Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Welcome back to ModGolf LIVE, I'm your host Colin Weston and we're at the PGA show 2026. Got a couple of interviews in this morning, one-on-ones, but we're gonna 3x that right now. We've got not one, not two, but three guests representing a company, well it's not only with Courserev AI, but there's another company here, you know what, the problem with me making the effort to remember everybody's name and all the rules, I gotta go down the line here, so I'm going to start right to my immediate left here, why don't you guys, why don't you roll it out here and let everybody know who you are and what you do. Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm My name is Matt Wade with PITCHcrm, VP of product for Pitch, and also partner in Courserev as well, and then Chris. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI Yeah, my name is Chris Hill, I'm CTO at Courserev AI, and yeah, excited to be here. Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI I'm Del Ratcliffe, so there are a number of roles here, I don't know where I got my different hats, I'm the president of Courserev, founder of the technology team that has PITCHcrm, and with Courserev I've worked with my good partner Amanda Justin as the founder of Courserev, and excited to be here today talking with you, thank you for the opportunity. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go, well Del, you're way at the end down here, but you and I met each other, we had the opportunity at the NGCOA Golf Business Conference for us to do a little duet that we co-hosted, I have to say I have not had that much fun being involved in an event in years, so I think you and I are on to something now, I think we need to take that on an 86 stage tour, take it on the road, what do you think, we got to get that tour bus going? Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI Yeah, I figured you would want to do that, but I think the whole purpose of that session is to make it fun for me, so you may want to tell people a little bit about that. Was that my job description? Whether it was or not, you did a good job at that, so. Well, I've got another 25-30 minutes here to make fun of you now, so that's great. I've got backup today though. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go, you've got some protection, we've got two guys between me and you here, so we'll see how it goes, but let's start with CourseRev, because I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, and I'm going to let you guys drive the narrative on this, and I'll help herd some cats here, so why don't we start off, let you decide which one of you wants to jump in here, and why don't you tell us what CourseRev AI does, and why you do it. Yeah, so pick that up. Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm So CourseRev AI, we've been out for about two years now, or 18 months. We're a voice and chat AI concierge for golf courses, and we started out, voice is our bread and butter at the moment. We're trying to take that pressure off of the pro shop at a golf course, so that golf course operators and the pro shop can spend more time with the customers face-to-face in the pro shop. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI So we take those calls, and we can handle tee time availability, booking, modifications, cancellations, and even general questions about the course, and even the status of the course as well for that day, if it's car path only, or something like that. So yeah, it's been pretty good so far, and we've had some challenges, but I feel like we're in the right track for 2026. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Well, hey, if you don't have challenges as a startup, an early-growth company, and entrepreneurs, and founders, you're just not trying hard enough. If you're not falling down, you're not going fast enough. I learned that snowboarding years ago, and I kept falling down, so that's what you need to do. So Del, I want to turn it over to you, because not only are you the president, I believe that's your role with CourseRev AI, but yourself with your three decades plus of course owner operator, so you're able to look at, kind of put on my client hat almost, and know all the pain points. So with CourseRev AI, for a lot of courses, because most courses now are just not quite there yet, or you're, how can I put it, I guess saying they're laggards is a bit harsh, but I think we've kind of seen that revealed. So why don't you let us know when you put on your user hat as the persona that would be the client for the product. Tell us what that is, the pain points that it solves for you with CourseRev AI. Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI Well, I'll tell you, you get to name all the products that we have, and I don't know what these two guys are talking about, the specifics of the products, but I am the chief operating officer of Pinnacle Golf Properties, and we have over 20 courses that we manage, and the whole real crux of what we're trying to do with technology is to make our golf courses more profitable. CourseRev is actually named that for course revenue, because we're focused on revenue generation. Yes, it's a voice answering service, but there is a lot more to it. We're using AI in ways that no one else is doing to make our golf operations more efficient, more profitable, and easier to run for the golf courses that implement the technology. Same thing with Prodology and Pixie, our end product. Matt's going to talk about that. We really focus on making our golf courses more profitable and easier for us to use. Now, we're solving problems that are really, I've had pain points for many years in the golf business, and most of the technology solutions we have have come from my talks with Manna and these two gentlemen sitting right here, where I said, you know what, we really need something that does X, and then these guys go out and build it. