2025 Startups to Watch: Noonan scores under par success with digital caddie as golf market earns deepage

Editor’s note: Startland News editors selected 10 Kansas City scaling businesses to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch list. Now in its 10th year, this feature recognizes founders and startups that editors believe will make some of the biggest, most compelling news in the coming 12 months. The following is one of 2025’s companies.

Click here to view the full list of Startups to Watch — presented by Morgan Stanley, and independently produced by Startland News — and see how the companies (including this one) were selected.

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The co-founders of Noonan — a digital caddie platform — originally launched the startup’s technology to complement their indoor golf franchise GolfTRK, Alex Reed and Matt Williams shared, but they quickly realized it had bigger potential.

The duo had a “lightbulb moment” after receiving feedback from major golf simulator manufacturers — as one of six finalists at the 2024 PGA Merchandise Show Golf Pitch Challenge — and realized Noonan itself is positioned in a high-growth arena that a lot of people are looking to migrate toward, Reed said.

“It really validated the Noonan concept and made us aware that there is this desire for almost any organization who has their foot in the off-course arena; they’re very much looking for this bridge to connect it to the on-course environment,” he continued. “It spurred the idea that, ‘Hey, we should buckle down and really rethink what Noonan is. It’s not just an extension of our indoor facility to drive retention. It’s really viable as a standalone product concept and potentially has a larger overall impact.’”

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• Elevator pitch: Noonan is a patent-pending digital caddie platform which uses simulator data to deliver intelligent shot recommendations and help golfers lower their scores.
• Founders: Matt Williams, Alex Reed, Sam Collins, and Paul Buonopane
• Headquarters location: Lenexa, Kansas
• Founding year: 2023
• Current employee count: 3
• Funding amount raised to date: $675,000
• Noteworthy investors: N/A
• Noteworthy programs/accelerators/incubators completed: Pure Pitch Rally 2023 and Digital Sandbox KC

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In August 2023, Reed and Williams — along with co-founders Sam Collins and Paul Buonopane — opened GolfTRK, a modern training and performance indoor golf franchise recently named a Trackman Preferred Franchise Partner, joining an exclusive group of just nine worldwide.

Albatross Golf founders: Matt Williams, Alex Reed, and Sam Collins; Not pictured, Paul Buonopane; photo courtesy of Albatross Golf

Then — initially to retain golfers in the warmer months — they developed Noonan, a patent-pending Digital Caddie platform which uses simulator data to deliver intelligent shot recommendations and help golfers lower their scores. 

“When we got started, we didn’t really want the entertainment, Top Golf-type experience,” Williams explained. “We wanted a place where we could actually play, practice, train; that wasn’t really available in the market. So by combining our indoor facilities and technology, there’s a big opportunity to innovate and develop solutions specifically for this demographic.”

The co-founders recently rolled Noonan — a 2023 Pure Pitch Rally competitor — and GolfTRK under the same brand umbrella: Albatross Golf.

“We’re really leveraging Albatross to be this incubator for new technology,” Williams noted. “So we have an indoor golf franchise, Noonan, and then additional concepts that just all feed into this massive market of avid golfers like us.”

On top of the validation the co-founders received at the PGA Merchandise Show in 2024, Albatross in early December announced a $675,000 seed round, fueled in large part by the Kansas Angel Investor Tax Credit program. And earlier in the year, Noonan received $20,000 from Digital Sandbox KC.

“A lot of 2024 was about identifying our market position and the essence of what Albatross and its subsidiary programs represent,” Reed said. “It’s this idea that we’re building and incubating businesses that live in this intersection of golf and technology.”

ICYMI: Golftech startup raises $675K seed round, swinging for franchise expansion and commercial tech launch

Alex Reed, Noonan, discusses momentum for his startup with Startland News reporter Nikki Overfelt Chifalu at HITIDES Coffee in the East Crossroads; photo by Tommy Felts, Startland News

Noonan — which just launched its commercial version at the end of 2024 — and Albatross are also poised to have a big year in 2025, Reed and Williams shared. They plan to open their second GolfTRK location in Overland Park this month and have already signed four franchises.

“We have goals for both franchising and Noonan; in just the past 30 to 60 days, we’ve seen a noticeable acceleration toward that vision,” Reed noted. “And we’re confident that we’ll be far exceeding those goals for 2025.”

The co-founders have aspirations to hit 10,000 users in the first year, according to Williams.

“Given the revenue projections, ideally that would get us about a million dollars for that first year in revenue,” he continued. “That’s very achievable given the fact we already have 1,500 people on the waitlist.”

To drive awareness of the platform, they are finalizing a contract with an influencer in the indoor golf space who has 50,000 students that submit videos to him for swing lessons and instruction, Williams said.

“He’s going to be essentially an affiliate marketer for Noonan and promote this to his students,” Williams explained. “Then we have a number of other influencers in that space with hundreds of thousands of followers who are also looking to create relationships.”

With golf participation on the uptick, in contrast to all other major sports, Williams noted, the co-founders expect the market to continue its growth.

“Golf is at this tipping point where — without a doubt — it’s the most popular it’s ever been in its history,” he said. “COVID had a huge impact on introducing people to the game, but now they are graduating past that entertainment, recreational-type experience and becoming serious golfers.”

“With Noonan and GolfTRK, we have this massive potential to satisfy that growing demand from people who are like us — looking for that avid experience,” Williams added.

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10 Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2025

• Good Oak scales social venture to boost biodiversity in farming, herd ag industry toward change
• Hilltop Technologies targets cybersecurity for Main Street (with help from next-gen talent)
• Icorium matches a complex environmental threat with Kansas-powered innovation
• LPOXY Therapeutics punches back at gut infection (and a foe with a billion-year head start)
• Marma pushes women’s nutrition to the forefront, birthing resources on demand
• OLEO roasts plans for slow-drip craft retail concepts, starting with coffee (and soon a diner)
• Raise Health tasks AI tools with a multiplier mission — detecting mental health struggles early
• Scout charts early adoption with digital veterinary workflow platform, diagnosing industry burnout
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