Brady and Belichick.
Kobe and Phil.
Ronaldo and Sir Ferguson.
What do these names have in common?
For one, they’re all champions and some of the best player-coach duos in their respective sports.
But there’s one main characteristic that helped them get there.
Communication.
Without excellent communication between coaches and players, games aren’t won and championships don’t happen.
This is why GoRout exists.
GoRout is a communications platform that enables coaches to transmit play calls and position-specific play information using a tablet from the dugout or sidelines to the players on the field in real-time.
We spoke with founder Mike Rolih, about how he started the company, challenges growing the business, and the long-term vision.
Introduce yourself and the name of your company
I’m Mike Rolih, Founder and CEO at GoRout.
GoRout is a visual, coach-to-player communications platform that enables coaches to transmit play calls and position-specific play information using a tablet from the dugout or sidelines to the players on the field in real-time via a visual, wearable display (similar to a smartwatch).
We’re currently working with more than 2,000 teams across the US, Canada, and Germany with an eye on continued expansion.
Our current markets are focused on Baseball, Softball, and American Football.
Where did the idea for this company come from and what problem are you solving?
I have a deep sports background, especially in baseball, having played at the D1 level at the University of Dayton and then coaching at the D1 level at a few schools.
I’ve always loved the intersection between sports and technology and I’ve always had ideas on what might work for me as a coach.
When my wife and I started a family, we moved from Chicago to Minnesota – where my wife was originally raised – and I was looking for something to get involved with that blended my love of sports and technology.
In the short term, I took a job driving a limo so I could think about what I wanted to do moving forward.
I was driving people from the Mayo Clinic to the Minneapolis airport each day, dropping off and picking them up, and thinking about what could be next.
One day, I went to visit a friend who coached junior college football in the area.
After watching the team practice, I couldn’t believe that with all the communication technology available to coaches and players, coaches still communicated plays by holding up paper scout cards and having the players huddle around them as they quickly explained each aspect of the play to be executed.
This was such a massive inefficiency and an issue with the NCAA’s limitations on practice time.
I went back to watch practice on a few other occasions and then went to a few high school practices where I saw the same issue.
So, I knew there was something there to solve for coaches and players.
The idea was simple: during practice, give each player on the field a wearable device that displays the same information the coach was showing on the paper scout card and remove the need to huddle.
This would allow coaches to focus on execution rather than just organizing the next play; it would give players a “digital flashcard reminder” of the play on their waist for reference. It would allow teams to execute better, faster, reps.
So, once I had the idea, I did what any limousine driver would do, I started pitching people my idea as we drove.
One day, I drove former Motorola and Kodak CEO George Fisher. We struck up a great conversation about sports and I slipped in that I was looking at starting a company.
I explained the idea and he was intrigued. When I finally developed a prototype, I called George.
He jumped on a private jet and flew across the country to Rochester to see the demo.
Now at the time, the demo was made up of a few prepaid cell phones from Best Buy, a home router, and an old Toshiba laptop running as a local server that only worked one out of every two or three attempts. But, it worked for Mr. Fisher’s demo.
He was impressed and asked what it would cost to get started and I told him $150,000.
He disagreed, cut us a check for $300,000, and GoRout was born.
How is the company doing today and what does the future look like?
The company is going through a strong growth phase and scaling quickly.
In the last 12 months, our team has grown from 12 to 24 employees, and we’ve grown topline revenues and annual recurring revenues (ARR) by more than 300%.
More than 70% of our customers are in long-term (3-year) contracts and we experience very low year-over-year team turnover.
Looking forward through 2025 and into 2026, we project a similar growth trajectory with topline revenue numbers exceeding $25M and growing to more than 7,500 teams worldwide.
These growth trends are due in part to rule changes across various sports and by their governing bodies.
In the last 24 months, the NCAA, NFHS, and other youth associations have allowed coach-to-player communication systems to be used in-game for both baseball and softball.
In February, the NCAA approved the use of one-way coach-to-player communication for FBS football in 2024 and approved a waiver for GoRout’s wearable system to be used by conferences at the lower levels on a trial basis.
Why is GoRout better than other solutions out there?
What separates GoRout from its competitors, aside from building a superior technology to their offerings, is the “why” we built superior products.
It’s an intangible that is hard to replicate and often is missed by many companies – our people.
