Huupe Turned a Basketball Hoop Into a 20 Million Dollar Business

Somewhere, a stranger is shooting 85 percent

Somewhere out there, a player is hitting 85 percent of their three pointers under an anonymous username. The Hustle opened its October 29 story with that hook, and the math is why it lands: the highest NBA career three point percentage is 45.4 percent, held by coach and former player Steve Kerr. Either that anonymous shooter is already a superstar, or the training tool deserves a look.

The tool is Huupe, a smart basketball system with NBA level workouts, live coaching, and real time stats, built into the hoop itself. Co founder and CEO Paul Anton told The Hustle that people using the swish tracker on the platform are seeing a 4 to 4.5 percent increase in their stats every week.

A remote game became a hoop with a brain

In 2017, Anton created a product that let him and others play basketball remotely from different cities. The leap came in 2019, when his friend and co founder Lyth Saeed proposed putting the game inside the hoop.

The co founders each bootstrapped about 60,000 dollars in personal funds for a prototype. From there, Anton said, it took dozens of iterations, maybe hundreds, plus weatherproofing for outdoor use, to reach the product players use today.

Shark Tank said no, and the episode never aired

An early prototype made the 2,000 mile trek from Milwaukee to Los Angeles for a shot at Shark Tank. The sharks passed, and the episode never even aired. Anton called it a motivating experience: it could have crushed the company, but they chose to keep going.

That motivation turned into a 400,000 dollar pre seed round that grew to 2 million dollars. The company has now raised 11 million dollars in total, and Anton says it is self sustaining today, even with a new obstacle: an AI chip shortage has pushed costs on some chips up ten times, and supply stays tight enough to complicate production every few months.

The scoreboard that matters

In the 15 months after the Huupe Mini launched, the company recorded nearly 20 million dollars in sales. More than 50,000 users now play in schools, gyms, and driveways. NBA players Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, Thaddeus Young, and Trevor Booker are among its users.

The lineup runs from the indoor Mini 2 to the full size Huupe PRO, plus the new Huupe Arena, a kit that makes any hoop smart. Anton described the real product in one line: players finish shooting in a driveway and come inside saying they did not miss today, because the stats arrive in real time and give them a feeling of connectivity.

• Sell the feeling the data creates, not the sensor that collects it
• Let a public rejection fund your motivation, then raise on progress, not pity
• Start with one beloved use case, then expand the lineup around it
• Plan for supply shocks early when your product depends on scarce chips

Feedback is the feature

Huupe did not win by making a better hoop. It won by making practice answer back. Every shooter already knew how shooting felt; Huupe told them, in numbers, whether it worked.

Any product can borrow that move. Give people honest feedback at the exact moment they act, and practice, work, and play all get stickier.