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI We call Del the main Guinea Pig. So it's the second title under the president, it's Guinea Pig. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast The main Guinea Pig. So Matt, so I understand, so can you explain this to me, like I'm in grade three here, so with PitchCRM, how does that fold into and add value to what's going on with CourseRev AI, and what kind of technology stack you have here? Yeah, explain that to me as simple as possible, so I will understand. Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm So Pitch is the oldest product. We've had it since 2012. Initially Del's idea that he wanted an email SMS marketing platform for his golf courses. What PitchCRM does is it allows golf operators to maximize their revenue and tailor marketing messages specifically based on customer interactions. So they're able to trigger automated email campaigns or direct campaigns based on reservation history or no-show, they can automate no-show email reminders. They can do all sorts of things to tailor messaging and automate that messaging so that they don't have to sit there and go in and create those emails every time. The system handles it for them automatically. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go, there we go. I want to ask these two gentlemen here without throwing any golf course owners or operators under the bus here, but what I saw during the mastermind on Sunday that I was able to participate in with all the course owners in there, I was quite surprised how far behind a lot of them were. A lot of them were behind themselves the fact they're taking credit card payments now. It's like, really, is this 2005? What's going on? So I was kind of surprised. So are you finding with AI that they're more intimidated or overwhelmed? So what's the messaging that you tend to say it'll do everything for everyone all the time. So what's that low-hanging fruit, that introduction that kind of warms them up? So yeah, I don't know who wants to jump in for this one, but let us know. Because I think a lot of course owners just from going to zero, they're like, "what the what? I don't understand this, so I'm going to do nothing". So how do you get them to do something with CourseRev AI rather than just do nothing for another three, four, five years? It's mainly based around education and teaching them what is possible. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI One of our main challenges has been, we have all this power in our platform, but our users don't necessarily know how to implement that into a strategy that works for their facility. So it's kind of just engaging with users, meeting with them one-on-one, trying to teach them what all is possible and develop strategies that maximize the use of the platform. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Thanks for that Chris. And I want to extend that, and Del, this goes to you, or whoever wants to jump in here. Del, I know you're a great storyteller. I want to hear a customer success story. Talk about an example where someone was resisting and how you managed to win them over and completely converted them. But now they're one of your ambassadors and they're evangelical about what you're doing. So I'm sure you've got many of those stories, but I don't know which one of you wants to jump in here. But yeah, share a couple of stories here of the success of how you had some go from, no, I don't get this stuff, I won't do it, don't understand it, to now they can't get enough of it. Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI I'll respond quickly to that, mainly because I want to address your comments on the fact that, of course owners and operators, Colin, you're exactly right. We're not really early adopters of technology. We never have been. And the industry is really rooted in tradition. I've been around for over 40 years, and tradition's a part of the game. And not only are the operators out there that way, but many of our golfers are very rooted in their beliefs of how golf should be paid for, what our business models are in golf, a lot of confusion in golf about memberships, what memberships really are, private club versus daily beat club, semi-privates and all of that. So the business model's not real clear. Every golf course is different. So when it comes to the adoption of technology, one of the challenges is making that technology adaptable to all of these truly different business models. We're still largely an industry of mom-and-pop operations out there. And even if we're not mom-and-pop, even among the bigger MCOs, which we're a part of, everybody has their own secret sauce or things that they want to do. So change is not real easy for us to overcome, and it can be scary, too. So we have that problem. Now, without calling out anybody in specific, I can tell you what our typical experience is. When we bring someone in and we explain the technology to them, a lot of times they're a little bit reluctant. They're excited because they see the potential. They know the pain points, okay? And again, we really focus on what can we do to help your business be more profitable, easier for you to operate, less headaches for you, less stress on you, okay? But the real key is that once we get it in and we get it tweaked to their operation, that's really the big hurdle for us. Our hurdle is not the initial sales. We could go out here on the floor right now, and I would bet you if you followed me at the microphone, we could make a sale of someone, of course, right within the next 10 minutes. I would be very confident of that, okay? But then getting them from that point to the actual adoption, that's where the real challenge is because we have to get in. We have to learn their business model. We have to customize our installation and what they do, and that's where these guys come in. We're designing things that are adaptable to all these different things that we have that we have to do with technology to adapt to a golf operation. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Got it. Got it. That leads me to my next question for both of you gentlemen to jump in here. Now that Del said that, I'll have you answer the hard question here. How, as a business, both with PitchCRM and Courserev AI, you want something that is out of a box so you can scale it very quickly. Sounds like you also have to do some customization. So my question is, how do you balance that tension between customization and replication? Do you build that into your pricing model? Tell us about that journey. How do you do that as far as the sales cycle? Pretend that I'm a course owner and now you understand my parameters, my hopes, dreams and fears. And so how do we go about getting across the line and getting a solution that works for me? Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI Great question. That is one of the hardest parts actually for us to solve when we first started. Is we now built a system that is fully customizable and fully functional, but getting all of those different parameters for different golf courses, who wants to do prepaid versus just booking around. That was a big challenge with what we do. But how do we do that? We really spend a lot of time with operators during the onboarding process to actually work with them, learn about their operation, what is driving their revenue and how do we set up the system to do for them. It takes a little bit of time to get that correct with each golf course. We work through it with them and get everything set up in the way that they want to work for them. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go, there we go. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI Yeah, what Del was saying, it's each golf course is even something personal to a golfer as well. They're local courses, maybe they played there for 20 years or something and it's very personal. So the change is a little difficult, but I think once they get started, they realize it's much easier. But one big pain problem that we've had is that it's not every golf course is a cookie cutter situation where, oh yeah, we'll just set up this one model and we can onboard 100 courses like that. Yeah, it's just amazing how each course is, maybe they have certain player type guidance or restrictions to where maybe they wanna have seniors on a different time or on Saturdays and things like that. So with Foreshare, we recently built a system where we can take those customizations and write them in natural language. And with AI, we can actually implement that much easier rather than trying to build something really rigid and structured in code as we used to do. We can just write out, oh yeah, they don't want this player type to play two o'clock on a Saturday or maybe they only want nine holes after three o'clock on Sundays. And we can just write that now in natural language. And because we're using AI, it's much more flexible in that way. So we're trying to build systems where even if one course wants it now, tomorrow, we're happy to build that because then now we have a new feature set for another golf course to come on and be like, no, we will take care of that right now. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go, there we go. Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm The funny part is that we can train the AI model instantly and very quickly within a few hours. The hard part and what we have to work through and during onboarding is actually training the staff and the course operators on what it's doing and how we need to get set it up. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast So that onboarding process with the staff, when you bring on a new golf course as a client, I'll get in a minute, I'm gonna ask you if there's gonna be this course and a daily fee course and a high-end private resort. I'm sure those are different animals together. So let's touch on that one in a bit. But how do you do that human-centric piece of the different needs that you have with someone that's actually working at the tail of the pro shop or the manager or the head pro, the head superintendent, someone that's the manager of food and beverage and the restaurant. So tell us about that as far as how, just don't drop this down in their lap and say, "good luck with all these tools and this awesomeness we have". So tell us about that piece, that human connectivity to make sure that they succeed. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI Yeah, that we've got, for example, one thing we have built into Courserev is something called a notice board. And then we have announcements and what that enables, even the guys in the pro shop, if they've got something that they need, that they know, say, for example, like there's a problem on hole 10 or it's caught path only on 15. They can just really quickly and again, in natural language, add that in and then straight away, instantly the voice AI and the chat AI will be able to relay that to the customer in real time. Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI Hey, Colin, I just want to jump in here. I'm really impressed, man, because your questions are very insightful and they're really keying in on the challenges that we face when we're dealing with these golf courses, because you're exactly right. We're not an early adopter industry. There's not a lot of understanding of what the capabilities are and are not of AI. What does it do good? What does it not do well? And so our challenge is to design something. Ultimately, what you want when you're trying to do any technology is to improve the efficiency of something to make it much more easy for the flow of not only the workplace, but also for the customers. You want it to be as frictionless as possible for the golfers coming to your facility. The challenge of that is still maintaining the complexity of golf. Golf is a very complex business in the way that we do it. We've got different price matrices. We've got different structures as far as player types and booking windows and all of this stuff. It's a very complex thing, but the general public doesn't realize how that is. So what we have the capability of what these guys are working on every day is how do we make it easier on both sides, both from the course operator, but also from the end user golfer to make that a very seamless and aimless flow of how that goes without them even realizing it's doing all this stuff in the background. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast And getting back to that mastermind with all the golf course owners and operators in the room, one of these pillars or key themes that kept recurring was agonizing over whether we should go with dynamic and surge pricing and argument on both sides. So how flexible, I'm assuming with the AI learning model that you have, that if someone then wants to change and they want to, oh, we haven't done surge or dynamic pricing yet, and now we want to do that, how not only frictionless, but how nimble, I guess is a better word. You find that you're now helping them supercharge that to make that even easier for them when they're trying different things or A-B testing or tinkering around looking for different solutions and using the AI model to help with that? Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI It's instant, really. The systems integrate with their reservation tee-sheet system. We're reading the pricing directly from there. So as soon as they change it or set a new dynamic pricing table, whatever it may be, our systems are instantly reading that and publishing that pricing to the customer. We've even had courses change Tee-sheet systems while using Courserev and we've been able to just make that switch in the backend and just continue booking and supplying those, whether that is dynamic pricing with a new Tee-sheet, we've been able to integrate that straight away. Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI You'll notice too, Colin, in that discussion in the masterminds, one of the things that's really obvious when you dig into it, there's not even an agreement on how dynamic pricing is. What are the things that it's even looking for? They couldn't even really define it. You have to agree on that. Oh, that's a whole podcast, three or four of the same. One of the things that we try to do in all of our software products is we design it to be flexible. We're not trying to tell the golf courses how to run your business. We're trying to provide you solutions that allow you to run the business the way that you want to. Now, we are working, this is something I want to tease a little bit here because Chris and his team are working really intently on some truly innovative dynamic pricing strategies, okay, and how we look at things. The great thing about AI is we're able to use unstructured data in a way that no one is even really comprehending you can use that. Tens of thousands of data points that we as humans can't even hardly comprehend, it can process instantly, you know, so what are really the factors that affect demand? It truly is demand-based, okay, but what causes demand? We look at things like weather. Does weather really cause demand? No, there are other factors on that. Again, we can talk hours. I want to shut up on it because I'm going to have a rabbit hole with that, but it's true. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Once again, Del, at the top of the show, you said, "I'm not going to talk that much". You failed, I didn't do it. I was like, okay, I'd like to see that happen, but everything you're saying here, you're just dropping nuggets of insights here. So they're good words you're saying, not just words. So one of the things I wanted to finish up with here, maybe this is a Del question again, or whether Chris or Matt or all of you jump in here, I touched on this with all courses are not the same and you guys mentioned this. You know this implicitly, Del, from your experience over the three decades. How could you not? So I think I got at least three of the food groups right here that if you've got your municipal courses, your daily rate courses, and also your private clubs, and then of course your high-end destination, maybe that's four of them. Are you, Courserev AI, do you have clients in all four of those sectors? It sounds like you do, you're shaking your head. What are the different needs or desires or pain points? They can't all be the same. So what do you see? What do they consider success? I'm sure a lot of the points are the same, but there's other ones that aren't. So tell us the differentiation between the fact that it's not one size fit all and how you could manage to accommodate them and make them even better. Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm Yeah, well we have, like you say, we've got actually one of every type of those courses. And we were just discussing that this morning where we've got MCOs and multi-course operators, and then we have to differentiate even within those. So we might have a multi-course operator that's a single property, one clubhouse, one pro shop that has three or four courses. Then we might have another multi-course operator that'll have four or five courses surrounded by over a hundred miles and with different pro shops. So those two setups, even within that, are completely different. I can imagine, yeah. Because if you want to get transferred to the pro shop, it's got to be able to know which pro shop, or if it's a single property, it has to be treated as if it's a single property not for individual courses. So even within that sphere, there's already differences in that. And then you've got even multi-course operators that span states, and then different courses that have different pricing. So we have the ability to then, during that call or interaction, to filter between what course they would want to play based on maybe a price or a location as well. So within even MCOs and multi-course operators, there's even nuances within that. Or with all their courses are the same. So different needs even under the umbrella. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Well Del, you're living that. I guess you are the guinea pig petri dish, I guess, for this. The fact that you operate, how many courses again? Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI We're at 23 right now growing. At the end of February, we're probably over 30. So we're continuing to grow the portfolio pretty extensively. And we wouldn't be able to do it without these two guys sitting right here and their team. Each one of them really is just working with a very highly experienced team, and it's just great to have them behind us all the way. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast So it sounds like with you and Pinnacle, you're the beta guinea pig. Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI Oh yeah, all the features get rolled out. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Your job is to break things. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI And that he does. That he does. Del Ratcliffe - President at Courserev AI Matt started with us and has been on the behind the counter actually working in the golf courses and then just moved over into the technology team leading that. And Chris has extensive experience on the golf side as well. So they're not just the tech guys. They have that experience. It's really great for us that they use us as the guinea pig and all. So that's how we make the products better. And I think that actually our clients appreciate that. Our expertise and knowledge within the golf industry really helps us in our day-to-day job understanding what their needs are and what staff members are encountering day-to-day behind that counter. It really helps us understand what we need to build and how to make it work. Nice, nice. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Okay, last question as we finish up here. We have every golf course owner and operator descending upon us this week in Orlando with the PGA Show and the National Golf Course Owners Association business conference here. I'm sure you've heard these stories. Lots of objections or at least reluctance maybe because they just don't know yet. So what are you finding the common misconceptions are? Maybe the way to put it that then you're able to alleviate to let them know or make them feel more comfortable. So what are you hearing? Whether the recurring ones that maybe golf course owners or operators that are watching on the ModGolf YouTube channel or listening on the ModGolf podcast afterwards when we release this or even at the show walking by here? So yes, what are you hearing? What can you say to other people that is not as scary as intimidating or difficult as you may think for that adoption? Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI I think one of the biggest things is 10 years ago when you call in a big company customer support line you get the automated answering service and people have the frustrations of let me speak to rep or frustrations of dealing with that automated assistant in the back of their mind. And they think, well that's what this course rep AI is going to be like and it's completely different. With the AI nowadays, it is incredibly intelligent. It is better than a human. It always answers in a happy tone. You don't have to worry about the mood of the staff that day and it handles it properly. If it can answer a question that's when it passes it over to the staff. So we have those safeguards in place that really allow it to work and function for you without being a headache. Love that response. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast I can do a mic drop but I have to ask one more question here. Are you getting any pushback of whether it's golf course owners or operators? Obviously they want to reduce their bottom line but there's always this big fear with AI that it's going to replace all these jobs. But what I understand, talking to a lot of people on the groundskeeping and superintendent side with mowers that are AI powered that it's doing all the jobs that either they can't hire people to do or it's the low skill jobs that are time consuming and take a lot of energy and not efficient where then they can focus their staff on doing the higher skill pieces. So are you finding that also that it actually doesn't eliminate staff but it frees them up to do more high value pieces of work? What are you guys finding? Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm I think it definitely doesn't eliminate staff. Like as you said, they can then focus on that face-to-face interactions that's happening right in front of them and everyone listening to this has probably been in a situation where you've been in the pro shop and the guy's on two phones and one guy wants to buy a hat and one guy wants to check in and one guy wants to be a member at the same time. So it's definitely not eliminating staff because then you can even get more face-to-face quality interactions in the pro shop and around the course. And even just in our businesses as well, it's certainly not even eliminated out with the increase, the help that we need because right now, even on a technical front for coders and our development team, we've actually increased our staff because they can spend more time designing and really thinking about a problem rather than just say coding. So I think it goes hand in hand with the golf course operators. They're able to spend that more quality time with each individual golfer or customer that comes into the pro shop. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast My last question here, once a course brings in Courserev AI and PitchCRM, are you measuring customer experience satisfaction scores and staff satisfaction? Are you able to measure that? So let me know about that. I would think that in both cases those would be going up, not down. So yeah, tell me a little bit about that. Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm We definitely are, yes. And I'll let Chris speak to this more so than me, but we actually track all those interactions and we have an agent that is reviewing them and flagging ones where there may have been a dissatisfied customer. So I'll let you speak more of that. Chris Hill - CTO at Courserev AI With the tools that we have in AIX, we're able to track and monitor every single call and interaction that comes in. It's able to point out all kinds of KPIs and data points that we can then track. We can then populate some questions that gets asked by every customer that interacts with the service. And then we can go to the golf course operator and say, "these are the most frequently asked problems and questions. This information is not on your website". So we can then work with the operators to then improve the system continuously. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast Love that, love that. Okay, so to finish up here, so everyone that's watching on the ModGolf YouTube channel, people walking by here at the show or people listening on the ModGolf podcast, how can people learn more about Courserev AI and also pitchCRM? Well, the easiest way would be pitchcrm.com. Matt Wade - VP of Product with PITCHcrm You can reach out to us and find out all about what the platform does and reach out to us that way. Yep, same courserev.ai. We just launched a new website this last week. So check it out. You can ping us directly to the website or email us hello at courserev.ai. Colin Weston - Host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go. Well, as I always do, so in the show notes for the podcast, I will include all those links to make it nice and easy for you to find those. And on YouTube also, I will leave comments, I'll include that also. Gentlemen, Chris, Matt and Del, thank you so much for joining us today, bringing us up to speed with what's going on with Courserev AI and PitchCRM. This is the beauty of the PGA Show. 72 hours ago, I didn't know you three gentlemen. And now I think I'm becoming fast friends here. And hey, for everybody, stick around for a few more minutes because as I mentioned at the top of the show, right behind me is the inventors spotlight, the showcase, I believe they call it. There's about 30 companies in there. Yesterday, I walked around and I found what I believe, based on my 15 years in entrepreneurship and sport tech and golf, the three that I like the most. So it's not a pitch competition. I've given them the opportunity to spend a couple of minutes at the end of the show here. And they're just going to be presenting the awesome thing that they're doing as part of the innovators showcase. So stick around for that. That's a wrap for this episode of the ModGolf podcast. You can find previous episodes and be alerted when new ones drop by subscribing to the ModGolf podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, www.mod.golf, or wherever you enjoy listening in. I invite you to join our ModGolf Patreon community at www.patreon.com forward slash ModGolf, where you will have access to exclusive content and will be entered at each and every one of our monthly ModGolf giveaway contests. I'm your host, Colin Weston. Thanks so much for joining me. Bye for now.