Speaker 1 (00:00.322)
Welcome to the first season of the Hard Tech podcast. The Hard Tech podcast is about bringing together innovators, builders, investors and thought leaders all in the world of hard tech. In my background and starting software companies that I've scaled and exited, there's so much content out there for folks building in the software space and not as much in the hardware space. And that's exactly why the Hard Tech podcast exists. This episode is with Eric Roberson, founder and CEO of HoopTech, a super innovative

shooting technology for young youth athletes looking to get better at shooting basketballs. And I think this episode is going to be really good to listen to because it's going to go beyond why just shooting a basketball is more than just about a metric. It's about a meaning. Super great to have you, man.

Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for driving all the way down. Because you're based at Mhub.

Yep, exactly. Yep, from Chicago, Emhub right there, near west side of the city. Me and my wife live not too far from there, so.

Speaker 1 (00:56.674)
Maybe you lived in Chicago your entire life.

Yeah, for the most part, I was born on the South side in a neighborhood called South Shore. Lived there for a while. All my family lives there. Grew up mostly in the South suburbs. Lived in LA for a little bit where I met my wife, got my master's degree. So LA was good to me and then I had to come back home. So now I'm back in Chicago. Not yet. No kids. Hopefully someday. But just Hooptek. Hooptek's my baby.

Nice. Any kids?

Speaker 1 (01:21.218)
So, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about Hooptek. Like what are you building?

Yeah, so simply put, I love to go into the story maybe a little bit later, but HoopTech is the world's first rebounding and passing basketball machine that's so portable, so mobile, so lightweight that actually folds down and compacts into a backpack.

Really.

I love that. It's one of those things that like, you imagine this device only exists in professional settings, right? Only for the pros that they get to practice something like this, but you're trying to democratize that. So I don't even have to own a basketball court. can bring this to my local park, my local basketball court and in practice and have.

fun. Exactly. Exactly. Like me personally, I grew up walking, riding my bike to the local park. I mean, that was the main rim that I had. And so even if I could afford one of the big machines, you could do with it, right? Yeah, it's going to be took or rest or, know, so absolute building access so that anybody could have one of these machines.

Speaker 2 (02:13.378)
That's that's so fun. I think one of my favorite sides of innovation is the non obvious one. Everyone's innovation has to be a brand new thing and has to have never existed before. But there's the side of innovation that's not a better mousetrap. It is taking a thing that exists somewhere and dropping it into a new blue ocean, a new beachhead that somehow everyone else overlooked because either is too expensive or too hard or too heavy. Right. Like all these preconceived notions of what that product is and how that product behaves. And someone just had this clever idea like, I'm to pivot it this way. And now I can hit all these new markets.

Exactly. Yeah.

And like really changing like the form factor of what is a shooting machine. My background is in sports tech and so obviously you have companies like Dr. Dish and I think it's Hoop Shot or something like that where these are like huge eight thousand dollar, ten thousand dollar shooting machines. And now you're saying that we can literally put these things in a backpack and a kid can just walk up to his whether it's in his driveway or they can go to the park or something like that and literally have a shooting machine. Just like is that basically

Exactly it. Exactly it. Where, you know, before to be an elite basketball player, to have elite level training, you either needed to have money or you needed to be the tippity top one percent of skilled hoopers where the coaches want to invest in you for free or they want to give you free access to their gym because that's going to look good on them. Like I trained Derrick Rose, I trained Michael Jordan. Whereas now it's it's available that no matter what background you come from.

no matter what access you have or the people that train you can train like a pro. You can have elite level basketball training access no matter who you are.

Speaker 1 (03:47.192)
So where did you actually like discover the idea or think of the idea? Was it because you wanted to shoot on a basketball goal and have it rebounded? You're tired of chasing or what happened?

Yeah, yeah, great question. you know, Grant was talking a little bit about innovation. And for me, the innovation came out of necessity. I couldn't shoot a basketball.

You're my friends here. I also still cannot.

I can't I cannot yeah

And so I love basketball come from a basketball family. My dad's 65. He still hoops. We actually just won a basketball tournament together where he hit the game winning shot in the quarterfinals of this tournament. you know, he's come from a long line of basketball players and hoopers and earlier. I don't know what it was. I just couldn't shoot. And I remember I would practice and I would practice and I would practice over and over again, whether I'm riding my bike to the park, YMCA, I'm going to L.A. fitness, whatever I can do.

Speaker 3 (04:40.014)
to just get shots up. I'm shooting hundreds of shots a day. My coach recommended I shoot up to 500 shots, right? So that was my goal. And I realized like, I'm just not improving. I'm not able to get that consistency of reps that I need. And I remember when I was young, I had to been maybe 10 years old. One of my teammates who was by far the best shooter on the team, he was more affluent. And he told me about this, to me at the time, magical device.

that would catch the rebound for you, whether you made it or you miss it, it would kick it down to a funnel and then it would pass it back to you. So you could stand in one spot and get your shots up. And I realized, man, he was able to get six times more shots up than me in the same amount of time than I was. And that made me realize like my issue is not effort. It's access to one of these rebounding. Exactly. It's efficiency. It's access. It's I just needed one of these machines. And so that's kind of what

kicked off that journey for me. The problem with these machines, as we've kind of alluded to, is that they're extremely expensive. know, the cheapest I've been able to find on the market is like roughly $3,000. Doesn't include battery, doesn't include shipping, can range all the way up to $20,000. And like I said, even if I could afford it, where am I going to keep it, right? They can weigh over 100 pounds. They're super big, super bulky. And so that's what really sent me on this journey to create Hooptek. And it started with me making

a rebounding machine out of wood in my backyard.

