Like many startups, Huupe is built on an idea that goes back to the founders’ college days.
Childhood friends Paul Anton and Lyth Saeed continued to play basketball together while going to college in different states by using Snapchat. With the phone in one hand and the ball in the other, they’d send videos of shots back and forth.
Anton and Saeed figured there had to be a better way and eventually developed the idea for Huupe: a smart backboard that uses AI to track players and their shots. It looks like a TV screen behind the hoop and lets players remotely form teams and compete in challenges. Not only that, users can watch training videos from NBA trainers, play challenges and games via the Huupe app, and stream live TV and music.
Serious ballers can even compete against the stats of NBA players who also use Huupe, including Shaquille O’Neal, Dyson Daniels, and Thaddeus Young, the company said.
“It’s more than just the basketball hoop,” Saeed, who serves as the company’s COO, told Insider. “It’s a full, interactive training and entertainment system that you get right from your home or gym.”
The pair worked on Huupe as a side project before formally founding the company in 2019. They raised $3 million in a pre-seed round back in 2020, and another $8 million in a seed round that closed last fall, led by Protagonist VC, Marvan Ventures, and TRI Investments. Anton said the company is planning on raising its Series A soon.
The weather-proof outdoor backboard has one camera at the top that scans the entire half court, immediately registering the spot from where a shot is put up and calculating the score. Huupe is also developing a camera that can attach to a standard backboard.
“There’s other basketball hoop companies that do shot tracking, but they have dozens of cameras,” said Anton, Huupe’s CEO. “We just did what they do with one camera. It just took a really long time to do, but we knew it would pay off.”
The hoops are $5,000 for the classic indoor-only model with just a smart TV, and $10,000 for the pro model with the camera and analytics. The cost is comparable to the standard portable basketball hoops you might find inside a gym, which go for around $7,000 to $11,000 — but it’s much more expensive than a hoop you might get for your backyard that would run around $200.
Getting hoops to customers
Huupe began shipping its backboards to users earlier this year, and a few weeks ago released the hoop-to-hoop feature for players to go against one another.
The company fills orders in seasonal “drops”: Customers can pre-order from a certain number of hoops available each season, rather than a rolling distribution. Anton said this process allows Huupe to be efficient with capital and warehouse costs and keeps delivery times reasonable for customers. He added that Huupe has presold 1000 units in 2023.
“Our tech will continue to get smarter with the more hoops that are out in the field,” Saeed said. “So we’ll continue to improve.”
Huupe recently delivered a backboard to Jake Paul’s Betr Studios in Miami. The two companies are planning to partner on a wagering feature in the Huupe app next year where users can bet against one another during shooting competitions. The founders also said they’re looking forward to their first international shooting contest once orders are filled overseas.
Saeed said that marketing, sales, and growth are the focuses for the next funding round. The company currently has more than 80,000 Instagram followers and 28,000 on TikTok.
The road to $11 million
The company found an early believer in Audie Atar, founder of Paradigm Sports Management, which represents fighters and soccer players including Conor McGregor and former US Men’s National Team player Jozy Altidore. Anton said Atar supported the technology right away and gave Huupe its first $1 million check.
NBA player Young also played a central role in the Huupe’s growth. He invested through his firm Reform Ventures after trying out the product for himself and has helped the duo navigate their product strategy.
“I think we do a very good job of meeting our goals and our targets in order to get to the next stage,” Saeed said. “That’s really the big difference maker for us going into these pitches.”
Check out 5 key slides from Huupe’s most recent pitch deck, which has been updated since their $8 million seed round:
Read the full article here
