When David Silberman moved to New York City, he wasn’t looking to reinvent recreational sports. He just wanted a good place to play table tennis. Instead, he found a market gap.
“There were very few places to play table tennis in New York,” Silberman recalls. “And the options that did exist weren’t great.”
The choices were limited. On one end of the spectrum were aging training centers tucked away in basements throughout the city. On the other were entertainment-focused venues where table tennis was more of an attraction than a sport. For serious recreational players, there was very little in between.
That simple observation would eventually become PingPod, a company that pioneered autonomous sports venues, developed the technology platform that became PodPlay, and is now expanding into billiards and golf through a growing portfolio of recreation brands.
Today, what began as a search for a better place to play ping pong has evolved into a much larger vision: using technology to fundamentally change the economics of recreational sports.
The Athlete’s Insight
Before entrepreneurship, Silberman earned a master’s degree in finance and worked in equity research at UBS. While many founders trace their origin stories to market reports or spreadsheets, Silberman’s began with personal experience.
“I’ve been a ping pong player since I was a kid,” he says. “I always knew I wanted to start my own business.”
Unlike sports such as tennis, squash, or golf, table tennis lacks a large commercial infrastructure in the United States. Yet Silberman believed there were many people like him, recreational players who loved the sport but lacked accessible places to play.
“I kind of knew in my bones that the demand would materialize,” he says. “We just needed to build it.”
Building Something That Didn’t Exist
The challenge wasn’t simply opening another table tennis venue. Silberman and his team quickly realized that traditional operating models wouldn’t work. Rent in New York City is expensive. Staffing recreational venues around the clock is even more expensive. If PingPod was going to succeed, it needed a fundamentally different economic model.
“We needed the technology to enable not having to pay employees to be there 24-7,” Silberman explains. “Otherwise, the economics would never work.”
PingPod became one of the first fully autonomous recreational venue concepts, allowing customers to book tables, access facilities, and manage their experience entirely through technology.
Players reserve a table through an app. Their phone unlocks the door. Cameras and remote monitoring systems maintain security and oversight. The venue operates with minimal on-site staffing.
Today, those concepts feel familiar. But when PingPod launched, many people thought the idea was unrealistic.
“We definitely got some crazy looks,” Silberman says. “People were skeptical about whether there was enough demand for ping pong. And they were skeptical about whether a fully autonomous recreational model could actually work.”
The company spent years proving both assumptions wrong.
More Than Just a Ping Pong Company
One of the most interesting aspects of PingPod’s evolution is that the company never viewed itself solely as a table tennis business.
Behind the scenes, the team was building something much larger.
The software, hardware, access control systems, instant replay technology, score tracking, and operational infrastructure developed for PingPod eventually became a standalone platform.
That platform is now known as PodPlay.
“We invented the entire software and technology stack,” Silberman says. “We branded it PodPlay within PingPod and eventually spun it out into its own company.”
Today, PodPlay powers hundreds of venues across multiple sports categories, while PingPod itself operates as one of its customers.
It’s a rare example of an operating business creating a technology platform that becomes valuable enough to stand on its own.
The Economics of Recreation
For Silberman, technology has never been the product. The product is recreation, and technology simply makes recreation more accessible. Walk into a modern PingPod location and you’ll find professional-grade tables, high-quality lighting, modern design, digital scoreboards, instant replay features, and a seamless mobile experience.
“You make a reservation in advance, use your phone to unlock the door, and go directly to your assigned table,” Silberman says. “There’s no waiting. There’s no uncertainty.”
That convenience creates a different kind of recreational experience, designed around players rather than operational constraints. As consumers have become increasingly comfortable with app-based services, PingPod’s model has benefited from broader shifts in behavior. Silberman compares it to Uber.
“In the beginning people thought using an app to call a car was strange,” he says. “Now people are used to these systems.”
The same pattern has emerged in recreation. Customers have largely embraced the idea that sports venues can operate differently than they did a decade ago.
By dramatically reducing labor costs, PingPod can operate smaller-format venues that might otherwise struggle to achieve profitability.
“We invented the system to enable the elimination, practically, of variable labor costs,” Silberman says. “That’s what makes the unit economics really able to flourish.”
This approach creates opportunities in urban markets where space is limited and expensive.
Instead of requiring massive facilities, operators can build compact locations closer to where people live and work.
A Bigger Opportunity
Looking back, it’s remarkable how much emerged from such a simple observation. A founder wanted a better place to play ping pong.
That observation led to autonomous sports venues, those venues led to a technology platform, and that platform led to a new category of recreational infrastructure. Now, it is helping power a growing portfolio of sports brands.
The story of PingPod isn’t really about table tennis. It’s about what happens when technology, real estate, and recreation intersect.
For David Silberman, that opportunity is still just getting started.
“We built it because we believed the demand was there,” he says.
Years later, the market appears to agree.