You know, I think we talk about innovation and how that creates impact here at Glassboard a lot. You one of the things I'm deeply passionate about is how true innovation not just changed the lives of people that make the cool innovations and successful companies, more importantly, the people that it serves. And that's something we really like to focus on. It's not just our customer, but our customer's customer. And when it comes to shooting, is something as simple as a shooting machine, it matters. Why? Because you need to how to shoot. And why is that so important?

Speaker 1 (06:37.602)
Well, if this kid learns how to shoot, he can get a college scholarship. Right. Right. He can then be on that travel basketball team and get exposure and travel around the city and the country and see different things and be exposed to a different way of life that maybe otherwise he didn't have access to. Yeah. That's why it matters to know how to shoot a basketball. And that's why I think it's just so cool on the product you're making on the side of like the social entrepreneurship, because helping kids shoot is more than just a shooting machine. Yeah.

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (07:05.742)
Can you talk a little bit more about that and like what your vision is there?

Yeah, that's spot on. mean, even to take it a step further beyond scholarship, which which is huge in many different communities. The idea of sports being the outlet. I think of myself like basketball is such a mental health thing for me, where whenever I'm feeling certain type of way, I need to clear my mind. I go and I get shots up or I think of all the friends that I've had growing up that have come from basketball. And so the fact that there's a device that allowed allows people from all backgrounds to be on the same elite level and experience all the

beautiful benefits that come with exercising, that come with community of being on a team, that come with scholarships or maybe even going pro, whether it's an MBA or overseas or something of that regard. I think there's plenty of opportunity to have an impact just with the device itself. And then taking a step back, I mean, my background is in the nonprofit world. Up until four months ago, I was full-time nonprofit where I did educational programs where

I actually got my right out of college. started after school programs. started school programs on the west side of Chicago, really initially started just bootstrapping it. I was a teacher and I realized the need that my kids had. Funny enough, they were starting businesses and I realized they needed mentors for the business. my school program was pairing mentors with the with the kids businesses that they're starting, which actually I never really thought about that, but it had a big impact on me to eventually go the entrepreneurship route. But anyway.

After school programs. started after school programs and I would start them and I was able to start two of them in Chicago. And then that expanded. I partnered with a nonprofit and we ended up expanding it throughout the country. And even I think that ended up being a similar program that used our curriculum in Mexico as well. And it was great, super fulfilling. And then this thing called funding ran out. And I realized like in order to...

Speaker 3 (09:06.338)
be sustainable, you're just constantly fundraising. And I kind of kept that in my head. And then I had a friend of mine tell me about this concept of social entrepreneurship. And it's the idea that you can have a sustainable business model that sells a product or service or generates revenue just like a business, but then also has a double purpose of creating impact. so that realization in me

you know, unfortunately, facing funding issues made me really interested in social entrepreneurship. I went and got my master's degree at the University of Southern California. I think they had one of the earliest social entrepreneurship degrees and I went and got that. then, yeah, I mean, truthfully, that's just in my DNA. And so one of the pillars of Hooptek, even now, I mean, we're in the pre-revenue phase. I haven't even launched my pre-sale campaign and we're already in the community.

interacting with kids. In fact, just Tuesday, we were at an event with Chicago Public Schools called Reimagining STEM. And we said, hey, you know, we're still in the prototyping phase. And I like to I like to think myself like I'm I'm a dumbo. Like, I don't know anything about engineering, but I am a lo fi master. I know how to make a good lo fi product or prototype rather, just because I don't assess it. I don't know how to engineer otherwise. And so was like, man, let me show these kids that, hey, you don't need to be

an engineer, don't need to have all the money in the world. But you can you can create something you can invent just with the tools you have at home. And so we brought all my lo fi prototypes to the CPS event and we're showing the kids. But this is a long way of answering your question of, know, what what does social entrepreneurship mean to me? I think it's, you know, obviously making money and having a sustainable business. But to me, I say, OK, to what end so I can get rich?

No, it's so that I can have an impact. can inspire as many kids as I can say, hey, you can do it too. Eventually, we're going to have a workforce development program that we're still ironing out the details with a few local nonprofits, but will likely do kind of like a pipeline from those who are formerly incarcerated to then coming and getting workforce development training with Hoop Tech and then working full time or also like continue to impact schools just like we're doing. But yeah, to me, this is in my DNA, I think.

Speaker 3 (11:25.976)
Having an impact in business should go hand in hand, especially once you have a successful business. think it's an obligation to kind of give back and have an impact.