More than 80% of our team is composed of people who were former coaches at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels.
When we build products, when we approach challenges, when we look at new features, we think about them differently and ultimately we build these products for ourselves from a coach’s perspective.
We always start with “How would I use this?” or “How could this be easier for my staff?”
We believe that for products to be great, you need to build them for yourself – you solve problems that you’ve experienced, because chances are, if you’ve experienced them, so have other coaches and/or teams.
We approach products and solve problems differently than most and we understand the intended result.
So, for example, in baseball or softball, some companies just focus on delivering the pitch call – fastball away, drop ball, etc. – so they design their products to deliver that outcome.
Because of our deep sports backgrounds, we saw “fastball away” differently.
We know that when a coach calls “fastball away”, there are a series of events that affect the outcome of that pitch.
You might have to reposition your middle infield, adjust the shading of the outfield, pull the corners into the grass – all the other contextual elements that go into executing a “fastball away” successfully.
So when we released our Diamond product, we didn’t just focus on delivering the pitch call, but allowing the coaches to input the other elements like position-specific notes, scouting reports, and spray charts to enhance the context around the pitch call.
That approach catapulted our technology ahead of our competitors and made us the leader in the space overnight.
From a technology perspective, we work with great partners who are also leaders in their space and push the boundaries of what coach-to-player communication should be for teams.
From a connectivity standpoint, all of our products operate on LTE and we partnered with KORE Wireless (KORE: NYSE) and their SuperSim technology to facilitate single sim, multi-carrier connectivity allowing us Tier 1 priority access to connections from Verizon, AT&T, TMobile, and up to 400 other connections world-wide across 185 countries.
This ensures that regardless of your location, our systems always access the very best in connectivity.
Many coaches are old school and adverse to change. How do you approach these types of coaches with GoRout?
Many coaches are creatures of habit.
They’ve created and adjusted a workflow over many years that they feel works for their team and coaching staff.
So, in many ways, the pushback to technology implementation is less about the technology itself and more about upsetting those already established workflows and processes.
What separates GoRout from many other companies, is that almost everyone in our company was a former coach at some level (HS, College, Professional, etc) AND in many instances, a former user of our system.
So when we speak to coaches, even the most adverse to change, we can talk to them at their level and understand where they are coming from day-to-day and philosophically, because we’ve lived it.
And because we’ve lived it, we’ve built products and systems that work for coaches.
For example, one of our core missions at GoRout (and it’s critical if you’re working in the sports vertical) is that our technology MUST bend to the will of the user.
We don’t force the user into using the platform our way.
In every demo we conduct, we use the team’s information and workflow by having the coaches themselves operate the demo to see how truly simple and efficient it is for them.
Once we can showcase how the system works using the team’s already existing workflows, they come around pretty quickly to the idea of adopting the system.
What’s been the most challenging aspect of growing this company?
Understanding that we’re in a marathon, not a sprint.
As a company, we’re made up of coaches and former athletes who are very competitive and they want to win all the time.
In this vertical, wins come slowly because there is so much time focused on product-market fit, education, building advocates for your system, and earning trust.
Very few coaches will just buy something without asking the question “Who else is using it?” and it takes a long time to build a strong user base to be able to provide teams with those case studies and testimonials confidently.
That’s why so many sports technology companies fail — the commitment to perseverance and achieving over the long term is the largest obstacle to success in this vertical.
Sports is a very niche space, where everyone knows everyone (even across sports).
When you start in the space, you have to be committed to seeing it through to completion and understand there will be bumps and bruises along the way.
What’s the long-term vision for GoRout?
We strongly believe that in the next 5 years, more than 24,000,000 athletes in the US and more than 60,000,000 athletes worldwide will be wearing some form of coach-to-player communication device during games and practices.
GoRout is working to transform not only being the on-field communications provider for teams but also their 7-day-a-week partner from practice preparation into post-activity data analysis.
Our goal is for every communication on the field to be maximized with the proper insights and context for continued improvement and execution to win games.
Are you currently hiring or raising money? If so, where can people find out more?
Yes, we’re currently hiring in the sales and support departments and we’re currently working on raising a Series A capital round.
People who want to learn more about GoRout and our opportunities can visit our website at www.gorout.com or email sales@gorout.com.
