full set knowt

What does your startup do in one sentence?

Hooply is a "Strava for basketball" mobile platform that lets pickup players log games, record stats, discover courts, and connect with teammates, transforming casual sessions into a verifiable performance history.

What problem are you solving and why does it matter?

We are solving the problem that millions of amateur basketball players have no central platform to track their stats, progress, or social play history, leaving them disconnected, unrecognized, and without a way to measure their growth.

Who experiences this problem the most?

This problem is experienced by the 250 million active players worldwide, especially the 30-40 million in the U.S. aged 13-35, who are mobile-first, tech-savvy, and play regularly outside of organized leagues.

How are they solving it today?

Currently, they aren't; pickup games are disorganized, lack any record-keeping, and don't contribute to a player's long-term development or visibility.

What’s your unique insight that others have missed?

Our unique insight is that casual pickup games, which are currently ephemeral, can be transformed into a durable social identity and verifiable performance history that matters to players, leagues, and recruiter and have identified ways to gamify the sport digitally that others seem to have been struggling with, similar to strava.

Why is now the right time for your product?

Now is the right time because basketball culture is increasingly digital , and the core, mobile-first demographic of players now expects tech-driven tools to measure their growth and share their progress.

What’s your solution and how does it work?

Our solution is a mobile app where players create or join games, add and check in, and log stats manually, this data populates player profiles with game logs, an ELO-like rating, and trend analytics along with a bunch of improvement tracking tools and challenges.

What makes your product 10× better than alternatives?

Unlike competitors like Homecourt or Ballogy which focus only on solo drills , Hooply is 10x better because it's a comprehensive social platform built for actual games, integrating stat logging, game history, scheduling, leaderboards, and court finding.

How did you validate your idea?

We validated our idea by running a "concierge MVP" at several local courts, manually tracking stats for 40+ players, some of which were our friends, in a shared spreadsheet. The obsessive way players checked the sheet and demanded new features, like an ELO rating, proved the core-loop was addictive before we wrote a single line of code.

What is your traction so far (users, revenue, growth, etc.)?

We have a built MVP with core features implemented, including user auth, game logging, an ELO rating system, and subscription payment flows with around 500 waitlist users. Our immediate plan is to launch this MVP to acquire our first 1,000 to 10,000 users.

What’s your north-star metric?

Our key north-star metrics are Weekly Active Users (WAU) and monthly retention, as these prove we are building a sticky, community-driven platform, along with average time spent on the application.

How do users find out about you?

Initially, users will find us through targeted creator-driven content and local ambassador programs , supplemented by organic social content and paid ad channels.

What’s your go-to-market strategy?

Our GTM strategy is to first launch the MVP to gather 1,000-10,000 users , then execute "Phase 1" by focusing on localization in 5-10 key metro areas to build network density and establish local partnerships.

What’s your business model, how do you make money?

We use a freemium model with three core revenue streams: a premium subscription for advanced analytics, targeted advertising in the free tier, and B2B SaaS solutions for leagues and court operators.

What’s your pricing strategy and why?

We offer a free, ad-supported tier to maximize user acquisition , and a "Hooply Premium" subscription for around $5/month or $50/year, which is priced to be accessible while capturing value from our most engaged users.

Who are your main competitors?

Our main competitors are Homecourt, Ballogy, and Hoop Life.

What do competitors do better than you?

Competitors like Homecourt are well-established and highly focused in the solo drill-tracking niche, having successfully tracked 45 million shots.

What’s your unfair advantage or moat?

Our moat is built on localized network effects; by focusing on community, city-level leaderboards, and partnerships with local facilities, we create a sticky social platform that is highly defensible against competitors who only offer utility tools and the diverse spread of ourselves on different campuses to leverage the biggest starting network as possible.

How big is your market (TAM/SAM/SOM)?

Our TAM for social sports tracking apps exceeds $10B , with a Serviceable Available Market (SAM) of $1B-$3B for mobile-first basketball users. Our initial Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) is capturing 0.5-1% of weekly hoopers in the top 20 metro areas.

What assumptions are you making about your market?

We are assuming that the 25-40 million U.S. players who play regularly outside of organized leagues desire a digital platform to track their stats, measure their growth, and build a social identity around their pickup games.

How did you meet your cofounders?

Printon LLP program, which we did 2 summers ago. We met there in person at Princeton NJ and worked more than 50 hours per week together in the imaging lab, while also hanging out after the lab hours and stuff and just going ahead and becoming really close. We shared our interests in Startups then and we all kept talking, even almost daily, since then.

Why are you the right team to build this?

We are a compact, hungry founding team that ships quickly , combining deep technical expertise in full-stack engineering and CV with a strategic focus on finance, growth, and community operations.

Who is CEO, CTO, and what are each of your roles?

Dhruv Hegde is CEO & Lead Developer, driving product vision and platform architecture. Tejash Gupta is CTO & Finance Lead, overseeing system design, the CV roadmap, and fundraising. Vikram Haran is our Marketing Lead, focusing on growth, content, and community operations and does some of the backend.

What does each founder bring to the table?

Dhruv brings the product vision and primary full-stack engineering; Tejash brings system design, the CV roadmap, and financial operations ; and Vikram brings growth, content, community operations, and backend operations.

How do you make decisions as a team?

We assign a "Directly Responsible Individual" (DRI) for every key decision—Dhruv for product, Tejash for tech/finance, and Vikram for growth. We debate openly, but the DRI makes the final call, and everyone commits 100% even if they initially disagreed.

How do you handle disagreements or conflict?

We default to data; we frame the disagreement as a testable hypothesis and let user data, like A/B test results or survey feedback, be the tie-breaker. If no data exists, we "disagree and commit" to the DRI's vision to maintain velocity.

What’s the hardest problem you’ve solved together?

The hardest problem was designing our ELO rating system to be rewarding for casual players without being exploitable by hyper-competitive users. We had to merge a traditional ELO model with velocity-based metrics, like "improvement rate," to ensure new users felt a sense of progress while veterans were still accurately ranked. That, or getting our first customer.

What’s your current team composition and who’s full-time?

We are a 3-person founding team: Dhruv Hegde (CEO/Developer), Tejash Gupta (CTO/Finance), and Vikram Haran (Developer/Marketing) and were all full-time in the summer, but currently part-time with University.

How fast can you ship a feature or MVP?

Variable based on feature, although we created our first entirely working MVP in 2 and a half weeks.

What are your top 2 technical challenges?

Our top two technical challenges are controlling the high CV compute costs for shot analysis at scale and successfully managing the "cold start" problem for our recommendation engine to accurately match new users.

What’s your stack and architecture?

We use a React Native and TypeScript frontend for mobile. The backend uses Python and FastAPI microservices with a Firebase/Firestore NoSQL database for real-time data and flexible schemas.

How do you ensure scalability and reliability?

We ensure scalability by using a decoupled microservice architecture with FastAPI , a flexible NoSQL database with Firestore , and containerized services for AI/compute that can be scaled independently.

How do you collect and prioritize user feedback?

Our team's philosophy is to iterate quickly based on user feedback.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made so far?

Our biggest mistake was initially trying to build a complex, automated CV-powered shot tracker for the MVP as well and also not publishing directly at the end of the summer and continuing our marketing as it stood. Delaying it down the pipeline was a mistake that cost us a couple of weeks in being able to garner more public users.

What did you learn from that mistake?

We learned that the MVP's goal is to validate the core social loop, not to showcase our most complex tech. Now, we ruthlessly prioritize manual-first features and only build automation, like CV, once the underlying behavior is proven.

What’s your biggest product failure so far?

Our first attempt at a "Court Finder" feature was a failure; we used a static database of courts, but users found it useless because it didn't have real-time data on how many people were currently playing. This failure taught us that "live" social data is our true product, not just static utility.

What experiment taught you the most?

We ran an experiment testing our invite flow: "invite by username" vs. "invite by phone contact." The phone contact import converted 400% better, teaching us that our growth model must leverage existing social graphs rather than trying to build one from scratch inside the app.

How do you measure product–market fit?

We will measure product-market fit quantitatively through key retention benchmarks, specifically aiming for Day 1 retention of 30-40% and Day 30 retention of 6-15%.

How will you know when you’ve reached PMF?

We will know we've reached PMF when we consistently hit our retention and engagement targets, such as a DAU/MAU ratio over 20% , and see a steady conversion rate from free to paid, validating our unit economics.

What metrics do you track weekly?

We optimize for Weekly Active Users (WAU), monthly retention, and the number of sessions per user per week.

What’s your burn rate and runway?

We are currently pre-funding, so our burn rate is near-zero, covering only essential infra costs of less than $20/month. Our runway is effectively infinite as we are supporting ourselves, but we are raising to accelerate our 18-month growth plan.

What milestones are you targeting in the next 3–6 months?

Our primary 6-month milestone is to complete "Phase 0": successfully launching the MVP and acquiring our first 1,000 to 10,000 early users via creator-driven content and ambassador programs.

How would you use funding or support from Telora?

We would use the support to execute "Phase 1" of our growth plan: aggressively localizing in 5-10 key metro areas, optimizing our conversion funnel, and signing our first partnerships with local rec centers and leagues, and consult with as many people in Telora as possible for guidance, as mentorship is what we value right now the most.

What would you do if funding didn’t come through?

We will build this regardless. We would continue to bootstrap by focusing on a single beachhead market, like our university campus, and grow organically through word-of-mouth and our ambassador program until we hit the traction and revenue milestones needed to fund ourselves.

How could your startup die?

Our startup could die from three main risks: low user retention if we fail to build sticky social features, prohibitively high CV compute costs that destroy our margins, or failing to build localized network effects fast enough to defend against competitors.

What’s your long-term vision (5-year or 10-year)?

Our long-term vision is for Hooply to become the core platform layer and operating system for amateur team sports , expanding our infrastructure beyond basketball into adjacent multi-billion dollar markets like soccer, football, and baseball.

What’s the ideal outcome for this company?

The ideal outcome is to become the dominant identity and operating system for amateur team sports, capturing a significant share of a $10B+ market by being the definitive record for amateur players.

Who are your first 10 paying customers (or who would they be)?

Our first paying customers will be the most engaged players in our initial beachhead markets who convert to Hooply Premium for advanced analytics, detailed trend graphs, and an ad-free experience

What feedback have you received from users so far?

Users desperately want a way to post highlight clips to their game logs , more gamification through skill badges , and a court reservation system that shows real-time court availability, which they see as the key to organizing more games.

What KPIs matter most at your current stage?

At our current launch stage (Phase 0), the most important KPIs are user acquisition (our goal of 1k-10k users) and early retention (our Day 1 retention target of 30-40%).

What keeps you up at night about this company?

What keeps me up is the "cold start" problem for a new city; our product's value is dependent on local network effects. The existential question is whether we can develop a repeatable growth playbook that ignites a new city's user base before users churn due to a lack of local games and players.

What’s your proudest accomplishment as a team?

Our proudest moment was seeing the first two completely distant strangers use our app to organize a pickup game and then log their stats. It proved that the core loop works beyond our immediate friend group and that Hooply can actually create new, real-world connections.

How do you stay motivated when things get tough?

Our motivation is intrinsic because we are our own target user; when we hit a wall, we just go play basketball and simply talk over our aspirations, which keeps us grounded. We got one life and we are young, best to use it while we can.

What’s one decision you’d redo if you could?

If I could redo one decision, I would have deferred building our native React Native app and instead launched the first MVP as a simple web app. This would have cut our initial development time in half and allowed us to start validating the core social loop and ELO system even faster.

What’s the biggest risk to your success?

The biggest risks are failing to achieve sticky user retention and lack of consistent use of our platform on an annual basis.