Yeah, no, and it's one of those things that when you're early on, like, how am ever going to find time to do that? How am I ever going to find time to give back? And I used to very like firmly believe that I'm like, I'm so busy trying to get this business off the ground. Like, how do I ever give back? And as time's gone over and you know, things have evolved, I find myself getting signed up and like wanting to sign up for all of this, you know, volunteering to mentor, EVCram, pre or run tech inspections that program Purdue or have a bunch of high schoolers in their summer programs come through class board in the summer and take

some time out of our day as Glassboard to tour them through, show them our prototyping methods and like show them what STEM can be. You know, it's not all like manila folders and cubicles and drawings like, no, we get to our hands dirty and get prototypes built. And I love your, lo-fi prototyping. I want to swap notes. So what is your, favorite lo-fi? One of ours is CAD cardboard aided design is one of our favorite lo-fi prototyping.

I love that. Yeah. Yeah. To your point of, you know, finding time, I just want to come on that real quick. I like personally, I've always found that like if I pursue those things, I pursue having impact, it tends to come back around for me. And that's actually one thing I appreciate about both of you. It's clear how genuine you two are of helping other people, whether or not, you know, they ultimately come and work with your company or you're just so

involved in making sure that people succeed. I'm sure both of you have plenty of examples where it comes back full circle to you. But like for me, I'll give you a perfect example. Even this Tuesday, this event where he went just to out of the goodness of our hearts, we wanted to really give back to the community. I mean, guess who was there? The Chicago Sky were there. The junior WNBA were there. And so, you know, my director of partnerships, Joseph Roberson, aka my pops, you know, he got phone numbers and he has meetings set up and.

Speaker 3 (13:16.414)
We're hoping to leverage that into a big long-term partnership with them. But I mean that that just comes from the idea of reciprocation or reaping what you sow or karma, whatever you're

And it boils on a community. What you just described is how community actually is supposed to work. Whether this is a religious community, a social, like where you live community, a school community. I don't care what the driver is for what you're naming this community. But as you start to build community in your life, in your career, in your business, it all comes around, right? When we had bad storms run through Indy today and like, I'm sure someone is helping someone else cut down a tree in their yard who doesn't have a chainsaw. And that's just that who's your hospitality, we call it here in Indiana, but.

that comes back around tenfold every time you put it out. It's not, it's not, you know, immediate, right? It's one of those things that it's a garden. You have to plant the seeds like you and I were talking about and sow it and water the garden. But eventually it will all bear fruit because, you know, it takes a village. I didn't get to be the technical engineer I was alone. I had some great mentors along the way. And then I didn't get to become the executive and CEO that am today without some amazing mentors that kept me from doing silly things. And, you know, that

community is what makes everyone better. Cause the people that taught me didn't learn on their own. Everyone got taught how to do it right somewhere. know, humanity has been standing on the shoulders of giants from, know, the first time we discovered fire to now. And the great things we can all do is only getting better and faster from much more connected. We all are right. This is from the basketball courts to social media to, you know, this podcast right here and ushering this journey that access to hearing stories of others and community is going to make everyone better from.

kids in school all the way up through aspiring entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs all the way up to hopeful venture capitalists listening to this podcast that might look and want to invest in you and close that loop in community.

Speaker 1 (15:01.39)
Yeah, I completely agree. think, you know, I recently joined Glassport, as you know. Don't this I think this is officially week number five. But really originally got to know Glassport, more importantly, Grant through my first startup on team sports. The IP got acquired early last year. It happened. We made it. And but nonetheless, you know, like this is way back in 2020. I started the startup when I was in college and

Still haven't left yet, we're all impressed.

Speaker 3 (15:20.372)
Congratulations, by the way.

Speaker 1 (15:30.902)
I'm in this program called G Beta, which is a young startup accelerator program that's for like pre-product, pre-everything, pre-revenue. Just a bunch of people just being nice. I think somehow getting sponsors to pay for this thing that they're doing. But it's basically a feeder into their main accelerator, which is, you know, an investment accelerator. And I'll just never forget Grant just like jumps on and it's like super help. He's mentor in the program. Yeah.

Super duper helpful. I remember feeling so encouraged. There was nothing that he could have got out of it because he was building actual things with atoms and I was using bits. But he really was genuinely helpful. And so then fast forward several years later, years later. Right. So this is like you reap what you sow. But it doesn't happen as quickly as you may think. Yeah, yeah. So in this case, it was several years later and I was the chief revenue officer for that company called Geyser Steam that I mentioned to you earlier.

I said, we're talking about building a new product. said, we have to go talk to Grant. Yeah. Right. And it's because like that first engagement or however many engagements we end up having in between there was just helping. And I think like Grant just mentioned, you know, it is it comes back to just genuinely wanting to help people. then that's why you work with people. It's that relationship. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting to think about how that is going to play with Hooptek in that like

how you can play both the product and have like the nonprofit feel or that social entrepreneurship feel. I think what you're going to see is a lot of that come back to bear harvest. Yeah. Right over time, which I think is super unique. And I don't know if you can map that out from a KPI and ROI perspective, but you can certainly look at zoom out from a number of years from now and see the impact that actually.

Exactly. Yeah, that's spot on. I think especially when it's done genuinely and people can tell when it's done genuinely or with ill intent or selfish intent. It can be a really special thing. mean, even worst case scenario, you end up meeting the most amazing people and having great community, like you said, Grant. So that's spot on. But I love the question you asked about lo-fi. Yeah. I like that CAD. What did say?

