, location counts, and average contract values. Ben corrects Nathan's court estimates and clarifies that hardware-enabled tiers create a 4-to-6-month implementation lag between contracted ARR and live revenue. | |
| Spinout Strategy and Series A Financing with Frontier Growth | 7 | 3 | 2 | 4 | The discussion shifts to financing, spinouts, and defensibility in the AI era. Nathan presents an extensive thesis arguing that vertical SaaS moats rely on proprietary customer memory, while Ben probes whether vertical software can be vibe-coded. | |
| Rapid Fire: Staffing Models, Real Estate Math, and Facility Pitfalls | 5 | 5 | 3 | 3 | In a rapid-fire sequence, Nathan asks provocative questions about unattended ghost gyms and real estate failure points. Ben rejects the ghost gym premise and provides deep operational advice on time-to-revenue and white box leases. |
Statements from this episode (11)
Borden was the first outside investor in PingPod in 2019
“It was founded in 2019 by Max David Silverman and Ernesto Ebwin. I was the first outside investor in that business.”
Borden: PingPod's first location achieved 60% to 70% 24-hour utilization in 2020
“Yeah, I mean, just from a utilization, we had a single location, but it was, utilization was, I think, running between 60 and 70% on a 24 hour basis. So, if you have a low fixed cost business, that unit was very, very, very, very profitable.”
Venue tech requires vertical integration of hardware and software
“Part of the secret here is like, can you get rid of the friction? And in order to get rid of that friction, you need to do the club management sort of reservation management and the video capture. So hardware and software. So most of the rest of the market, yo…”
Borden: 90% of Podplay tech team worked on Equinox or Nike apps
“About 90% of our tech team has ties to those two, two projects. So our hiring strategy has been to kind of go pick off all the best engineers, product managers, and designers that Ilya worked with in, in the past and kind of reassembled them as a dream team.”
Borden: Podplay approaches $3M contracted ARR across over 200 locations
“We are kind of approaching three million in, in contracted ARR. We have a little over 200 locations signed up on the platform.”
Borden: Podplay manages over 2,000 sports courts across its venues
“Average is, is trending up closer to 10 per, per location, and so I think we're over 2000 quarts now.”
Borden: Podplay grew contracted ARR between 100% and 200% year-over-year
“Triple digits. So, you know, we'll put it, peg it between a 102 hundred. Yes, more than a hundred percent. Less than 200%.”
Podplay spun out and raised an $8M Series A in 2025
“We spun out pod play as a standalone entity in August of this year, which was a prelude to raising a series A for standalone pod play which we did in October. So eight million dollars series A round led by frontier growth.”
Latka says software companies need proprietary customer memory to rival AI
“I think you're going to see a lot of software companies today realize that they can't compete with AI unless they sit on some kind of memory about their customers that the general AI foundational models don't have access to, right?”
Borden says developers cannot vibe code deep vertical domain software
“You can put together a prototype, like and you can vibe code your way to kind of a, you know, a simple scheduling app but you can't vibe code your way to something that has kind of deep value to a domain.”
Founders should choose white-box buildouts over prime locations to launch faster
“You would prefer a slightly lesser location that if you can get kind of that white box that doesn't have a lot of structural work and you can put less money into it and get open faster than getting that kind of prime location if you have to do a bunch of work …”