How hoop dreams became a $20m reality

Somewhere out there, a player is hitting 85% of their three-pointers under an anonymous username.

The highest NBA career three-point percentage is 45.4%, held by coach and former player Steve Kerr. So, either that person is already an NBA superstar, or they should be.

Practice makes perfect, but Huupe, a smart basketball system with NBA-level workouts, live coaching, and real-time stats, can change your game quickly.

Co-founder and CEO Paul Anton revealed that people using the swish tracker on the platform are seeing a 4-4.5% increase in their stats every week.

“It makes your jump shot a lot better, really fast,” Anton told The Hustle.

How it started

In 2017, Anton created a product that allowed him and others to play basketball remotely in different cities. But it wasn’t until 2019 that his friend and co-founder, Lyth Saeed, proposed putting the game inside a hoop.

The co-founders each bootstrapped $60k in personal funds for a prototype.

“From there, it's been dozens of iterations, maybe hundreds of iterations, to get to where we are today,” Anton said.

An early prototype made the 2k-mile trek from Milwaukee to Los Angeles, all for a shot at Shark Tank. The sharks passed, and to top it off, their episode never even aired.

(Mark Cuban’s Mavericks could have used an 85% shooter... though even Huupe can’t promise that.)

“Definitely a motivating experience,” Anton remarked. “It could have crushed us… but we chose to keep going.”

That motivation led to a slam-dunk $400k pre-seed round that grew to $2m, even while building a product that required weatherproofing for outdoor use.

How it's going

Anton says the company is now self-sustaining, but its new challenge is an AI chip shortage: costs on some chips are up 10x and supply is tight, making production a new challenge every few months.

But right now, Huupe:

• Has raised $11m; nearly $20m in sales 15 months after the Huupe Mini launched.
  
• Has 50k+ users, among schools, gyms, and driveways.
  
• Counts NBA players Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, Thaddeus Young, and Trevor Booker among users.
  
• Makes products ranging from the indoor Mini 2 to the full-size Huupe PRO, plus the new Huupe Arena, a kit that makes any hoop smart.

“ People shooting in driveways might go inside and be like, ‘Guys, I did not miss today.’ We provide those stats in real time… We just give that awesome feeling of connectivity,” Anton said.