Speaker 2 (17:36.13)
Cardboard aided design. And so everyone thinks 3d CAD computer aided design. Yeah. Cardboard aided design. got the exacto knife out and scissors and tape and you're just trying to does this form fit on the table? Right? Is this how big this is supposed to be? Yeah. You know, this fit in your pocket? Yeah. And it's so fast. You can just rip through crazy ideas, right? And you have to be talented, right? Unlike because I can't draw. I may be an engineer, but I can't sketch an idea to save my life. Like my hands don't do what my mind wants. Yeah. But cardboard, I can always just keep trimming some off till it's about right and wrap duct tape around it.

Just feel it. Don't, don't, we know it's ugly. Just feel it. And then you can get that idea across. And for me, that just became such a great early form of communication.

Yeah, I love that. some, think some of my favorite like lo-fi things that I've ever done. Definitely. Yeah. The sketches and the cardboard, those are great. I think those are classics. Like you can't beat those.

So what's your wood shop go to? you like dowel pins and stuff?

I'm a PVC guy. I love me some PVC pipe. Man, I know like I know the most niche websites too, in order to find like the perfect joints for them to like all the right angles and couplers and ones that swivel and move. And so if you're watching this at home and you need some very specific PVC pipe connections, you know, email Eric at HoopTech.com

Speaker 3 (18:52.472)
But yeah, definitely I love PVC, making things like, another one that I actually was talking to the youth at the STEM event on Tuesday about a lot, cause I feel like it's more accessible for them is I love combining either, well, in their instance, combining toys. And so one example I gave them is I got a, a Nerf hoop. I got like the same kind of like motor setup that think of like a,

Hot wheels, you know, hot with the hot wheels, they spin them up. then it projects the car. And so I had basically a device similar to that. And I basically connected those to launch the ball. And then I took a, you know, the pop-up soccer nets that you can twist them and they fold out. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, right. All right. Yeah. It's easy. You got to watch like a whole YouTube video, just figure out to get back in the bag. But yeah, so I just combined three toys and I told the kids like, Hey, this is a way to

it's just like the tents you can never get back together.

We'll talk about.

Speaker 3 (19:49.016)
test the concept is called a proof of concept prototype showing that I can launch a ball showing that this more nimble kind of structure for the net can catch and knock a net into a funnel that can then reciprocate and send the ball back. And yeah, I love stuff like that. I think I had a third one that I like saving me, but I think those are kind of like the main main two that I tend to go towards.

What I'm jealous about is that a lot of the kids today are getting access to CAD, like computer aided design in school. Like my high school did not have CAD. And I went to like, I think a great high school and like, they just didn't have CAD. It wasn't the thing they taught. And nowadays I'm these, you know, late elementary, early middle schoolers like, oh no, I'm a Tinker CAD in my class. I'm like, you what? And like, no, I can 3D draw a thing and make a little like visual image of it on the computer screen. And oh man, like the accessibility of that.

being free to access for, you know, personal use and then how easy it's gotten, like the low barrier to entry to make, uh, make that occur. Then coupled with how cheap 3d printing's got. I I bought a, I was bored over COVID and bought a 3d printer from my house. It was cheaper than an inkjet printer. was $99. It was like, you know, again, it was a pain to use. had to reach, you know, level it all the time. It was, wasn't easy from like a, wasn't user friendly, but it was cheap. And it made whatever I wanted, you know, made 3d prints. So I was like,

need to get on my stuff now.

Speaker 2 (21:09.388)
man in 20 years from now how easy it's gonna be to truly get your ideas out in three dimensions.

Exactly. Yeah, I used to be really kind of like embarrassed too of like lo-fi prototypes. Because yeah, I just felt like was in imposter syndrome where I never want to show people like what I was working on or when I was testing different concepts, I would just keep it really close to the chest until I got to M hub and then learned that most engineers who are classically trained and have masters, whatever in engineering, they start with lo-fi prototypes. I was like, oh, okay, I'm an engineer.

Yeah, you learn by doing what we call the driving by Braille. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I may be at the beginner stage, but you know, I'm getting there.

Speaker 2 (21:54.35)
And it's so valuable to get that feedback, right? Because I mean, when you and I are always talking about like startups, like, who have you shown your idea to? Like, oh, no one, can't tell anyone it's a secret. Like you're under NDA, so can tell you. I'm like, no, no, no, you need to go tell everyone what you're doing. no one's going to copy it. Everyone you need to shout from the rooftop, they want this thing.

At the point where most people are willing to copy your product, you're already so deep in the market. You're making so much revenue. The company that's more than likely thinking about copying you will just probably buy you instead to avoid the R &D, right? Eric, we've learned about your background. You're obviously an amazing guy. Yeah, from a character perspective, like seriously, like focusing on like the social impact of your startup before like it's even fully like born into the world. Like having that core bedrock, it's like amazing.

thank you.

Speaker 1 (22:41.23)
And I think a lot of people can really resonate with that both as a customer and as an investor, which I think is why you've been successful in raising capital so far. Let's talk a little bit about the actual product development, get a bit deeper into like the business and like the different things that you're actually working on in terms of progressing down your path. And so from the actual product development perspective, where are you? What have you done to kind of experience and like what does the next?

you know, six to 10 months or six to 12 months, like look like for you to actually bringing the Hooptek product, the backpack shooting gun, you know, to the world.

