In June 2011, Jose Torbay decided to take a chance. The man who had studied entrepreneurship at MIT before going on to be a successful management consultant for McKinsey & Company took a few months off from his Los Angeles-area job to see if he could launch an idea.
He headed to Puerto Escondido, a small surf town on Mexico’s Pacific coast, on a sabbatical. All he had was an obsession for golf and the hope that the old-school method of handicap tracking could evolve.
“The concept was simple,” Torbay said. “Private clubs used to receive your scores in little wooden boxes at the end of your round. Golfers would deposit their scorecards there and then someone at the club would transcribe the scores and calculate a handicap. The idea was, ‘Can we replicate this concept with current technology? Let’s create a handicap service to help golf clubs outsource this.’ ”
From that starting point, Torbay’s idea quickly transformed. It became apparent that the service wasn’t for c...