Perhaps the only downside to building a golf-focused startup is that it leaves less time to actually play golf.

Dane Renkert will take that tradeoff, for now, as he works on something that he says will change the way people play and interact around the game.

Renkert is co-founder and CEO of Barkie, a Bellingham, Wash.-based startup building an app that aims to be a true AI caddie in every golfer’s pocket — one that tracks scores by voice alone, settles betting games automatically, and rarely requires a golfer to look down at a screen.

Renkert is no slouch as an athlete and golfer. A Washington State University graduate, he played professional baseball for the Milwaukee Brewers before moving into tech and sales leadership roles at Docugami, Komiko, and Ben Kinney Companies. As a competitive golfer, he placed 13th at the 2009 World Long Drive Championship and now boasts a scratch handicap.

The name of the company is a nod to golf terminology — a “barkie” is an honest, hard-fought par saved after a golfer’s drive ricochets off a tree.

The inspiration for the startup stems from Renkert’s own frustration with existing golf mobile apps, which he argues have essentially operated as digital spreadsheets for the last decade. Incumbents like 18 Birdies, The Grint, and Golf Genius require constant manual data entry throughout a round, Renkert said.

Noting that seven out of 10 golfers still use a paper scorecard and pencil because they like the tradition or want to avoid screen distraction, Renkert set out to build a platform centered on a simple philosophy: “keep your head up and not down.”

To translate that concept into software, Renkert initially teamed up in 2025 with co-founder Zubin Wadia, an MIT grad whom he worked alongside for five years at Docugami, the Bellevue, Wash.-based AI startup. Wadia remains a strategic advisor to Barkie.

To achieve the “heads up” experience, Barkie is differentiating itself by launching a full voice user interface that eliminates manual typing entirely. Using standard gear like an Apple Watch or AirPods, golfers can simply speak the outcome of a hole to dynamically update a digital scorecard in the background.

According to Renkert, Barkie is the first to market with an AI-native, voice-first caddie that allows for natural, fluent speech on the course rather than forcing players to toggle through menus and hit arrows to log data.

“The voice thing, in particular, I believe is a massive lift technically, but it’s a big lift from a user experience side as well,” Renkert said, adding that the platform is designed to seamlessly augment the traditions of the game rather than disrupt them.

Under the hood, Barkie relies on a patent-pending dual-layer system to prevent the application from making mistakes or hallucinating numbers. A guardrailed large language model handles the conversational front end — interpreting natural voice requests, answering rules questions, or trading friendly banter.

A separate, rules-based engineering backend handles all the scoring, strokes-gained calculations, and betting math. This split ensures that while golfers can talk to the app like a human caddie, the actual bookkeeping remains completely accurate.

When the betting function comes online, that same backend will settle real-money side games — Nassau, skins, wolf, hammer bets — instantly once a round ends, sparing golfers the aggravation of hashing out who owes what on the 18th green.

Barkie’s simplest use case doesn’t require voice at all. Through a feature called ScoreShot, golfers can snap a photo of a paper scorecard. The app digitizes it and pushes the data directly to GHIN, the USGA’s official handicap system, via a partnership Renkert says gives Barkie access to course-specific data like slope rating and tee-box selection. Golfers without a club membership or GHIN account can still generate a handicap through the app, calculated according to World Handicap System guidelines.

Either way, the result is hole-by-hole performance data that Renkert says no other golf app currently offers — letting players see which holes they’re strongest and weakest on, and, he added, which holes they should be pressing their buddies on.

Barkie is available for download on iOS (optimized for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch companion setups) and Android devices via the App Store and Google Play Store.

The app offers a free tier that includes GPS mapping features. The premium tier unlocks unlimited hands-free voice tracking, advanced Strokes Gained analytics, the Barkie Betting Engine, and full GHIN integration. Limited-time pricing is available at $4.99 monthly or $29.99 annually.