If one founder left, how would the company continue?

We've discussed this and have standard 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff, so the company retains the equity. While losing any of us would be incredibly difficult, our roles are well-documented, and the remaining two founders possess the full-stack and growth skills necessary to continue building the product and business.

What are each of your superpowers and blind spots?

Dhruv's superpower is rapid, high-quality product iteration, but his blind spot is over-engineering solutions. Tejash's superpower is rigorous systems-thinking for finance and backend, but his blind spot is a bias for caution. Vikram's superpower is feeling user empathy and driving community, but his blind spot is getting distracted by new, unvetted growth hacks.

What’s something impressive you’ve built personally (not startup-related)?

I built bomIQ, a B2B supply chain optimization platform that used ML algorithms to recommend sourcing strategies, achieving an average of 25% cost reduction for clients . I also developed Kiloflicks, a high-performance C++ steganography system that achieved a 300% higher data payload than existing tools by implementing custom error correction coding

Why should we pick your team over others?

we've already built and shipped the core MVP while coordinating with a daily operational tempo from three different top universities. We've been in the trenches with previous ventures, we know how to iterate, and we are obsessively passionate about this problem because we are the users we're building for.

If you had 10 seconds to convince us, what would you say?

Hooply is "Strava for basketball," targeting a $10B market of over 250 million players who currently have no way to track their stats or build their identity. Our MVP is built, and our expert, lean team is ready to capture this market through localized network effects.

What stack (hardware/software) do you imagine for our product (if the startup is “beer-specific” maybe brewing sensors, IoT, data analytics, supply chain) and what trade-offs would you make (cost vs speed, build vs buy)?

Our stack is a React Native/TypeScript frontend, Python/FastAPI microservices, and a Firestore NoSQL database; our main trade-off was prioritizing speed by buying managed services like Firebase for auth and DB, allowing us to build our core IP—the ELO and social-matching engine—faster.

If we have to launch a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in 3 months with minimal budget, how would you prioritise what to build versus what to leave for later?

We would prioritize building the absolute core social-loop—manual game logging, stat entry, and the ELO leaderboard—while aggressively deferring all high-cost/complex features like AI-powered CV shot analysis, highlight generation, and B2B league dashboards.

In the beer industry (or whichever niche), what technical/challenge-hurdle do you see that most startups overlook (e.g., fermentation data, supply chain traceability, regulation, packaging automation)?

In the amateur sports-tech niche, the hurdle startups overlook isn't the tech, it's the real-world "cold start" problem; competitors build great solo-drill tools but fail because they can't achieve the critical local network density required to make social logging and matchmaking valuable.

How would you measure success technically for a first version — what metrics would you choose (instead of “user growth”) in an early hardware/software beer-startup scenario?

Our key technical success metrics would be sub-200ms API response times for loading profiles/leaderboards, a Day-1 retention rate over 30% indicating the core loop is addictive, and an average of 1-3+ game-logging sessions per active user per week.

If you inherited tech debt (or you have to pick between speed to market vs perfect architecture), how would you decide when to refactor vs keep moving?

We decide by refactoring only when the tech debt is actively blocking a critical-path feature or degrading core user-experience metrics; otherwise, we consciously accept the debt to prioritize speed to market.

How would you design a system (software/hardware) to support scaling from 100 to 10,000 beer-cases per month (or whatever scale) — what changes architecturally would you expect?

To scale from 100 to 10,000 active users, we'd architecturally evolve from our current Firebase-centric model to a decoupled system using Python/FastAPI microservices, implement aggressive Redis caching for leaderboards, and move all heavy computations like ELO calculations to asynchronous background tasks.

If the team is just 3 people (co-founders + you), how would you structure your dev/test/deployment pipeline in a lean way (automation, version control, monitoring) given limited resources?

We use a lean pipeline centered on GitHub Actions for CI/CD, running automated tests on every push, and connecting directly to Vercel and EAS for automated, predictable deployments to web and mobile, with Sentry for real-time error monitoring.

