• December NYC Tech Breakfast Club Thursday 12/14

• December Boston Tech Breakfast Club Wednesday 12/6

• Legally Blond

• Celebrity Caddy turned Founder, Abe Bloom Interview (feat. Travis Kelce)

Thanks to Fidelity for sponsoring today’s newsletter

Hi Breakfast Club members - I’m writing this week’s newsletter from LA. I’m heading to Colorado for Thanksgiving - if you’re skiing in Colorado next week, hit me up, I would love to get a couple laps in with you.

November NYC Tech Breakfast Club was incredible - thanks to everyone who joined us at LUME studios! Shout out to Dotan for making it happen - if you’re interested in collaborating with LUME, reach out at [email protected].

December NYC Tech Breakfast Club (Holiday Edition)

NYC December 14th (It’s a Thursday)

Breakfast Club OG and elite VC, Lori Berenberg, is back to cohost the final Tech Breakfast Club of the year. It’s going to be a Holiday Breakfast Party.

We’re teaming up with Mike Wolkon, founder of Night Inn, for a bespoke breakfast experience - this will be the most elevated and gourmet Breakfast Club yet!

Night Inn brings live, curated experiences to you - from interactive wine & food pairings to cocktail making - led by the industry’s best. They work with private groups and companies to create exceptional events.

Sign up by clicking the image, or either of the two buttons below or this hyperlink right here.

Boston December 6th (Wednesday)

Kylie Bourjaily, Jay Parekh, and I are gathering to celebrate Jackson Fordyce and Josiah Simons from our favorite VC news podcast, Venture Daily. If you’re not already familiar with Venture Daily - you should be.

Sign up by clicking this link or the button below

Breakfast Club Expansion: Los Angeles

We’re going to LA in January - sign up

Stay tuned for details!

Fidelity for Startups x Shoobx

Thank you to Fidelity for Startups for sponsoring Tech Breakfast Club

If you’re tired of Carta or scared of Carta’s high fees or are confused about the Carta drama - email Charlie Stephens.

[email protected]

Fidelity for Startups is committed to supporting the startup & VC community. Fidelity helps founders prepare to raise with community, connections, and our cap table management and data room platform.

Conflict of Interest - Startup Lawyers

Back in September, NYC Tech Breakfast Club hosted Jerry Neumann (legendary angel investor) and Liz Zalman (founder of StrongDM) to talk about their new book Founder vs Investor.

If you came to the talk, you might remember Liz referencing something that otherwise doesn’t get enough attention – the conflict of interest between many startup lawyers and the VCs investing in startups those same lawyers represent.

“You may think that your lawyers are fantastic and that they’ll take care of it for you but if you are using one of the 6 law firms that claim to have a competency in startups, you’re already in a bad spot. (If you’re in doubt as to whether you’re working with one of these firms, ask your investors or send me an email). Investors will tell you that these firms have a ton of experience in startups and are tops. That’s true. But they’re also beholden to investors because they do hundreds of deals a year for investors and maybe one deal every other year for you. With whom do you think their loyalty lies? Not you. Furthermore, they often work for both sides at the same time; I’ve personally been in a deal with one firm that was working for three separate parties simultaneously. In any other scenario lawyers will recuse themselves; not in startupland. They make more money with investors than you and there’s no way to change it.”

As a first-time founder you’re dependent on your lawyers to level the playing field against more sophisticated repeat players. You should hire and engage people with the right expertise, but also without hidden dependencies.

One of the key advantages of Optimal, compared to legacy law firms, is that we stay on one side of the table. Our startup clients have been backed by many of the world’s most elite VCs. But uniquely among startup law firms we (deliberately) don’t represent any of those Tech VCs, to ensure founders can trust us.  

If you’d like to read a more comprehensive exploration of power dynamics in venture capital check out Founder vs Investor or this blog post by Optimal partner, Jose Ancer.

About Morgan
Morgan, besides running Tech Breakfast Club, is a Startup Lawyer at Optimal, an elite lean boutique startup law firm repping clients funded by a16z, Sequoia, Kleiner, Accel, and countless other VCs. He works with clients from formation to exit, in collaboration with Optimal’s partners.

Caddy Shack to Hackerhouse - Abraham Bloom

This week I chat with Abe Bloom about going from celebrity caddy life to starting a computer vision/artificial intelligence golf improvement company.

For the bit, we had to conduct the interview on the golf course.

