The investors on ABC’s Shark Tank say “no” a lot more than they say yes, but being rejected on national television can be a discomforting experience for any founder. Paul Anton and Lyth Saeed, cofounders of Huupe, a smart basketball hoop that offers data tracking, on-demand training and coaching, had an even more humbling one. Not only did they get rejected by the Sharks, their segment never aired, meaning they never got the free publicity that comes with the show. “We didn’t even make the air. That’s how bad we were,” says Anton with a chuckle.
The duo barely blinked at the setback, though. They had, after all, sunk their entire life savings into the company they founded in 2019—$60,000 for Anton and a bit more than that for Saeed—so after that failed pitch, it was simply on to the next one with other investors.
That persistence paid off. To date, San Diego-based Huupe has raised $11 million over three rounds. And in the first 15 months following the company’s release of the Huupe Mini, a smaller version of the high-tech hoop, the company recorded sales of $20 million.
The journey to that success involved relentless product demonstrations, organic marketing, and overcoming some major setbacks in the process.
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An early rejection
Anton, 33, and Saeed, 32. were childhood friends in Milwaukee who played basketball together every day. When Anton went to college in Boston in 2011, they would record their shots on their phones and send them back and forth. Anton later moved to San Francisco for law school and got startup fever. He initially created a game that was played via augmented reality glasses. Lathe suggested the idea of transferring that to a backboard.
“The game was awesome, but every time on the augmented reality glasses, you’d move your head away from the backboard,” says Lathe. “It wouldn’t track the shot, so that’s when the idea was like, ‘Hey, let’s take this technology and apply it to the backboard itself.'”
The duo had enough to make just a single prototype, which they physically transported around the country to demonstrate to potential investors. It quickly became apparent that Huupe was a product that had to be experienced to understand.