In September 2023, Danny and Steven Sanicki played a game of mini golf. The Sanickis are twins, they are both competitive golfers and were budding content creators at the time, so of course they filmed the entire round. Danny edited the footage on his phone, recorded a quick commentary track, placed a marker on top of the video, and posted the tournament as a six-part series. on his TikTok channel. Neither brother really expected anything to happen.
The videos went viral.. And since then, the Sanicki twins have been posting tournaments every day, attracting new friends and building a Putt-Putt empire all over the web. They built a complex system of tournaments and points, began awarding money to winners, and began planning how to make things even bigger.
In this episode of The VergecastThe first of a two-part series we call How to Succeed in the Future, we chart the rise of double course golf (as they would prefer to be known) and talk to Danny and Steven about their experience as creators. We talked about the process of deciding to get into mini golf, how they tried to expand their offering without compromising what people like, how they divide the workflow, how they monetize across multiple channels, and much more. The Sanickis' story is a classic creators' journey, and they've reached many of the milestones and forks in the road that come to everyone who wants to make it big on the Internet.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
