Clinton Grusd ’12MBA and Salman Syed ’12MBA were classmates and golf buddies at the Yale School of Management when they decided to go into business together. Their idea: Dolphin Golf, a device that would use GPS technology to "automatically track the location of the golfer’s ball and statistics of the golfer’s game," thereby providing "in-game advice and postgame analysis."
The idea won support from the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute's summer fellowship program two years ago. Grusd, an Ironman triathlon competitor (but a 24-handicap golfer) believed the device "would revolutionize the game of golf" by making it easy for statistic-obsessed athletes to crunch their numbers and improve their performance.
So says Grusd in a lawsuit accusing Syed of stealing the idea and starting a rival company. The suit, filed last week in New York State, contends that Syed told Grusd last year that he needed to leave Dolphin Golf for a paying job, then secretly teamed up with others—including two YEI-connected investors—to form Golfkick LLC, "a business that is identical to Dolphin Golf."
The suit accuses Syed, Golfkick, and other defendants—who include Elon Boms ’07MBA, a member of YEI's operating board and cofounder of a private equity firm, LaunchCapital; and Victoria Elenowitz, a founding member of the YEI Advisory Council and an angel investor—of breach of contract, misappropriation, and fraud.
The defendants have not yet filed a response. Grusd's suit cites a September 11 letter in which they reportedly said that "Grusd and Syed were not really partners, that Grusd did not really come up with the idea . . . and that Golfkick is different" from Dolphin Golf.
Grusd asks for a 50 percent share in Golfkick LLC.
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