In September 2023, Danny and Steven Sanicki played a round of mini golf. The Sanickis are twins, are both competitive golfers and were aspiring content creators at the time, so of course they filmed the entire round. Danny edited the footage on his phone, recorded a short commentary track, placed a scoreboard over 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 hosting tournaments every day, bringing new friends and building a putt-putt empire on the Internet. They set up 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're calling “How to Make It in the Future,” we trace the rise of Twin Tour Golf (as they'd like to be called) and talk to Danny and Steven about their experiences as creators. We talk about the process of deciding to go all-in on mini golf, the way they tried to expand their offering without compromising on people's preferences, how they divide up the workflow, how they work on different Earn money through channels and much more. The Sanickis' story is a classic creator's journey and they have reached so many milestones and forks in the road that come for anyone who wants to make it on the internet.
If you'd like to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: