Maybe the one draw back to constructing a golf-focused startup is that it leaves much less time to really play golf.
Dane Renkert will take that tradeoff, for now, as he works on one thing that he says will change the best way folks play and work together across the recreation.
Renkert is co-founder and CEO of Barkie, a Bellingham, Wash.-based startup constructing an app that goals to be a real AI caddie in each golfer’s pocket — one which tracks scores by voice alone, settles betting video games mechanically, and infrequently requires a golfer to look down at a display screen.
Renkert is not any slouch as an athlete and golfer. A Washington State College graduate, he performed skilled baseball for the Milwaukee Brewers earlier than transferring into tech and gross sales management roles at Docugami, Komiko, and Ben Kinney Firms. As a aggressive golfer, he positioned thirteenth on the 2009 World Lengthy Drive Championship and now boasts a scratch handicap.
The title of the corporate is a nod to golf terminology — a “barkie” is an trustworthy, hard-fought par saved after a golfer’s drive ricochets off a tree.
The inspiration for the startup stems from Renkert’s personal frustration with present golf cellular apps, which he argues have primarily operated as digital spreadsheets for the final decade. Incumbents like 18 Birdies, The Grint, and Golf Genius require fixed guide information entry all through a spherical, Renkert stated.
Noting that seven out of 10 golfers nonetheless use a paper scorecard and pencil as a result of they just like the custom or need to keep away from display screen distraction, Renkert got down to construct a platform centered on a easy philosophy: “hold your head up and never down.”
To translate that idea into software program, Renkert initially teamed up in 2025 with co-founder Zubin Wadia, an MIT grad whom he labored alongside for 5 years at Docugami, the Bellevue, Wash.-based AI startup. Wadia stays a strategic advisor to Barkie.
To attain the “heads up” expertise, Barkie is differentiating itself by launching a full voice person interface that eliminates guide typing solely. Utilizing customary gear like an Apple Watch or AirPods, golfers can merely communicate the result of a gap to dynamically replace a digital scorecard within the background.
In accordance with Renkert, Barkie is the primary to market with an AI-native, voice-first caddie that permits for pure, fluent speech on the course reasonably than forcing gamers to toggle by menus and hit arrows to log information.
“The voice factor, particularly, I imagine is an enormous carry technically, but it surely’s an enormous carry from a person expertise aspect as effectively,” Renkert stated, including that the platform is designed to seamlessly increase the traditions of the sport reasonably than disrupt them.
Below the hood, Barkie depends on a patent-pending dual-layer system to stop the appliance from making errors or hallucinating numbers. A guardrailed giant language mannequin handles the conversational entrance finish — decoding pure voice requests, answering guidelines questions, or buying and selling pleasant banter.
A separate, rules-based engineering backend handles all of the scoring, strokes-gained calculations, and betting math. This cut up ensures that whereas golfers can speak to the app like a human caddie, the precise bookkeeping stays fully correct.
When the betting perform comes on-line, that very same backend will settle real-money aspect video games — Nassau, skins, wolf, hammer bets — immediately as soon as a spherical ends, sparing golfers the aggravation of hashing out who owes what on the 18th inexperienced.
Barkie’s easiest use case doesn’t require voice in any respect. By means of a characteristic referred to as ScoreShot, golfers can snap a photograph of a paper scorecard. The app digitizes it and pushes the information on to GHIN, the USGA’s official handicap system, through a partnership Renkert says provides Barkie entry to course-specific information like slope score and tee-box choice. Golfers with no membership membership or GHIN account can nonetheless generate a handicap by the app, calculated in line with World Handicap System pointers.
Both approach, the result’s hole-by-hole efficiency information that Renkert says no different golf app at the moment provides — letting gamers see which holes they’re strongest and weakest on, and, he added, which holes they need to be urgent their buddies on.
Barkie is obtainable for obtain on iOS (optimized for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch companion setups) and Android gadgets through the App Store and Google Play Store.
The app provides a free tier that features GPS mapping options. The premium tier unlocks limitless hands-free voice monitoring, superior Strokes Gained analytics, the Barkie Betting Engine, and full GHIN integration. Restricted-time pricing is obtainable at $4.99 month-to-month or $29.99 yearly.
Barkie has attracted seed funding from family and friends and notable traders, together with Rob Gough, an entrepreneur and collector maybe greatest identified outdoors tech circles for his record-setting $5.2 million purchase of a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card. In accordance with his LinkedIn, Gough can be an investor in Jeff Bezos’ AI startup Prometheus, which raised $12 billion in Collection B funding final month.
“I invested in Barkie.ai as a result of I imagine they’re constructing one thing that delivers actual worth to golfers, not simply one other AI demo,” Gough stated in a press release. “Nice corporations have an unfair benefit, and Barkie has precisely that: a founder with deep area experience as a scratch golfer who genuinely understands the sport, mixed with a world-class AI group recruited from corporations like Meta, Google, and NASA.”
Barkie’s cap desk additionally consists of former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu, who serves as an advisor to the corporate.
Armed with high-profile backing and a group recruited from tech giants, Renkert isn’t shy about his ambitions to disrupt the entrenched gamers within the area.
“I would like the incumbents to know I’ve lots of backing, and I’m coming for you,” Renkert stated. “I’m not making an attempt to compete with you, I’m making an attempt to take it over.”
For now, taking on means grinding behind a desk as an alternative of on a fairway. Renkert admits that constructing the startup lower closely into his personal time on the course this previous yr — even resulting in a tough exhibiting when he tried to qualify for the U.S. Novice.
However the grind is the purpose.
“I’ve executed lots of cool issues in my life, however that is the toughest I’ve ever labored for one thing,” Renkert stated. “I imagine, hopefully, this can be my mantle piece.”
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