Pickleheads

Pickleheads operates a website and mobile app that lets pickleball players find courts, discover and join games, and organize recreational play. Users search by location to find places to play, games matched to their skill level, and private instructors. The platform began as a court finder aggregating court data across thousands of cities and has expanded into tools for running recreational play: organizing games with automatic invites, filling games with level-appropriate players from the local user network, running round robins in multiple formats across any number of courts, hosting DUPR-rated games, and collecting payments for events or court fees.

The company frames its product around the shortage of courts and the wide skill-level mix at drop-in "open play" sessions, which it addresses through level-based formats and structured round-robin programming. It positions itself as infrastructure for recreational pickleball, allowing instructors and organizers to run programming and businesses on the platform. Pickleheads is the official court and game finder of USA Pickleball and the Global Pickleball Federation. It also operates a merchandise shop and a newsletter covering technique, paddles, gear deals and professional pickleball.

Founding story

Co-founder Max Ade, a longtime tennis player, took up pickleball and saw a need for technology to reduce the friction of organizing games amid court shortages and mismatched skill levels at open play. Ade had previously bootstrapped Growth Collective, a hiring platform for freelance marketers that was acquired in 2021, and wanted to build the next company with co-founders and outside capital. He launched Pickleheads with co-founders Ian Langworth and Brandon Mackie, the latter a Georgia Tech alumnus and former competitive tennis player who first picked up a paddle in 2021.

Business model

Pickleheads runs a consumer platform that is free for players and organizers to use for finding courts, scheduling games and running round robins, and separately operates an online shop. The company describes an ambition to serve as the operating system for recreational pickleball, enabling instructors and organizers to run their programming and businesses on the platform, including collecting payments.

Traction

Reported milestones for 2024 include nearly 9 million players visiting the platform, registered users of about 347,000-354,000 growing 405% year-over-year, and over 3,500 app ratings averaging 4.9 stars. Coverage in February 2025 cited nearly 1 million players served monthly. Earlier reporting cited court data for over 4,400 cities and more than 100,000 monthly visitors to the court finder.

Latest developments

In February 2025 the company closed a $2.5 million seed round led by Overline, adding Ardent, Oregon Sports Angels, Profluence Capital, Service Provider Capital, Network Ventures and more than 65 angel investors, to be used for technology development and for expanding marketing and engineering teams. It introduced organizer payment collection and signaled further round-robin formats, advanced invite features, and league and tournament solutions. The company also publishes a newsletter and, per later issues, has launched court leaderboards.