KC startup founder pivots into pickleball haters’ biggest complaint, eliminating court noise

SLN/CR is serving the sweet sound of silence to neighbors of outdoor pickleball courts, said Eliot Arnold, a serial entrepreneur-turned avid pickleball player who’s taking a swing at the source of critics’ irritation.

His Kansas City-based startup — pronounced “silencer” — offers a fabric-based noise mitigation system that uses nanotechnology to absorb nuisance noise, said Arnold, founder and CEO of SLN/CR.

“There’s some challenges for the sport as a whole,” he explained, noting that as pickleball has rapidly expanded in recent years — often seeing tennis courts converted to pickleball, as well as large, new pickleball facilities built — nearby neighbors often complain about the change in noise levels around the courts.

“Haters are going to hate. There’s one group that has spun up to essentially kill outdoor pickleball nationally because of the noise issues,” Arnold said. “So we do have some headwinds in the market. These people say that no products work and that the only way to solve the problem is to shut down the courts or move them into parts of rural America that are completely inaccessible.”

“We think that the community benefit and the health benefit for our citizens far outweighs the risk to homeowners’ peaceful enjoyment of their neighborhoods,” he continued. “Because there are enough noise mitigation products and services in the market today to really, really make a meaningful dent in the perception of the noise on court.”

Launched in 2023, SLN/CR already has a strategic relationship with USA Pickleball and is one of its Premier Quiet Category partners, Arnold noted, and he’s published research with the Acoustical Society of America and the Institute of Noise Control Engineering on its product configuration.

The pickleball noise problem is multifaceted, Arnold said. 

“Obviously, you have a sound pressure issue, which is measured in decibels,” he added. “So it’s inherently just loud, louder than the ambient environment. But you also have a frequency, so the ball striking the paddle emits a frequency that is the exact frequency that falls within the most annoying range for the human ear.”

“The sound of that noise is really attention grabbing,” he added.

A third aspect of the noise problem is the impulsive nature of the sound, Arnold noted.

“It’s not a predictable noise,” he explained. “It’s pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and so that impulsive nature adds to the annoyance factor of the sound.”

SLN/CR nanofiber court implementation at the Esplanade Country Club in Bradenton, Florida; photo courtesy of SLN/CR

Bringing the best to market

Arnold plays pickleball regularly with Josh Nana — SLN/CR advisor and manufacturing and supply chain lead and fabric and apparel design serial entrepreneur — at Mission Hills Country Club, which was involved in a multi-million dollar pickleball noise complaint lawsuit that threatened its program.

The country club had invested heavily in converting tennis courts to pickleball courts, Arnold explained, but then had to buy the complainant’s neighboring house in order to resolve the lawsuit.

“The system that Mission Hills Country Club elected to use for noise control was built with very antiquated industrial technology,” Arnold detailed. “It’s a very heavy rubber system. It’s like hanging tires on fences. It’s reflective; it’s not absorptive. It just bounces noise from one location to another and it doesn’t really absorb or attenuate the noise.”

When Arnold and Nana looked at what Mission Hills Country Club had done to abate the problem, Arnold said, they knew they could build a better product.

“It’s heavy and it causes a lot of stress on the fence,” he said. “It doesn’t look very good. So we immediately started researching the state of the art for materials used for sound absorption or sound attenuation. We came across a paper that indicated nanofiber material. Nanofibers have a very keen ability to absorb sound and convert sound energy into heat.”

After doing their research, he noted, the duo started doing lab testing and field testing, including with the city of Prairie Village.

“Our results proved that the product works,” he explained. “We’re 70-percent lighter than the incumbent products — the industrial products — on the market. And we’re the price-to performance-leader in the market.”

Power of Pipeline pushes into 2025 momentum

When Arnold joined Pipeline Entrepreneurs in 2023, he entered the program with a healthcare business, he shared. But by the time Arnold finished his fellowship class, he’d pivoted and launched SLN/CR in June 2023.

Eliot Arnold pitches SLN/CR during a 2024 Pipeline showcase event in Kansas City; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

“One of the beauties of Pipeline is they really, really help entrepreneurs focus on whether or not there is a customer for a business that is willing to pay for the products or services that they’re offering,” he explained. “It’s like a trial by fire. Over the course of my fellowship, the mentors got me thinking differently.”

It was a soul-searching endeavor, he noted, to give up the healthcare business and pursue the pickleball business.

“I’m like, ‘there’s an acute problem here’ and I ended up validating it with some customers,” he said. “So by the end of 2023, I had the framework of the business stood up and I started to solicit customers. We got our first customer commitment at the end of 2023.”

In 2024, SLN/CR — which has been self-funded by the team — had a massive influx of inbound interest, Arnold said.

“It’s been a year of commercialization and traction,” he continued. “It was zero to just under a half a million in revenue in one year.”

“We’ve had very, very quick momentum,” he added. “I’m really surprised at how quick, but it’s because of my partners that we were able to productize this so quickly. Our initial investor, Josh Nana, he’s been making apparel for his whole career. So he knows how to stitch things really well and he’s got factories all over the world. We were able to do very quick product development cycles because of his resources, so that was an invaluable leg up for us.”

The SLN/CR team has also grown recently as Brett Cooper joined as chief sales officer in December, Arnold noted, and they are adding a third sales associate. The team is expecting big things in 2025.

“We have a very aggressive goal of wanting to close the year at $2 million,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of really great projects lined up for 2025 already, some of the most high-profile communities in the country. So we’re very excited about that.”