Yeah, yeah. So I told you my story, how I faced that problem, right? Where they were too big, they're too bulky for me. And so the first thing I did, you know, as any entrepreneur would is I wanted to validate and see, do other people have this issue, right? And so as we all know, customer discovery was huge for me and is still huge as I, you know, iterate on the product and getting feedback. And, you know, truthfully, customer discovery is huge for me when I decided to go full-time as well. Making that leap from

you know, working in the nonprofit space and truthfully loving, loving the line of work that I did and feeling really fulfilled from it and being very happy with a steady paycheck. And then, yeah, leaping into essentially the unknown was really difficult, but the customer discovery I did said, no, not only is it a good idea for me to go on this full time, I have to, I have to, I talked to 40 Hoopers and did more formal.

know, customer discovery interviews where I'm taking notes and things like that. And without even telling them beyond like, I'm a basketball startup. They all described HoopSec. Yeah, they all describe it.

Speaker 2 (24:24.174)
this problem. They're like, Hey, I see what the tennis ball launcher is done for tennis that I can, you you can go buy that and bring one, you know, they're one that like fit in a basket, you carry to the park to launch balls. Now you still have to put the back in the launcher. But that's super interesting that you were able to get that. So I have a question on discovery is how did you know to do that? Is that something you learned in your master's program? And I'm just curious, cause like most startups actually missed that the first time around.

And they just get excited until they start to raise money and then their investors tell them they need discovery and anywhere in this process that you learn to do that.

Yeah, I think I was it helped going to business school for sure. So if you if you are in a position and you're able to go to business school and you want to be an entrepreneur, definitely do it if you can. You obviously don't need to, but definitely helps. That's the first place I learned about customer discovery. And then Hub, you know, another shout out to Hub, they get all kinds of organic support today. They actually joined their Mpower Black Founders cohort.

Last year and I recently graduated. It's about a six month. It's essentially a pre accelerator program I'm not sure if they would describe it that way, but more or less. That's what it is

a little bit like iCore and NSF

Speaker 3 (25:36.578)
Yeah, I'm actually in iCore for another business I'm consulting on and that's a perfect parallel. Yeah, yeah.

That's awesome. It's such a small world. I core is such a great program because most of the people that go into NSF, for those of you listening at home, national science foundation, they have small business innovation, research grants, Sivers as their, their nicknamed. And one of things you can do before you do a server is an ICOR. And I don't know what that one acronym stands for, but what it is, it's really, it pays the team to go and just learn about the customers. And you have to write it down and you have to report it to get, to get the funding back.

And most people that apply to NSF grants are academic in some nature, whether they're in grad school or they're a professor. And if they're going to try and chase their idea, the first thing they usually don't have any experience with at all is the actual market. They've got the technology or the chemistry or the software like figured out, but they don't know how to do the customer. So it's so cool to see that, you're doing I Corp with another thing you're involved in. And you went through that, uh, that program at M house.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, yeah, for both of those, as you as explained, like, for example, empower through M hub, they have a grant, but they don't release the grant until you've hit the threshold for customer discovery interviews, which is great. And so, yeah, I interviewed, you know, officially interviewed about 40 Hoopers between either myself having those conversations or different people on my team. And then, yeah, I use like an AI recorder to kind of transcribe them and obviously read through the transcriptions or listen back and then kind of did some like

summarization there. And then also, you know, use that to then go and do a quantitative survey as well to kind of ask and dig in and get kind of a bigger sample size with similar questions.

Speaker 2 (27:13.742)
So how much would you pay? How big, how much weight could this be for you and trying to build this rough idea of what you're trying to build?

And even trying to like figure out like the right customer to because I I'm still considering it me and Deandre we're talking about go to market strategy earlier and hope to get into that a little bit today But you know, is there a market for schools for example or for trainers or is this like a direct to consumer product? Only where I'm just sending selling to like kids and the parents of kids and customer discovery kind of helped me

Where do you start? Cause they might be all the above eventually. Exactly. You know, is it easier beach had to do schools first? Cause there's less of them. you know, you have this target market, they have a little bit more money than the individual consumer. They can share it with all the students or is actually easier to go to the consumer. Hope that some of them have disposable income where this is more of, you know, a thing that they get just cause they want one, not cause they need one. And that builds enough demand and, you know, groundswell to show everyone that needs one that they exist.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, we're still kind of closing in on the answer. I'm still trying to figure that out, but definitely customer discovery will be a big, big asset of that.

So you bring up a good point. Actually, this is a question worth having answered with Grant because we were talking through it a little bit in terms of go to market. Yeah. So you walked me through like your go to market strategy for for Hooptek, right? Your your ICP, if you had to pick one, it's like young basketball players. ICP is ideal customer profile who you're selling and there are in their archetypes, who they are. The cost per unit.

Speaker 2 (28:33.442)
ideal customer profile.

totally knew that.

Speaker 1 (28:42.71)
So you're talking like a 50 percent landing cost. Right. Which is great from a hard perspective. Go to market. So you had partnerships and influencers. you just landed a pretty large with three million followers. Yeah.

Yeah, we're still signing the paperwork, so I don't want to say yet, but yeah, he's got about three million followers across his different platforms. And what I love the most is that he's specifically a basketball trainer influencer, so very niche in that market.

