As the first employee at the company now called ZoomInfo, I’ve had a front-row seat to the way data has changed how businesses operate. Fifteen years ago, it was a foreign concept to use data to optimize your go-to-market strategy. But companies like DiscoverOrg and ZoomInfo endeavored to change that. These databases centralized information, saving sales and marketing professionals countless hours of research. In addition to the platform, the underlying dataset of businesses and the people who work there powered automation and optimization that transformed the efficiency and effectiveness of an entire industry.
But not every industry has progressed along the data adoption curve. I’ve learned that sales and marketing professionals in golf are somewhat stuck in the past. That’s why we’re building the golf industry’s first modern intelligence platform — one that puts critical data in the hands of the people who can use it most. We want to bring the progress seen by traditional B2B sales and marketing professionals over the past 15 years to those in the golf industry.
And it’s not just go-to-market strategies in golf that are behind. Offering sales tools to companies that sell to golf facilities is a nice business. But I believe the intelligence platform is really just the tip of the iceberg. Golf is an old-fashioned sport, and many parts of the industry remain analog while the rest of the world has gone digital.
Yes, there’s value in consolidating the scattered data that exists across golf — and we’ll do that. But aggregation alone isn’t enough. The real opportunity lies in applying modern approaches, especially artificial intelligence, to unlock new possibilities. Golfers deserve better tools when deciding where to play or practice. Developers deserve sharper insights when determining where to build the next course. And operators deserve smarter ways to manage their businesses. That’s how the industry moves forward.
Data and AI will transform virtually every industry. But these transformations do not happen without enterprising businesses that push the envelope and marry legacy industry practices with modern approaches. In golf, that’s us.
At Downgrain Labs, we are focused on driving data innovation in the golf industry. We believe a future-forward data business brings clarity to a space that has long been opaque. Our tools will make businesses run faster, smoother, and with less friction. That’s what Downgrain is all about.