Growing a Golf Simulator Business to $50k/month | Hacker News Reader

Growing a Golf Simulator Business to $50k/month

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102 pointspatwalls22 comments

VR pool and VR golf seem worth making for the Vive. Also swordfighting.

In fact, all three of those have something in common: You want to hold an object (cue, club, sword), not just a controller.

I know there are vive trackers that you can put onto objects, but it seems like the next step in VR is generalized object tracking with generalized full body tracking. Hopefully the next gen tech can solve some of these problems natively.

Golf and Pool already exist. In fact VR mini golf does very well (top 10) in VR arcades.

I think you'd get a fundamentally different market segment, though.

The pros of virtual golf are for swing analysis. I definitely wouldn't call it 'fun'. It's just that you can get the numbers and better understand your swing, and what the outcomes of the changes you're making to it are.

Of course, because you're hitting on a mat it's hard to translate, but that's just golf.

I still think the most useful aspects are the numbers. Clubhead speed, angle, where you struck on the head, ball spin, difference between clubhead speed and ball speed (which gives a sense of how well the ball was struck).

I can imagine those things being able to be handled with a headset, but not particularly well. The ball needs to be starting at a point the sensors/camera can pick up, and that camera has to be static to get the more useful bits of info, which makes me think if someone makes it it'll be sold to a very different crowd.

I can't imagine VR golf working well for this use case. This is a serious simulator. $3000 before the projector and mat.

1. The VR headset would probably have a negative effect on swing or at the very least cause it to not translate well to real life

2. A short virtual club won't have the same weight and feel as a real club.

3. A real club while wearing a VR headset makes being a house cat suddenly very dangerous.

Maybe AR?

Allow me to address these one by one:

1. Have you worn a vr headset for any amount of time? They aren't nearly as cumbersome as you'd think. I've been playing plenty of VR games involving a lot of movement -- frisbee, paintball, etc -- never have I felt like the headset was impeding me in any way, aside from the odd stumble across the cable every now and then.

2. This is easily solved. HTC sells separate tracking dots you could very well stick on an actual golf club.

3. Close the door and move your breakables somewhere else ;)

AR doesn't really address any of these issues more or less than VR.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/489600/The_Golf_Club_VR/

VR pool is pretty terrible if you've played much pool - resting a hand on the table is fundamental and doesn't work in VR.

I’m genuinly curious how he got his SAP Business from $280k to $4m in 4 years.

That seems like an accomplishment in and of itself, nevermind the online store

I'm more curious how he started at the 280K mark.

It’s pretty well known that SAP consultants make a high hourly rate.

Still... that's a pretty high number. I doubt 4M is true, it seems a bit exaggerated. Good for him if it's true though.

Considering he was working in hr, he was probably doing body rental of sap consultant and make the margin on top, if you are good in headhunting is a really scalable business

No, it's really not a high number. It's right on the money for 3 years in-the-trenches experience making the move into consultancy -- around $130-140/hr billable, which is what I was billed out at in the mid 2000s as a .NET consultant.

Getting high hourly rates isn't the hard part. It's maintaining consistent work across multiple clients while taking the time to market yourself and negotiate contracts. That's not an easy task for someone who has never worked on their own before. Unless it's an unusual circumstance (like he had one client the whole time), I think averaging 20 billables a week in the first year is pretty impressive for someone to do.

Pretty sure that he other other employees/consultants under his umbrella. I don't think that anyone bills $4m/yr as a single person (which would equate to around $2000/hr).

https://www.alanweiss.com/store/books/million-dollar-consult...

IIRC, Alan Weiss wrote that book back in the early 90's. BTW, Matt Inglot did a good interview with him at Freelance Transformation.

Also, I just found this article, which I have yet to read: https://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2013/08/31/the-as...

280k is not a high number for a senior SAP consultant with a big mouth, but 4M indeed is but definitely not impossible or even rare. Anecdotal, but at least I already know 1 person from my own friend group, a friend worked as SAP consultant in utility; he started his own company specializing in SAP for utility but he wrote specific small tools for parts where SAP was(is?) very hard / cumbersome to use or where it has gaps for the particular (big) electricity providers he contracted for. Selling those on the side next to his high contracting fee, he made (makes) millions.

Wow, just... wow. It really goes to show that there are oppurtunities in this world where one would not expect. It looks like I completely misjudged the size of this market and the magnitude of consultants' income in it. Thanks!

280k is only around $150/hour which isn't unreasonable at all, if anything maybe even a bit low. I know 1099 contractors that bill higher and do less..

It is really hard to get in 1800+ billable hours in year as a consultant. You have so much other stuff you need to do that isn’t billable. (I aim for 5 billable hours a day on average.)

Is this image from the article a simulation of the golf simulator?

https://images.ctfassets.net/t0pm5m7uku03/6f5J0wJUtikAU4yoqg...

Simulations all the way down...

Not much to add, aside from: this is a cool business

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