If you’re a Tech Breakfast Club member with an interesting story, I’d love to chat - reply to this email. Always looking for good content.

Okay for context, for the readers, I just teed off on the first hole at Rancho Park Golf Course in Los Angeles, it’s a 384-yard par four. I have the distinct honor of Abraham Bloom caddying for me. He usually caddies for celebrities but today he’s caddying for me. You’re not just a caddy, though. You’re also one of the cofounders of GolfGolf – tell me about the company
So GolfGolf is putting a golf pro in every golfer’s pocket. For the beginner golfer, a lot of people don't have access to feedback, like, “why am I slicing the ball?” and “what's going wrong in my game? 

We're taking golfers zero to one with our feedback using computer vision and artificial intelligence. We're the first Gen AI golf tech company. 

So, there are some computer vision companies out there, but none of them actually have a LM interface. A lot of them require a coach to get the feedback. We're putting simplicity right at the forefront. With the chat interface, ask the coach for feedback, you get it instantly, it's going to learn your game over time, so you can get custom tips. 

Right now we have an MVP that assesses your stance. 

Can you explain how the MVP works right now?
Someone uploads their stance to golfgolf.tech and they're going to get a score, Zero to 100. Actually, Morgan got an 86, which is pretty good. 

We trained it on professionals. We took a couple thousand photos of professionals, and looked at key metrics like shoulder slope, leading arm straightness, where people placed the ball and created standard distributions for that and created an algorithm. 

It’ll roast you if you suck and give you feedback. Morgan actually didn’t get roasted because his setup/stance is pretty good. 

We've had 1000 users in eight weeks. 30 paying customers for the premium report. 

 Next up, we’re building a full swing analysis. 

Most founders that I chat with, their background is something like... I was an engineer at Google or Apple – wait did you even go to college?
Haha, yeah, I went to college. Trinity in Connecticut. I majored in Religious Studies. I got a pretty good LSAT score but didn’t want to go to law school just yet. 

The religious studies to caddying pipeline. Classic. How did you end up caddying for celebrities in LA?
Since the LSAT score is good for five years, I felt like I could be a bit adventurous. I moved to LA and started caddying at Wilshire

[Approaching my drive on the first hole]

Nice shot, you piped that. 

[Using laser range finder] 

You’ve got about 75 yards to the pin. 

Okay, I’ll hit like three quarters 54-degree wedge

[Hits wedge]

Great shot! Pin high, maybe 6’. Here’s your putter

Thank you – okay so Wilshire. For those who will eventually read this but don’t know about LA Country Clubs, Wilshire is a great club
Yeah, it’s pretty historic. There are some beautiful, very prestigious tracks in LA. Some of the top ones are LACC, Bel-Air, Riviera, Lakeside, Sherwood – each club has it’s own vibe. Some might have celebrities, others, like LACC, have historically shunned celebrities. 

Wilshire is cool, it hosts a LPGA tour event. About a month in, though, I get the advice that I should work at Lakeside. I switch. It’s more celebrity heavy. Bob Hope was a member. The members are pretty friendly... they like to have a good time. 

[Putting for birdie, miss, right edge, tap in for par]

 A lot of serious golfers there. Do you normally play Rancho?

Yeah, it’s the closest course to me in LA and since it’s municipal, it’s only $20 in the afternoon. And I think it’s actually a good course. It’s so busy though that I can hardly ever get a tee time. I’ll join a club eventually. 
So yeah, like 10 months ago, I was talking to my friend Charles, who is now my cofounder, that we should figure out a way to capitalize on my position as a caddy for all these interesting people. How can we take advantage of this? At first, we tried to do a concierge service – book tables at restaurants, etc. That kind of sputtered out. Then we tried golf course management software.  

[Hits drive on the second hole, par four, 467 yards]
We got some early interest. We created an MVP in iOS testflight that handled things like calendar and messaging at the country club, and like finding other golfers. We got some early users, but people were kind of gaslighting me. People want to be nice to you. “Yeah, it’s great, I would love a product like this.” But in reality, you build it, and they would rather use SMS. 

What happened next?
We realized that golf is about vanity. I care about getting better or seeing what pro my swing is most like. We pivoted

[Hits second shot]
Damn dude, you’re bringing the juice today. Good ball, bro

Thanks man
We wanted to take better advantage of our skills, too. Charles is an ML engineer. We applied to Jason Calacanis’s accelerator. 

