The Pinned Golf founders showing off their brand new product Pinned Golf Boston-based Pinned Golf, a consumer golf-tech brand founded by Alec Lorenzo, John Rowell, and Matt Buckley, has spent the past seven years producing rangefinders that offer precision at an accessible price point—along with a bold array of color options that let golfers showcase their style while locking in a number. The team took home the Best New Product award at the PGA Show for The Caddie, a subscription-free magnetic GPS tablet. The unit provides dynamic distances—front, back, and center of the green, plus hazards—on over 45,000 courses. The device also features stat tracking, multiple game modes, and the ability to toggle between a traditional bird’s-eye view or a 45-degree angle for a more immersive, video game-style perspective of each hole as it is played. The product’s development was a natural extension of Pinned’s core business. After analyzing customer feedback, the team found that golfers preferred the quick, at-a-glance convenience of cart-mounted GPS screens over the process of continually grabbing a rangefinder and shooting a number. This insight sparked the idea to create a portable solution to deliver that same seamless experience—but without the need for built-in cart tech. While plenty of golf apps offer overlapping functionality, those solutions also come with loads of trade-offs—namely having to stare at small screens along with draining phone batteries and inviting constant distractions from incoming notifications. These are exactly the pain points Pinned set out to solve. “At 8-inches, it’s bigger than any phone that’s out there, and you just get too many notifications on a course, Lorenzo said. “Calls from your girlfriend, texts from your dad—it’s too much. Being able to disconnect and keep that phone in your bag and being able to focus on golf, that’s what we were really going for,” he added. MORE FOR YOU Google Chrome Attack Warning—Stop Using Your Passwords ‘Severance’ Season 2 Finale Recap And Review: In The Windmills Of Your Mind NCAA March Madness: Less Than 1% Of Brackets Remain Perfect On First Day Of Tournament Filling a Golf Tech Gap “The market fit had been there. In-cart GPS’s aren’t anything new, the fact that we were able to make it portable was the biggest slam dunk,” Lorenzo explained. It took the team over two years of research and development to bring The Caddie to market. The challenge was designing an intuitive, frictionless user experience while engineering a durable, golf-specific form factor—one that could withstand the elements and the rigors of a bumpy cart path. That meant refining the software interface and building a powerful magnet strong enough to stay put through a lead-footed ride. “It was about making sure this was truly built for golf—able to stand up to the sun, the rain, and all that stuff. We had to build the circuit board around the magnet. It had to be strong enough to serve its purpose, but that meant rewiring some of the circuitry," Rowell added. From the left: John Rowell, Matt Buckley, and Alec Lorenzo Pinned Golf Between 3D-printed prototypes and full-scale hardware testing, The Caddie underwent 10 to 15 iterations before reaching its final form. By the time it was market-ready, the research and development budget had climbed well into the hundreds of thousands—just shy of $1 million, according to the team. Four out of five golf courses do not have built-in GPS’s on their carts and in addition to selling to individuals, Pinned is eyeing fleets sales. Standard 18-hole courses tend to have between 60-80 carts on the premises and The Caddie, available for pre-order at $400 per unit ahead of a May release, offers a more cost-effective option “It’s a six-figure investment, if you want to outfit all your carts. Some courses are buying a dozen and renting them out—it’s a new revenue stream,” Rowell explained, adding that they had one club order them as a gift to new members. With its affordability and flexibility, Pinned Golf sees The Caddie as more than just a convenience—it’s a way to modernize course setups without the long-term financial commitment of built-in cart systems. “The younger crowd is excited about having something techie,” Rowell said. “And some of the older folks we’ve talked to struggle with lasers. They miss, they’ll hit a tree behind [their target], and this is an easy way to give them that number.” Follow me on Twitter. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades