While I think these venues are cool, they’re inherently VERY limited in maximum possible scale. They’re more of a competitor to bars like SPIN, rather than traditional table tennis venues - kinda like how Top Golf isn’t really trying to steal business from the local driving range.<p>As a tourist, I walked by North Station location in Boston, saw the price - $50/hr at any time I’d want to play - and noped out hard. Decided to spend the money on an Uber to Boston Table Tennis Club instead, and played for three hours with good coaching (shoutout to Coach Vincent for the warm welcome) and fun pickup games. Cost half the price in total, and I didn’t have to hunt for a decent partner either.<p>Economically, Pingpod will just never be a viable option compared to old school clubs, even if they slash their prices to a tenth of what they are now. Forever a novelty/tourist gimmick.
Claims of automation really fall apart for me when they rely on outsourcing. Even setting aside ethical considerations, this business relies on there being a stable source of cheap labor. Moving that labor to remote monitoring and presumably some kind of local intervention skeleton crew for when they report something may be more in line with the experience customers want than a gym that is perceptibly staffed, but automation is a strong word for that
We're in the cloud golf simulation space (sounds like these guys dabble in golf too) and this has a few really interesting angles.<p>- remote video monitoring from the Philippines. Great way to economically monitor customer behavior.<p>- built in tech for capturing replays and sharing to social. Awesome and really scratches the sharing itch.<p>In golf some extra challenges are:<p>- safety - a golf ball at 160mph is far more dangerous than a ping ping ball, literally life threatening.<p>- cleanliness - you don't want people hitting balls into your shiny impact screen using their filthy mud covered clubs. Need some way to monitor people's clubs at check in time. Could again be the Philippines crew. Or make them use the in-house clubs - more capital outlay and ongoing expense<p>- need a gaming computer and sim licence installed on it. Expensive to have sitting idle between customers
I wouldn't really consider this automation. Just because a company uses software doesnt mean it's automation.<p>This is the same way self storage operators run their business. No one would call that automation. It's called self service.<p>But I guess that wouldn't drive valuation.
I don't understand. Either you have one person on site or one person monitoring video with your expensive "no one on site" tech. I'm skeptical that this would save anyone money. I suppose the labor for the monitoring is dirt cheap and maybe one person can monitor multiple sites? And I suppose no real employees means no HR, etc..
> In March 2022, we received $10 million in VC funding [for facilitiy rental business]<p>> In 6 years I’ve bootstrapped my moving company to $100M in revenue. Avoiding VC funding has been key. [Link is to an article by a different author.]<p>Also, it's cute that they use the term "outsourcing" instead of "offshoring" for the Philippines-based monitoring.
So much cynicism here but if they have solid YoY growth and $3.6 million in real revenue then $50 million valuation (I assume post money and probably with some guarantees) isn’t totally crazy
There's a pingpod place near where I live. It's a cool little spot, and I applaud the founder for taking a unique approach.<p>Well done, PingPod!