Global sports & entertainment agency Paradigm Sports has announced it has led the closing of an initial seed funding round in the revolutionary basketball technology platform Huupe, the world’s first smart basketball hoop that allows you to train like a pro, track your performance and compete against other basketball players anywhere in the world.
In addition to Paradigm Sports’ investment, Founder & CEO Audie Attar will join Huupe’s Board of Directors as a founding board member to provide strategy and guidance on scaling the product and its go-to-market strategy.
“We’re excited to play an integral part in bringing Huupe to consumers and the larger sports marketplace,” said Attar. “Paradigm is focused on driving innovation—from the subtle to the seismic—at all locations across the intersection of sports, technology and venture capital. Huupe has done an impressive job of distilling complex engineering down into a product that’s simple and intuitive for users and presents the potential to radically reshape how athletes and fans interact and engage through a sport they love.”
Huupe is a first-of-its-kind “smart” basketball hoop that was conceived by Paul Anton and Lyth Saeed, who spent three years refining the hardware and software to enable Huupe to use machine learning and computer vision capabilities to capture and analyze player data. Huupe will also offer live training sessions with certified trainers where players can continue to develop fundamentals, interactive tournaments where users can compete against one another, and the capability to stream content directly from the Huupe so users can enjoy their favorite game or shows while they train. The Huupe technology has been curated for every level of basketball enthusiast, from former professional players to the novice basketball fan who enjoys the game; It also allows competition between friends who may be in two different parts of the world, who can compete against one another in games like H.O.R.S.E. and other recreational basketball competitions in real time.
“Huupe was founded with the intention of bringing top quality basketball workouts and competition to the masses,” Huupe founders Anton and Saeed said. “We want to provide access to top quality training methods and competition, all accessible within the confines of user’s own homes. Paradigm Sports is at the forefront of a new type of agency that has touchpoints within both the sports and technology worlds; Having Audie join our board is a natural fit that seamlessly intertwines Paradigm’s ethos with Huupe’s mission of delivering the highest quality in basketball training to everyone.”
Alongside Paradigm, the initial funding round included participation from F Street Ventures, Reform Ventures, JB Fitzgerald, Tundra Angels, and Ball Tek Ventures, alongside a group of angel investors. Huupe has also received investments from a number of NBA players, led by Toronto Raptors’ Thaddeus Young and eight-season NBA veteran Trevor Booker. Huupe is expected to come to market in 2023.
In addition to representing its global roster of elite combat sports athletes, Paradigm Sports has led the industry in offering joint ventures and investment opportunities for its clients with successful launches led by Audie Attar including Conor McGregor with Proper No. Twelve Irish Whiskey, training program McGregor Fast and clothing line August McGregor. In 2021, Paradigm Sports became the first sports management agency to launch an NFT-based ecosystem for its athletes, partners, ventures, and global communities with its creation of MintPS.