Mike and Rob Barnes were just 19 and 22 when they founded Selkirk Sport, a pickleball equipment brand, in 2014.
The brothers had no college degrees, no outside investors, and no guarantee that pickleball, which was widely seen as a niche sport for seniors at the time, would ever catch on.
But they were hooked on the game, played on what resembles a miniature tennis court with a paddle roughly 16 inches long and a perforated plastic ball.
The unique thing about pickleball, invented on Bainbridge Island in 1965 by three dads looking to entertain their families, is its low barrier to entry.
“You can teach someone within an hour, and they’ll have fun. Versus a game like tennis, where you have to put in a ton of hours to learn,” Rob told Business Insider from the Selkirk HQ in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where he, Mike, and their younger brother Tom were homeschooled and encouraged to pursue entrepreneurial projects. Mike and Rob started their first business in 2009, selling airsoft equipment and supplies.
“I remember there was a point where dad talked to us and said, ‘OK, you can go to college, and you can go down that path, or you can keep doing what you’re doing and just double down’ — and we were like, let’s double down, see what happens,” recalled Rob.
It paid off in a big way. The family-run company, which Tom joined after a career in the Marines, is a leading pickleball brand known for its premium paddles, which have been the hero product since day 1. The brothers expect to generate at least $100 million in revenue in 2026 and have expanded to more than 200 employees.
“We’re definitely big believers in education,” Mike chimed in. “It just doesn’t necessarily have to be traditional education.”
Like their schooling, the way they operate their business is unconventional. Here are two business rules they live by.
The Barnes brothers don’t believe there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to go about business.
“In a formal education environment, you often learn there’s one way of doing things — and your goal is to avoid making a mistake,” said Mike. “That creates a mindset where people are just trying to learn the best practice so they don’t mess up. Our mindset is more like, let’s look at all the different ways people have done things and decide what actually makes sense for us.”
Instead of defaulting to industry norms, they focus on “strategic practices” that are grounded in evidence, context, and their specific business goals.
“‘Best practice’ is almost a bad word in our company,” Mike said. “If someone says, ‘Let’s do this because it’s the best practice,’ you actually have to bring in evidence and explain why it’s ‘best.'”
Keep in mind that “no one’s built a great business by doing everything exactly the same way everyone else does,” added Rob. “Be willing to be counterintuitive and challenge the status quo.”
From the beginning, Selkirk has embraced vertical integration.
“It used to be common advice to figure out what you’re good at, focus on that, and outsource everything else,” said Mike. “We think that’s bad advice, so we do pretty much the opposite. If something creates value for the customer, we try to do it in-house.”
That includes research and development, which many competitors outsource to manufacturers. Selkirk has the only private sports science lab in pickleball, which they’ve invested roughly $1 million into.
Their hands-on approach requires a tolerance for mistakes.
“You have to be willing to move and make decisions knowing you’re going to mess some things up,” said Rob. “Our dad always said, ‘If you’re never breaking dishes, it means you’re not doing anything.'”
He pointed to Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech, which he has framed and acts as a guiding philosophy. The message, he said, is that criticism is inevitable when you’re actually doing something.
“The synopsis is, everybody can judge the man in the arena who has blood and sweat on him. If you’re doing anything meaningful, people are going to judge you constantly, so you might as well get in there, try to make a difference, and accept that mistakes are part of the process.”
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