Early Days of Birdie Board

In my last post, I shared how Birdie Board started with a spreadsheet on a golf trip. Today, I want to take you back to one of the earliest moments where Birdie Board began to feel real.

By July, I had already spent a lot of time working on the “behind the scenes” part of the app, the part that makes sure scores and formats are calculated correctly. With that foundation in place, it was time to bring the app to life on a phone screen.

This was completely new territory for me. I had to figure out how to build something that golfers could use on their own devices. More importantly, I knew Birdie Board needed to work for everyone, whether they carried an iPhone or an Android. After exploring different ways to build it, I landed on a setup that would let me design once and share it everywhere.

That led to one of my favorite moments in this journey: seeing the very first version of Birdie Board running on my computer screen.

In the short video below, you’ll see me click “Sign in with Apple” on an iPhone emulator and land on the very first version of the home page. At that point, the home page was just four simple match cards. You could click on a match and move to the next screen, but those pages were still empty. It wasn’t much—but it was a huge step. Birdie Board was no longer just an idea or a design. It was alive.

This 23-second clip shows one of the very first versions of Birdie Board in action. You’ll see me log in and land on the earliest home page, where the foundation of matches and navigation first came to life.

Looking back, it’s fun to see how far things have come. That first little home page grew into the foundation of the app golfers use today to set up matches, keep score, and track highlights. Every big project has a “first spark,” and for Birdie Board, this video was one of them.