Yeah, I think from a good market perspective, influence led marketing. We did it with all in, I think, for a consumer product like B2C product like yours that has that novel, like this is the first shooting machine in a backpack. The backpack looks really cool. Absolutely going to work. Of course, you have your paperclip marketing. You can definitely get a positive eye on paperclip with it because that's like your background to do.

You you're eating your Wheaties on email drip campaigns, press events. So we talked we talked about press events. We landed on this idea of doing like backpack drives. You know, they hoop tech is backpack. Right. Right. And so what was your thoughts there?

Yeah, and I love brainstorming with you because you kind of helped me refine that idea. So I'm definitely going to give you props and help and gratitude for your help on that. But yeah, my thought is, hey, like this this product. It is going to make elite basketball training accessible for accessible for everyone. And how cool would it be from a, you know, I'm just going to start shouting out celebrities, maybe I could tag them and we can make it happen right here.

Speaker 3 (30:15.47)
right here now, but like a Derrick Rose or a Angel Reese said, hey, I want to make basketball training accessible for everybody. I'm going to buy X amount of these and I'm going to, you know, do this backpack drive program, give it to every women's basketball team in the Chicago public school system. I've already crunched numbers about 100, a little over 100 teams. And so because mine is at affordable price points, totally, totally doable. But setting it up in a way that, again, it's kind of.

like a mutually beneficial win-win situation all around where, you know, the the endorser is obviously able to have an impact and lift their brand. The schools that are receiving these get elite basketball training. Hoop Tech is able to, you know, generate some revenue, get some traction, right? Show that, you know, this product is good and people want it. And so, yeah, that was like one of the ideas that we had talked about and I think could work. And yeah.

And whenever we were talking about that grant, we were kind of throwing around the concept of, well, there's already backpack drives that exist. And so somehow integrating that together. So instead of just making about Hooptek, making like more of a Hooptek backpack drive where it's both a Hooptek backpack and backpacks. Either you can donate a backpack or a

Yeah.

Or the flip side is, know, if you guys could get a backer for Hoop Tech, that's a charitable backer and you guys start a campaign that, hey, if we get enough backpacks donated, this other backer will donate X amount of Hoop Techs to that school. Yeah. Right. And then you pull that community.

Speaker 3 (31:48.64)
So it's both educational and athletic.

Yep. And it's one of those things that you could pull it in that like, everyone needs backpacks of various kinds to be successful in their life, right? Whether it's to carry your books or this one to get access to this training and this great feature. Yeah. And, you know, make that a blended mission. Yeah. Because if you have a charitable donor that's on the basketball side, able to donate the hoop text, but they're not going to do it unless the community comes together to donate for the backpacks. Yeah. And I think this is where you're the social, you know, social entrepreneurship and the nonprofit and like the community building we talked about at the beginning of the episode.

circles all way back around. We're literally talking about a marketing plan to get off the ground, a go-to market plan. we're like, all right, think community can help here and do these things. And yes, as we all say, it feels good. It's ethically good. just, you know, it feels warm and fuzzy, but it's tactical. Like the world works on community, whether it's the venture capital community. I when you go to fundraise, you'll learn that 80 % of your investors know each other by first name. you know, if you have a closing in a room together, like old school days, everyone will shake hands and they know each other better than they know you. And it's a community.

Yeah. And this is just such a, you know, a continuous narrative in our lives. Absolutely. More so in entrepreneurship than anything.

And I think the skeptic might say, well, you're just doing that as a PR stunt or a marketing ploy. And I think that it definitely can be that. But if you take a step back and you look at kind of the fruits of that organization, then you can kind of tell what their intentions are. And I think making sure that there's always a balance of, we're actually in the community. Like, no, we we know those kids. Yeah. You know, we taught them earlier about entrepreneurship. just. Yeah, we just had a workshop on, yeah, how to low fire prototype and.

Speaker 2 (33:21.966)
low-fi prototype.

Speaker 3 (33:26.67)
I know them. So this is genuine. And I think that's when you get that reciprocation as opposed to kind of that one way higher than thou type of giving.

Well, and think the other side of it is even if it is pure capitalism, you're still doing good for the kids. Yeah. And I think that's my favorite part is I get this theory that like short-term selflessness is actually long-term selfishness. Right. So being selfless in the moment usually means you'll get the most benefit at the end. Right. You build up enough goodwill, the community will take care of you when your trips are down. And it's this, it's this counterintuitive thing that everyone's like, well, you know, why would I ever be selfless now? I should do it for me.

It's when you win.

Speaker 2 (34:05.078)
actually the best way to set yourself up for success is to be selfless now because the community will help you later when you really need it.

Yeah, yeah, I think it was one of you, I was talking to you earlier at the M Hub Hard Tech Summit, said if you want, I'm gonna butcher it, but like if you want, if you want a donor or if you

Oh no, if you're looking for funding, ask for advice. If you're for advice, ask for money when you're fundraising. love that phrase. Not an original thought. I actually don't know who to quote on that one.

haha

Speaker 3 (34:34.568)
say about quotes as long as you forget who you stole it from. It's yours.

It's yours now.

Yeah, the Grant Chapman quote.

Perfect. Register trademark. Yeah.

