EE427: 100,000 Customers with Zero Marketing Budget: The Story of Seed Golf

The Entrepreneur Experiment

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with Dean Klatt, the Australian founder of Seed Golf, who built a global direct-to-consumer golf brand… from Carlow. Dean shares the story of how he reverse-engineered premium golf balls, bootstrapped his way to international markets, and took on billion-dollar brands without a cent spent on advertising in the early days.

From wind tunnels in rural Ireland to handwritten letters to YouTubers, this episode is a masterclass in strategic thinking, resourcefulness, and challenger brand building. If you’re a founder aiming to disrupt a traditional industry or simply love a good “from zero to one” story, this is a must-listen.

Show Notes In this episode, we cover:

⛳ The unconventional path from golf distributor in Australia to founder of Seed Golf in Ireland 🚀 How Dean designed a high-performance golf ball using university labs, 3D printing, and wind tunnels 🧠 The strategy behind creating a digital-native, direct-to-consumer brand 🌍 Going global from day one: leveraging Irish brand identity and organic word-of-mouth 🎥 Why early influencer marketing worked without a budget — and how they seeded (literally) the market 🏗️ The two-year product development phase and how Dean overcame self-doubt 🎯 "If the big brands zig, we zag" — building a challenger brand with authenticity 🏆 Winning Golf Digest awards 3 years in a row and what that means for future growth 🛍️ What makes golf balls the perfect D2C product: consumable, shippable, repeatable

💬 "Our customers were giving away the golf balls they bought just to tell others about us — that’s when I knew we were onto something." – Dean Klatt

🔗 Resources & Links Seed Golf Website: https://seedgolf.com/ Follow Seed Golf on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedgolfco Peter Finch Golf YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/peterfinchgolf

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