What do you believe is a fair equity split for someone joining at this stage, and how do you think that should evolve as the company raises further rounds?

A fair equity split is based on contribution and comes with a 4-year vesting period; while we already have unequal splits based on work-to-date, a new joiner who contributes more than any of us ever have would be entitled to more, though it's highly unlikely a new hire at this stage would receive more than 5%.

How would you handle an eventual dilution event (future fund-raise) — are you comfortable with your percentage going down if the company succeeds?

We are completely comfortable with our percentage going down in a dilution event, as our entire focus is on maximizing the absolute value of the company, not the size of our individual slice.

How would you feel about a role where responsibilities are ambiguous (“we all wear many hats”) and the job might stray far from a “traditional job description”?

We thrive in ambiguous, "many hats" roles; as founders, we are already the CEO, lead developer, marketer, and finance lead, so we are wired to operate without a traditional job description.

Which startups or companies do you model your work-ethic or role after — if you had to pick 1-2 companies (in beer, hardware, tech) whose team culture you admire, what would they be and why?

We model our team culture after Strava, for their obsessive focus on building an addictive community-driven product, and Vercel, for their relentless high-velocity, developer-first ethic that prioritizes shipping and iterating.

How much autonomy vs structure do you expect? At this early stage, there may be minimal structure — how do you operate in ambiguity?

We expect 100% autonomy and minimal structure; we operate in ambiguity by setting our own aggressive, high-level objectives (OKRs) and then holding ourselves accountable to the key results.

How do you define your success in the next 12–18 months in this startup?

Our success in the next 12-18 months is defined by shipping our B2B and CV-expansion products, achieving clear product-market fit validated by 10%+ Day 30 retention, and scaling to tens of thousands of active users with meaningful recurring revenue.

Tell me about a time you built a solution from scratch with minimal guidance or resources (setting: ambiguous project) — what did you do and what was the outcome?

I built bomIQ, a B2B supply chain optimization platform, from scratch, developing ML algorithms that analyzed supplier histories and achieved a 25% average cost reduction for clients.

Describe a time when you had to pivot quickly (change the plan) because the original plan didn’t work — what triggered it, what did you change, what was the result?

Our original plan was to all attend Stanford and build this co-located in SF; when that plan failed, we pivoted instantly to a remote-first company across three top universities, forcing us to build a rigorous, high-tempo operational model that has actually made us ship faster.

How do you prioritise your work when EVERYTHING feels urgent (which often happens in startups)?

When everything feels urgent, we prioritize using a simple 2x2 matrix of "User Impact vs. Engineering Effort," ruthlessly executing the high-impact, low-effort tasks first to maintain momentum.

How have you handled failure (or a project you were leading that didn’t go as planned)? What did you learn?

Our biggest failure was our initial, naive assumption that we'd all end up at Stanford and build this in SF; when that plan failed, we learned to stop waiting for the "perfect" setup and to execute immediately with the resources we have, which led to us building our remote-first MVP.

What kind of team do you thrive in? What kind of team do you struggle in?

We thrive in high-trust, high-velocity teams that give direct, blunt feedback and are obsessively focused on the mission; we struggle in teams with slow-moving bureaucracy, low accountability, or a culture that avoids conflict.

In an early stage venture, you will often be doing things outside your “job title” (marketing, ops, customer support), how comfortable are you shifting gears across functions?

We are extremely comfortable shifting gears, as our careers have been about rapid pivots: Dhruv from sim programming to MechE, big tech, quant finance, and metaphysics; Tejash from optics to CubeSats and CS/Finance; and Vikram from physics research to robotics and digital tech.

Why are you interested in this startup (mention its niche, mission, beer-specific if relevant) rather than joining a more established company?

We are interested in this because we want to make our own job, not take one, as we believe the fulfillment from building our vision is better than any compensation package.

What draws you to the risk/ambiguity of early stage?

We are young, willing to bootstrap our lifestyle, and embrace the risk because we know that no one achieves large-scale, meaningful impact without it, and we are built to become accustomed to it.

