We turned a professional golfer’s mental-game method into a product plan that raised its Seed round, then built the iOS application and its backend and released the MVP six months later.
Richard “Dick” Zokol played on the PGA Tour for more than two decades, and learned what most professional athletes learn: the mental game matters as much as the physical one. He invented a method to stay in the moment for every shot, to manage performance anxiety and to break what he calls the golf insanity mindset. With a team of technology veterans he founded MindTRAK Golf to bring that method to professional and amateur golfers worldwide.
The method captures key performance markers for every shot: the assessment and the execution, each rated excellent, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and whether the shot gained or lost a stroke. A putt lined up perfectly and mishit is an excellent assessment, an unsatisfactory execution and a stroke lost. Round by round the markers build a statistical picture of a golfer’s game, and because the golfer is scoring shots rather than the round, the method does its other job: it keeps the mind off the scorecard.
The founding team was strong in marketing and technology and committed to the idea. What it lacked, as early-stage startups often do, was product strategy and planning: the work of turning a method into a software product plan an investor could fund and a developer could build.
The method, the founder and the team were the same at the end as at the start; what changed was that they had a product.
Our CEO was introduced to Dick by a mutual contact. After a few web meetings he met Dick and his team in Canada for two days of product planning and team building, and the plan took shape from there.
How a golfer captures shot-by-shot markers during a round, how the resulting statistics are presented so they are compelling and understandable, who the early adopters are and how to reach them to find product-market fit.
Interactive wireframes that let Dick, his team, his advisors and potential investors see the application before it existed; user stories and epics for every feature; estimates to develop and test the iOS application and the backend services behind it.
Several rounds on the user journeys, the data model for shot-by-shot capture and the reports that show a golfer their performance, until the plan was something the whole team stood behind.
With the plan and the wireframes, Dick raised the Seed round that funded development. We ran an agile program with our own developers and quality assurance engineers, and the minimum viable product was released six months later.
Two further iterations from user feedback, and the help MindTRAK Golf needed to launch in the App Store, secure key advisors and build its go-to-market plan.
Technologies: Swift for the iOS application, Node.js on AWS Lambda with a managed NoSQL database for the backend.
“As we ventured down the path of building the MindTRAK Golf platform we quickly realized how fortunate we were to engage with Michael and his team at CodeStringers. From forethought to wireframe, creative concepts, to practical user experience and those unforeseen problems that surface from time to time, CodeStringers was there to deal and resolve every critical issue quickly. CodeStringers was more than a developer for us. They added value to MindTRAK Golf.”
A plan that could be funded, and a product that shipped on it.
From the first sprint to the MVP.
Development began once the Seed round closed; the minimum viable product shipped six months later.
The round raised on the plan.
The product plan and its interactive wireframes were what Dick put in front of investors to fund the build.
Iterations since launch.
Two product iterations from user feedback after the MVP, and the launch in the App Store.
The figures are from the case study as the previous site published it; MindTRAK Golf did not disclose the size of the round.
A plan good enough to fund is still the first gate of every product we build.
Business systems are moving from applications that record and route to agentic surfaces that reason and act, a paradigm shift we are driving. The method on this page, discovery, a plan everyone can see, estimates against a definition of done, is now how we plan an agentic solution, with agents doing the routine work between the gates and a person at each one.
How we plan and build today: the same gates, with agents doing the routine work and a person approving each one.
The capability under this engagement: product planning, build, quality assurance and operations as one team.
Native iOS and Android applications with the backend services they run on.
The plan an investor can fund and a team can build: stories, estimates and the release they add up to.
Where we're not the right answer
We are not the right answer if you want seats filled and nothing more: every team on this page carried its own product, quality and project people, and the planning gates came with it. Services by the estimate are available today; the long-term focus is the managed solutions.
Every engagement on this page began with a conversation about what was slowing the business down. Tell us yours and we will say, in plain terms, whether we are the right answer, what it would take and what we would measure.
