Consumers will soon be able to order a smart basketball hoop that will enable them to get expert training and compete against friends without leaving their own driveway.
The device was invented in Milwaukee by Huupe, a startup that intends to transform basketball like the Peloton exercise bike disrupted home fitness.
Huupe has raised more than $1 million in capital from investors including Tundra Angels of Green Bay; F Street Ventures, part of Milwaukee's F Street Group; and Ball Tek, a group of angel investors in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., Huupe CEO and co-founder Paul Anton said.
The startup also has backing from former NBA player Trevor Booker through his firm JB Fitzgerald Venture Capital and from NBA player Thaddeus Young through his firm Reform Ventures, Anton said.
One of Wisconsin Inno's startups to watch in 2022, Huupe plans to begin taking pre-orders in February, aiming for 2,000 initial orders. The hoops will be priced at $3,500 and have a financing option, Anton said.
Anton and his co-founder, chief operating officer Lyth Saeed, started working on Huupe in 2019. In summer 2021, they participated in gBETA Milwaukee, a free accelerator program run by Wisconsin's gener8tor Management LLC. Huupe's chief technology officer is Dan Hayes.
"The (Huupe) leadership team is a five-star leadership team," F Street Group president Scott Lurie said. "We are very excited about their technology and their patents."
Huupe's basketball hoop has a weatherproof, high-definition screen for a backboard and pairs with a mobile app. The company has a prototype and a manufacturer and is in talks with an NBA team to partner on Huupe's launch, Anton said.
Anton, Saeed and Hayes are from Wisconsin but Anton and Saeed currently live in Irvine, California, where Huupe's warehouse is now located. The company's engineering team is in Milwaukee, Anton said.
"Every startup needs to be where its market is," said Matthew Kee, manager of Tundra Angels, which is part of the Greater Green Bay Chamber's economic development arm. "The LA market is perfect for (Huupe)."
Since the pandemic, the market capitalization for Peloton Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: PTON) went from $6.2 billion to $14.3 billion. Huupe and its early investors are hardly the first aiming to replicate that success.
Through his firm Rx3 Ventures, Aaron Rodgers invested in Hydrow, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based maker of an interactive rowing machine. Pitbull and Jay-Z backed CLMBR, a connected climbing machine invented by a Denver startup. Boston's Liteboxer sells an at-home boxing device.
Within the growing at-home fitness market, however, Huupe is unique in that it aims to market to kids and teens, Kee said.
