⛹️  Shooting hoops

👋  Morning, sunshine. Remember: Money can’t buy happiness. But it might be able to buy you a new body, should you need one. Author Bill Bryson calculated the total cost of the raw materials needed to build a human body seven years ago in his book The Body: A Guide for Occupants, putting the cost at $150k+. Now, BBC Science Focus says if you’re willing to do some chemical refining yourself, the human body’s elements — oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and more — could be a lot less, around $140. We’re pretty cheap.

NEWS FLASH 

🚚  Get stressed driving on the highway next to a truck? What if no one was driving the truck? It’s increasingly becoming a possibility: Kodiak AI signed its first commercial deal with DTL Transport that will put 75 self-driving trucks onto public highways starting in 2028. First, Kodiak will give its trucks full autonomy, removing human safety operators on a stretch of highway between Dallas and Houston to shuttle Ikea goods.

🚲  Pedal pushers: The never-ending parental battle between managing kids' screen time and making sure they get enough exercise just got easier. The startup Tovie makes stationary bikes for children with a "Pedal-to-Play" feature that lets kids watch videos or play games only while they keep pedaling. Founded by married couple Arnav Dalmia and Shivani Jain, who previously sold an under-the-desk elliptical bike invention for $100m, Tovie is designed to help kids burn off energy and self-regulate emotions.

🌋  Enchantment under the sea: Seattle startup Endurance Energy successfully tested the world's first subsea geothermal power plant — a mile down in the Pacific Ocean. Powered by an underwater volcano off Oregon's coast, the test plant generated more power than it consumed. While the test produced only 16.5 kW of net power, it demonstrates the company's ability to scale up. Next stop: the Kingdom of Tonga, where the company's first commercial application could reduce dependency on imported fuel.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• Must love robot dogs: Startup Dimensional posted — and deleted — an ad on Facebook offering $20 an hour for robot dog operators to walk four-legged robots through the streets of San Francisco.
  
• Low-hanging fruit: Strella raised new funding to develop its devices that use machine vision and gas measurement to monitor fruit in real time, preventing spoilage and reducing food waste. 
  
  
• Autobots, roll out! Rendezvous Robotics raised $20m to build modular tiles that autonomously assemble and reassemble to form a single spacecraft — while in orbit. The first-of-its-kind mission launches in 2028.
  
• A blank canvas: Kyoto-based Ideable Works raised $1.14m to transform empty walls in hotels, offices, train stations, and other commercial spaces into digital galleries where artists can display and even sell their work. 
  

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM

AI is headed to the polls

This year’s US midterms are the first elections to take place when AI is integrated into all major social media platforms.

What does that mean for voters?

Oftentimes, a more opaque, confusing path to the polls.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

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 an obstacle every few months.

But right now, Huupe:

• Has raised $11m and recorded nearly $20m in sales in the 15 months after the Huupe Mini launched.
  
• Has 50k+ users, playing in schools, gyms, and driveways.
  
• Counts NBA players Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, Thaddeus Young, and Trevor Booker among its 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.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Here’s one you can actually use: AI can take unwanted tasks off your team’s plate — if you know how to control it. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Number of job applications Italian tech company Bending Spoons received last year, per Fortune. Unfortunately for most of those applicants, the firm hired just 286 people, making the process ~100x more selective than the Ivy League.

The company, which owns Vimeo and AOL among many other tech companies, sends prospective hires a list of “controversial” workplace principles and warns job hopefuls to prepare themselves for “considerable” challenges.

Apparently, there’s something to the hiring process: The company employs 600 “Spooners,” and its revenue per full-time employee has more than doubled from $1.12m in 2023 to $2.57m in 2025.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1929, billions of dollars were lost on Wall Street’s Black Tuesday when 16,410,030 shares were traded in a single day.

🏀  Game: Test your sports trivia knowledge.

🐦  Something good happen?: Send a bird about it.

👁️  That’s cool: Explore these optical illusions.

🐶  Aww: That’s a big dust bunny.

SHOWER THOUGHT

It’s actually really cool that phone selfie cameras are high res+low latency enough to use as mirrors now. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Danny Jensen, and Bill Meincke.

Editing by: Sara "What's all the hoopla?" Friedman.

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