Barkie has attracted seed funding from friends and family and notable investors, including Rob Gough, an entrepreneur and collector perhaps best known outside tech circles for his record-setting $5.2 million purchase of a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card. According to his LinkedIn, Gough is also an investor in Jeff Bezos’ AI startup Prometheus, which raised $12 billion in Series B funding last month.

“I invested in Barkie.ai because I believe they’re building something that delivers real value to golfers, not just another AI demo,” Gough said in a statement. “Great companies have an unfair advantage, and Barkie has exactly that: a founder with deep domain expertise as a scratch golfer who genuinely understands the game, combined with a world-class AI team recruited from companies like Meta, Google, and NASA.”

Barkie’s cap table also includes former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu, who serves as an advisor to the company.

Armed with high-profile backing and a team recruited from tech giants, Renkert isn’t shy about his ambitions to disrupt the entrenched players in the space.

“I want the incumbents to know I have a lot of backing, and I’m coming for you,” Renkert said. “I’m not trying to compete with you, I’m trying to take it over.”

For now, taking over means grinding behind a desk instead of on a fairway. Renkert admits that building the startup cut heavily into his own time on the course this past year — even leading to a rough showing when he tried to qualify for the U.S. Amateur.

But the grind is the point.

“I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but this is the hardest I’ve ever worked for something,” Renkert said. “I believe, hopefully, this will be my mantle piece.”

Seattle’s Cascade PBS has spun out its streaming app technology into a standalone company called Local Public, which is now building connected-TV and mobile apps for public media stations across the country.

The goal is to provide local PBS stations nationwide their own branded, station-curated streaming apps — plus tools for fundraising and audience data — as an alternative to a one-size-fits-all national app.

Local Public was originally created within Cascade PBS (KCTS-TV channel 9) to build apps for that station, which serves Western Washington and part of British Columbia. Supported by 10 Founding Sponsor partner stations, a Local Streaming Initiative (LSI) was launched to expand the platform to serve stations nationwide.

On July 1, Local Public launched as a public benefit corporation. Cascade PBS owns 100% of Local Public, but it’s expected to take on investment and be co-owned by a coalition of other PBS stations in the near-future.

In a blog post announcing the launch, Local Public CEO Kevin Colligan wrote that the company is aiming to build “a growing coalition of independent public media organizations working together while remaining deeply rooted in their own communities.”

Eighteen stations are currently using Local Public, according to Cascade PBS, including Arizona PBS (Phoenix), Houston Public Media, OPB (Oregon), Rocky Mountain PBS (Denver), Vegas PBS, WETA (Washington, D.C.), WHYY (Philadelphia), WQED (Pittsburgh), and others.

Colligan framed the launch against the backdrop of media consolidation, arguing that a shrinking number of corporations increasingly control what Americans watch and read, while local newsrooms have been gutted and replaced by centralized programming.

He also pointed to the rise of low-effort, AI-generated content as a further threat to authentic local journalism and storytelling — one he said makes trusted, community-rooted public media more valuable, not less.

“We bring a startup mentality to public media’s longstanding tradition of community service,” Colligan wrote. “We are building technology that allows stations to move faster, collaborate more effectively, and reach audiences wherever they are.”

Local Public apps currently run on 10 platforms, including Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Google TV, Android TV, LG and Samsung smart TVs, iPhone, Android and a web video portal. NPR, radio and podcast integration is in development and expected to launch in fiscal year 2027.

The apps run on a centralized content management system, letting stations publish their own programming, build featured-content carousels and pull real-time viewer analytics. Stations can also message members and prospective donors directly within the app. The platform fully supports PBS Passport, the streaming benefit for recurring donors, and PBS Media Manager, the system stations use to manage and distribute video.

