The drive to make a better golf app: Former pro athlete bets big on ‘Barkie’ and AI as a caddie

Perhaps the only downside to building a golf-focused startup is that it leaves less time to actually play golf.

Dane Renkert will take that tradeoff, for now, as he works on something that he says will change the way people play and interact around the game.

Renkert is co-founder and CEO of Barkie, a Bellingham, Wash.-based startup building an app that aims to be a true AI caddie in every golfer’s pocket — one that tracks scores by voice alone, settles betting games automatically, and rarely requires a golfer to look down at a screen.

Renkert is no slouch as an athlete and golfer. A Washington State University graduate, he played professional baseball for the Milwaukee Brewers before moving into tech and sales leadership roles at Docugami, Komiko, and Ben Kinney Companies. As a competitive golfer, he placed 13th at the 2009 World Long Drive Championship and now boasts a scratch handicap.

The name of the company is a nod to golf terminology — a “barkie” is an honest, hard-fought par saved after a golfer’s drive ricochets off a tree.

The inspiration for the startup stems from Renkert’s own frustration with existing golf mobile apps, which he argues have essentially operated as digital spreadsheets for the last decade. Incumbents like 18 Birdies, The Grint, and Golf Genius require constant manual data entry throughout a round, Renkert said.

Noting that seven out of 10 golfers still use a paper scorecard and pencil because they like the tradition or want to avoid screen distraction, Renkert set out to build a platform centered on a simple philosophy: “keep your head up and not down.”

To translate that concept into software, Renkert initially teamed up in 2025 with co-founder Zubin Wadia, an MIT grad whom he worked alongside for five years at Docugami, the Bellevue, Wash.-based AI startup. Wadia remains a strategic advisor to Barkie.

To achieve the “heads up” experience, Barkie is differentiating itself by launching a full voice user interface that eliminates manual typing entirely. Using standard gear like an Apple Watch or AirPods, golfers can simply speak the outcome of a hole to dynamically update a digital scorecard in the background.

According to Renkert, Barkie is the first to market with an AI-native, voice-first caddie that allows for natural, fluent speech on the course rather than forcing players to toggle through menus and hit arrows to log data.

“The voice thing, in particular, I believe is a massive lift technically, but it’s a big lift from a user experience side as well,” Renkert said, adding that the platform is designed to seamlessly augment the traditions of the game rather than disrupt them.

Under the hood, Barkie relies on a patent-pending dual-layer system to prevent the application from making mistakes or hallucinating numbers. A guardrailed large language model handles the conversational front end — interpreting natural voice requests, answering rules questions, or trading friendly banter.

A separate, rules-based engineering backend handles all the scoring, strokes-gained calculations, and betting math. This split ensures that while golfers can talk to the app like a human caddie, the actual bookkeeping remains completely accurate.

When the betting function comes online, that same backend will settle real-money side games — Nassau, skins, wolf, hammer bets — instantly once a round ends, sparing golfers the aggravation of hashing out who owes what on the 18th green.

Barkie’s simplest use case doesn’t require voice at all. Through a feature called ScoreShot, golfers can snap a photo of a paper scorecard. The app digitizes it and pushes the data directly to GHIN, the USGA’s official handicap system, via a partnership Renkert says gives Barkie access to course-specific data like slope rating and tee-box selection. Golfers without a club membership or GHIN account can still generate a handicap through the app, calculated according to World Handicap System guidelines.

Either way, the result is hole-by-hole performance data that Renkert says no other golf app currently offers — letting players see which holes they’re strongest and weakest on, and, he added, which holes they should be pressing their buddies on.

Barkie is available for download on iOS (optimized for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch companion setups) and Android devices via the App Store and Google Play Store.

The app offers a free tier that includes GPS mapping features. The premium tier unlocks unlimited hands-free voice tracking, advanced Strokes Gained analytics, the Barkie Betting Engine, and full GHIN integration. Limited-time pricing is available at $4.99 monthly or $29.99 annually.

Barkie has attracted seed funding from friends and family and notable investors, including Rob Gough, an entrepreneur and collector perhaps best known outside tech circles for his record-setting $5.2 million purchase of a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card. According to his LinkedIn, Gough is also an investor in Jeff Bezos’ AI startup Prometheus, which raised $12 billion in Series B funding last month.

“I invested in Barkie.ai because I believe they’re building something that delivers real value to golfers, not just another AI demo,” Gough said in a statement. “Great companies have an unfair advantage, and Barkie has exactly that: a founder with deep domain expertise as a scratch golfer who genuinely understands the game, combined with a world-class AI team recruited from companies like Meta, Google, and NASA.”

Barkie’s cap table also includes former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu, who serves as an advisor to the company.

Armed with high-profile backing and a team recruited from tech giants, Renkert isn’t shy about his ambitions to disrupt the entrenched players in the space.

“I want the incumbents to know I have a lot of backing, and I’m coming for you,” Renkert said. “I’m not trying to compete with you, I’m trying to take it over.”

For now, taking over means grinding behind a desk instead of on a fairway. Renkert admits that building the startup cut heavily into his own time on the course this past year — even leading to a rough showing when he tried to qualify for the U.S. Amateur.

But the grind is the point.

“I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but this is the hardest I’ve ever worked for something,” Renkert said. “I believe, hopefully, this will be my mantle piece.”