You have two ropes that each take 1 hour to burn, but burn unevenly. How do you measure 45 minutes?

Light rope 1 at both ends and rope 2 at one end simultaneously; when rope 1 burns out (30 mins), light the other end of rope 2, which will then take 15 more minutes to burn out (30/2), totaling 45 minutes.

How many basketballs can you fit in this room?

This is a Fermi problem; I'd estimate the room's volume by $L \times W \times H$, estimate the volume of a single basketball ($V = \frac{4}{3}\pi r^3$), divide the room's volume by the ball's volume, and then reduce the total by about 30% to account for packing inefficiency, since spheres don't tessellate.

You are in a room with three light switches, which correspond to three light bulbs in another room (which you can't see). How do you determine which switch controls which bulb with only one trip to the bulb room?

Turn switch 1 on for 5 minutes, then turn it off; turn switch 2 on, and leave it on; go into the bulb room—the bulb that is on is switch 2, the bulb that is off but warm is switch 1, and the bulb that is off and cold is switch 3.

Your biggest paying B2B customer demands a new feature that your free-user community hates and that deviates from your core product vision. What do you do?

We do not build the feature, as letting one customer dictate our roadmap will kill the company; we explain to the B2B customer why it violates our product vision and try to solve their underlying problem in a way that aligns with our strategy.

You and your co-founder have a fundamental, 50/50 disagreement on the next 6-month product roadmap, and data is inconclusive. How do you move forward?

The CEO (Dhruv) makes the final call as the "Directly Responsible Individual" for product vision; we then "disagree and commit" as a team to that single vision, because indecision or a split focus is worse than picking the sub-optimal path.

You can hire one engineer: a "10x" senior engineer who is a brilliant 'rockstar' but a known cultural risk, or two "4x" junior engineers who are perfect team players. Which do you choose?

We hire the two "4x" junior engineers; a toxic "10x" engineer creates a net-negative output by demoralizing the team and destroying collaboration, while two positive, aligned engineers will compound our velocity and culture.

A well-funded competitor just launched a clone of your MVP and is spending heavily on marketing in your target cities. What is your immediate move?

We ignore their marketing spend and double-down on our unique, low-cost growth channels: creator-driven content and our campus ambassador program, focusing on building a sticky community and local partnerships, which is the one moat their money can't buy.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

The total cost of sales and marketing required to acquire a single new paying customer, calculated by dividing total acquisition spend by the number of new customers.

B2B (Business-to-Business)

A business model where a company sells its products or services directly to other businesses (e.g., Salesforce, Stripe), rather than to individual consumers.

API (Application Programming Interface)

A set of defined rules and protocols that allows different software applications to communicate, interact, and exchange data with each other.

Burn Rate (Net Burn)

The net rate at which a company is spending its cash reserves to cover all expenses and overhead, typically measured per month and used to calculate runway.

LTV (Lifetime Value)

A projection of the total net profit a business can expect to earn from a single customer over the entire duration of their relationship with the company.

LTV/CAC Ratio

The critical ratio comparing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer to their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); a healthy startup aims for a ratio of 3:1 or higher.

Runway

The amount of time (usually in months) a company can continue to operate before it runs out of cash, calculated by dividing its total cash reserves by its net burn rate.

SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity)

An investment contract used by early-stage startups that allows an investor to get equity in the company at a future funding round, without setting a valuation today.

Common Stock

Shares of ownership in a company, typically held by founders and employees, which grant voting rights but are last in line for payouts during a sale or bankruptcy (after preferred stock).

Preferred Stock

A class of ownership shares typically given to investors that includes special rights, such as a "liquidation preference" (getting paid first in a sale) and anti-dilution protection.

PMF (Product-Market Fit)

The state of being in a good market with a product that can fully satisfy that market, often identified organically when you have high retention, users are "pulling" the product from you, and growth is rapid.

MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

The most basic version of a new product with just enough features to be usable by early customers, allowing the team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning with the least amount of effort.