Founder University?
Yeah, we were nonchalant about getting in, but then very motivated to make the most of it. We released our initial product very quickly. The MVP was a driver stance assessment with just a figma file. It looked so ugly. Then came the web app. 

It was an incredible program. Looking back on our pitch deck from the beginning, we’ve had incredible growth. Very fruitful. Lots of good info to help us level up.  

What was it like chatting with Jason?
He actually gave us great advice. He gave us some great tips on viral growth. We decided that the app should roast your swing if it’s bad – very entertaining. 

 Okay, this is Morgan’s second six foot birdie putt in two holes. Impressive. Are you good at reading greens?

[Misses birdie putt]

Sometimes

Coming back, I think it’s going to be straight or left center

I’m seeing the opposite.

[Misses par putt]

Morgan just three putted from six feet away. 

That’s definitely not going in the interview 
[laughter]

So yeah, we got good traction, day one. 100 users in our first day. Well over 1000 now in eight weeks. 30 paying customers. It’s kind of crazy. 

We hit a j curve – we saw what we needed to do and how to present ourselves to our users and our investors. Something started to click and we’ve able to iterate very quickly and see that we’re resonating. People want to meet with us. 

Jason just wrote you a check – is he even a golfer?
He’s not a golfer from my understanding. He was very interested in who I caddy for. He really loved some Joe Pesci stories. 

[Morgan hits tee shot on par 3, 198 yards]
Tight shot. Morgan can really hit the ball. You’re putting... 

As soon as I figure out putting, it’s over for you all. 

How was New York Tech Week?
It was good. We got to pitch A16Z for their consumer AI competition. It went well. 

[Morgan misses putt for birdie]
This is a hard putt, play it just outside the left edge

[Morgan misses put for par, tap in for bogey]
Oof, what’s your golf story?

My Uncles are good golfers, my Dad didn’t play. I played a little bit as a kid. Got back into it during the pandemic, like a lot of people. Difficult to play in New York though.
In the last year, there have been over 3 million new golfers. It used to be 2 million new golfers per year, but we’ve seen a strong uptick. One really promising trend is youth golf. Parents are turning away from football and other contact sports. With golf, you’re not going to get CTE, I mean unless you get hit in the head with a golf ball – that’s almost happened to me. 

Will you continue with just golf as the focus?
Yeah, we like the name GolfGolf, but we’re planning to do other sports too, so the name might be on the chopping block. 

TennisTennis?
Yeah maybe that’s the formula. 

[Standing on the tee box of hole #4, par five, 522 yards]
Are they [referring to the group in front of us] far enough away that I can hit?
Yeah, I don’t think you can reach them 

[Hits drive, hooks left]
Not your best 

I’ll recover. 
What type of law do you practice again?

I’m a startup lawyer, everything from formation to acquisition. 
I’ve actually got a question for you, can I get some legal advice?

[REDACTED]

Okay, you’re 277 yards out. 

[Hits 3 wood]

What’s the most egregious instance of cheating you’ve seen on the golf course?
Hah, I don’t want to out myself.

Okay, we got off track, back to J Cal. He wrote you a check
Yeah, it has put a spring in our step. We want to deliver a lot of shareholder value and it’s been a huge boon to us getting meetings. 

Incredible progress in 10 weeks, what’s on tap for the next ten weeks
Next up is the mobile app. Building out the model. Fine tuning the LLM chat for golf instruction. Add Goal Oriented training modules within the app - think DuoLingo but for Golf. Close our preseed round. Make two hires. 

I’m pretty impressed at how fast you and the team got up and running. How helpful is it to have celebrities on your cap table?
Especially as a b2c product, it helps to have investors that have platforms – I think it’ll go a long way. There’s a big opportunity for celebrities to create their own coaches. Maybe punch like Tyson. Something along that line. 

[Hits third shot, lands on green 15 feet from hole]

This is our last hole, since I have to hop on a call. I have to get a good celebrity story out of you 
Let me see what I can share – this one I’m thinking of is pretty insane, we might have to cut it

[REDACTED]

Yeah, I don’t think I can include that. Do you have anything tamer?
Well, Joe Pesci, he’s an incredible trash talker, and he’ll take it too which makes it really funny. He’s 78 years old but still thinks he has a good golf swing, there’s some comedy in that for sure. 

[Morgan 2 putts for par]

<If you made it this far, reply with your best putting tip (I need it)>