TheDesk.net reported that Sacramento’s KVIE has already relaunched its streaming app through Local Public as KVIE Plus (stylized KVIE+), offering free access to the station’s full lineup of broadcast channels over streaming alongside local programming and acquired shows, movies and documentaries. Denver’s KRMA has relaunched its connected-TV app through the platform as well

Pricing for Local Public is tiered by station size, based on how many Passport-eligible members a station has at signup. Small stations (fewer than 15,000 members), for instance, pay an $8,000 onboarding fee and $60,000 annually.

Amish Patel knows his neighbors by their dogs’ names before he knows their own. It’s a pattern he noticed in his Seattle neighborhood — and one he’s now built an app around.

Patel’s newest pet project — born out of his Conduit Venture Labs startup studio, is Sniff, an iOS app that turns the everyday moment two dogs greet each other on a walk into a lasting connection between their humans.

The idea traces back to Patel’s own block in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood, where he moved with his standard poodle, Chewie, right before the pandemic. With no kids and limited ways to meet people, the neighborhood park became the default hangout — and a group text thread became, in Patel’s words, a real sense of community. The catch: most of those contacts were saved under names like “Glory’s mom” or “Louie’s dad.”

“The five people in Madrona that I hang out with, more often I met through him,” Patel said of Chewie.

Beyond widening Patel’s own social circle, Sniff has a greater societal objective — taking on loneliness and isolation, an epidemic cited in the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory on social connection.

“Younger people are having kids less, getting more isolated … we’re sitting on our phones, even though we’re all next to each other,” Patel said. “One out of four people don’t know their neighbors or talk to their neighbors.”

Dogs — and Sniff — could be an answer.

Sniff verifies that users are real people who actually live in the neighborhood they claim, using address and location data, and the app is geofenced so members can only discover dogs nearby. Inside the app, users see only dog profiles and photos — no human names or personal details — until a connection is made. Patel said artificial intelligence plays a role only on the trust-and-safety side — confirming identity and location — rather than in matching people up.

Once connected, neighbors can message through the app, arrange meetups, and lean on each other for help — dog walking, sitting, or just a hand when something comes up. Patel said the trust that builds from already knowing someone’s dog often translates directly into people who are willing to help.

The pilot is open in Madrona, Leschi, Madison Park, the Central District and Capitol Hill, but pet parents anywhere in Seattle can sign up today. Each neighborhood stays geofenced until it reaches enough engaged sign-ups, at which point Sniff opens it up — Madrona, the first to launch, already has about 100 people on the platform.

To help build momentum in each neighborhood, Sniff is partnering with the Seattle Chamber of Connection — where Patel sits on the board — to recruit “Pack Leaders”: local dog owners who help organize meetups and informal introductions as their neighborhood’s user base grows.

Patel is a Microsoft vet who spent eight years on projects including Xbox Kinect and Microsoft Band, before moving into the startup world with stints at fitness wearable maker Katalyst and football helmet manufacturer Vicis. He landed an entrepreneur-in-residence role at Seattle startup studio Pioneer Square Labs in 2020, and two years later co-founded Conduit Venture Labs with Susan Paley, the former first CEO of Beats by Dre.

Conduit focuses on “hard-tech” ventures that blend hardware and software. Sniff is Conduit’s fourth in-house startup, following Fluffy — a computer vision platform for doggy daycares — and an audiobook AI venture in the loneliness space that Patel said is preparing for a public seed round this fall. A fourth project, in health tech, remains under wraps for now.

The Sniff app itself was built lean: a couple of developers, a product lead, and Patel splitting his time across the studio’s other projects. Patel said the team has since shifted to AI-assisted development to move faster, and is now searching for a CEO to take the project in-house full time as it raises capital and pursues some hardware-related features.

For all the talk of trust layers, geofencing and future hardware, Sniff’s entire premise still comes down to a dog doing what dogs do. The humans get the friendships, the favors, the group texts. The dogs, Patel said, get something simpler.

“They just get to be more social,” he said, “because we don’t keep them in our house with us while we’re doom scrolling through everything.”