Can I add is now a good time to ask about kind of conversation we were having around almost like timing and how these different aspects come together from a I guess engineering perspective. Yeah, so maybe you do like a case study brainstorming. Yeah, sure. Right here. So me and me and Grant were talking. So I'm in a position where I am as far as like developing the product goes, I'm very, very early on. I have essentially my proof of concept prototypes that I've, you know, chat, GPT and lofied and.

Speaker 2 (34:53.749)
and like order of operations.

Speaker 2 (35:13.8)
and iterated on and polished.

Exactly. So you take that. Eventually, I need to go to market, right? So that's kind of the second leg. And then the third leg of this all is fundraising, right? I need to go out and get the seed money to, you know, get the real engineering or to

or inventory or tooling or marketing.

Yeah, and I loved the idea that we were brainstorming earlier about kind of bringing in the pre-sale campaign really, really early in and almost giving like a behind the scenes look of where I'm at saying, hey, like, I only have a PVC pipe version with the motor that I got on Amazon.

But do think this will be cool if this dream that we drew up over here comes reality?

Speaker 3 (35:57.996)
Yeah, but I exactly I partnered with glassboard and they gave me some super cool industrial, you know design photos for

Yeah, some renders and some concept drawings.

I was going to ask, I'm curious from you guys, but like, how do you, how do you see those three legs, guess, intertwining as far as like timing goes from like a first time founder like myself, you give me some advice on that.

I think the biggest one with the pre-sale campaigns and hardware that's really scary is don't sell it. When you're in a pre-sale campaign, don't sell it right away because it's going to take you longer than you think to get to market and consumers are wildly unforgiving with delays. We've had clients that had to deal with some of that, know, fall now, ironically, their pre-sale campaigns, the reason they were able to close their round. But it was really tough for them. I've seen other startups actually get crushed in their public will between a really good idea pre-sale.

manufacturing switch and delay. No one ever promoted the device again, just because they didn't ship on time or they weren't like, you know, perceived to be authentic, even though like the founders are first time founders and they lost their credibility. But I think what I've seen work really, really well, are those pre sale campaigns that get you to sign up or maybe put a deposit down, but not a full amount. Right? Hey, no one's gonna be upset if you took

Speaker 2 (37:08.974)
10 or 20 bucks off of them and it got delayed by two years. But if you're taking, don't know what your MSRP goal is, but a hundred or $400, somewhere in this, know, free figure number of money, I might be pretty upset if I put that money down and it's like 24 months late or 18 months late.

Let's give this practice. So my MSRP goal is 600. Yeah. Walk me. What would you

Yeah, go get a deposit, whether that's like 20 bucks or 50 bucks, like just enough that it's not like a 99 cent. Of course I'm going to back this guy, but here's money out of my pocket that I'm never going to see again unless you guys make it. If you can capture that on a render and a dream, you're going to prove that people want this. And cause they know how much you're in your pre-sale, saying, Hey, MSRP is, you know, 599 or four and whatever this is. Do you still want to put a deposit down and you will get the very first ones. along the way you're getting access to the behind the scenes, you know,

of this, you're going investor updates, just like my investors, but you're my micro, you know, supporters. Yeah. That's going to get you your traction because the, you want to show there, it's not how much money you made. It's actually not about how much money you took off the clients. It's about how much money you spent to access those clients. Yeah. Right. Like, Hey, my cost per click to get my $20 deposit is already profitable. Exactly. Right. Like, know, my rate is good. My marketing is hitting the right ICPs. Here's their profiles. The people that are backing me.

a demographic, you know, where they live geographically, are they a school or are they in person, you're starting to build your ICP model up and pressure testing that and showing that you do know how to go to market. every investor is so scared of a technical founder, which again, you're you're luckily not you're in this social entrepreneurship founders, they're going to bet on you for go to market. probably gonna like wonder if you're gonna pull it off from building hardware. Right. All of the flip side is all of my technical co founders I work with are founders. They go

Speaker 2 (38:53.454)
the investor, yeah, I know you can build it. Can you sell the thing? Like who is going to buy this from you? How do you know how to access them? So if you can prove that you have access to the market in a way that's repeatable, oh man, now you've just de-risked the whole thing without needing to wait until you're done to go see if the market's there or the other way around. Tell the market it's here at the risk of blowing up all your social goodwill when you're 18 or 24 months later when you actually launch at scale.

Yeah, I would say, Eric, that is a probably more mature version of what we were talking about earlier. And the reason I say that is because I come from more like the software background. So I had an idea. Yeah, well, the concept that I made it. The concept that I threw to Eric was this. So the biggest innovation when it came to I told you the story as well to Uber, for example, wasn't that you could take right in someone else's car as opposed to a taxi.

And you can fake it till you make it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:48.044)
It was actually the Uber map on your phone. See them coming. So people are much more willing to wait if they know how long their wait is going to be. But they're much more scared and fearful of not of the unknown. So as long as they know, I'm only wait 30 minutes as opposed to 15 minutes. I know you'll be here in 30 and I don't know you're going to be in 15. The same kind of concept applies to, in this case, a waiting list. Yeah. Right. And so like as you launch a product, you could if you could somehow.

yes, that you could see them coming.

Speaker 1 (40:14.99)
turn your waitlist into some sort of product like we mentioned before, where sure, maybe it's not the full $600 MSRP, but you say, hey, look, put down a hundred bucks. It's 99.99. You get the, you're going to have the first units of this product. And then you have them opt into your personal Instagram account of Hooptek or an email or yes to both. And you keep them updated on a week over week, just super intimately updated. And I think what that creates is the Uber map for the waitlist.

to keep people engaged and maybe even become bigger advocates since you're being so transparent.

Yeah, I love that too, because I mean, I have investors now, I'm already keeping them in the loop. And so just adapting that content, making it maybe a little more engaging. Maybe, maybe Polish, maybe not. Maybe it's simply me on my ride back to Chicago. Exactly. Yeah, keeping them, keeping them engaged that way. I love that a lot.

This is super real.

Speaker 2 (41:06.958)
Yeah, because blending that back to your main question of how do these three legs fit together? Right. So I think you need to hit this, the proof that you have access to a market because every investor needs to know that. I think that you also need to then prove the technical side of what you're doing, which is again, you're already working on minimum viable prototypes, but building the plan and not even doing the engineering yet. The really important part is to make a plan of this is where I'm at and this is where I'm going. Again, whether you work with someone like Glassboard to make that plan, because we do this for all kinds of markets.

or you hire an internal team that has experience in a launching product, having them build a plan that, they've been doing this for a while and have some experience is going to come with more credibility than had you had a technical co-founder that was really going to engineer it for you and might totally be able to do so. But now you guys have to sell to the investors that I've never done it by myself, but I think I can do it for this. It's totally different than when you're trying to say, Hey, here's my vendor or I hire these two engineers from

XYZ company that maybe they built a tennis ball launcher. they worked at that company that did that. They know it takes 18 months to go from A to B and where we're at in space. That investor confidence in now your technical timeline is just the same investor confidence that you got by accessing the market. And those two things, get those two legs of the stool, guess what, the third one is already there. If you have technical confidence and you have market confidence, now the investors are gonna be like, okay, cool. Let's just talk terms. Let's talk terms. Like now just down to brass tacks of venture capital.

how big's your market, how much money you're raising, how big do you want to go? And it's way easier if you come with these two proof points to them, then waiting for them to ask, well, how do you know how much money you need or how long it's going to take? Or how do know you can sell this? This is this amount of like we do, we call it discovery at Glassboard that we'll go through and build this roadmap, this timeline, like who's involved? Cause Glassboard can't do everything as much as I wish we were a manufacturer in all things and software developers. We're really good at developing hard tech and prototyping, but that's where our core competencies kind of end.

But we'll help set up that supply chain, but I'll need to identify and discovery who's going to make this. Where are we making this? Do we need a 3PL to warehouse this or are you going to build an office somewhere and warehouse and ship direct and building that roadmap plan? A, helps us build a product that you want, but it helps investors know who's doing what when we're in a house.

Speaker 3 (43:22.028)
I love that too. And it almost makes it feel like it's a, like a pre pre-sale campaign in a way where I'm not, you know, selling it for the full MSRP price. And that even allows me to say like, you know, I'm just, I'm just testing the water. I haven't even started yet, even though I'm getting these customers. And then when I do my pre-sale campaign, it's going to. Yeah.

And they'll all convert. They already have 20 or a hundred bucks in there. They're like, I want to be first in line. Like, Hey, the very first of the first in line, first to fill this bucket. you can kind of, know, gamify that and down. know there's a whole bunch of psychology behind like, how do you gamify people to get them to incentivize the right way?

Sure. We can have a lot of fun with that. The thing that I would say is like, yes, it's not much of a pre is much of a pre sale campaign. It's a validation campaign. You are validating both your engineering pillar. Yeah. You're both you're validating your go to market pillar, which then fuels your funding pillar. And that's whenever we were meeting together earlier saying like a great founders who build

I like that.

Speaker 1 (44:25.74)
truly great companies that impact both yourself and the lives of people that use them are people that do those three things in that case very well. Yeah. Right. And it truly is a mixture between the engineering pillar for the hard tech startup. They go to market pillar, which the initial step for you is the validation, which is possible with some industrial design concepts. Yeah. And then I can initially doing a pay per click campaign and converting like you've done it. I can help you do it like we can get this thing like bought for ninety nine ninety nine and truly.

It would be so great to see the validation. mean, how much more confidence do you go to investors with saying, well, launch this initial validation campaign to validate our go to market. Not the fact that because we already know our products are moonshot. Right. That part just to validate our channels.

Yeah, and not only validation, but the confidence it gives me to say, you know, I'm going to this investor, but I've got some cards here. You know, I have some negotiating power where if we can't come to an agreement on the terms or even maybe if we don't even click how I was hoping we were, can say, okay, well, thanks for your time.

Yeah, well, I'll find one that clicks with me because I validated that I believe there's something here. Exactly. There's a word in the venture space, conviction. And it's like not traditionally used in like, you know, regular human speak a lot, but conviction in your idea, conviction in your plan and conviction in your company's ability to hit those goals. Yeah, that's 89 % of what all investors write checks for. They're not writing checks because they truly think that the world needs a basketball catching machine. Right. Sometimes they do it most of the time.

No, they think that, man, this founder is so convinced. actually like his conviction comes from data and comes from fact, not just from, he's high in his own supply. This is really like, man, if he believes this much, we're in.

Speaker 1 (46:09.186)
You know, I have to say something there as well, Grant. And I think that's something that's a bit overlooked, but I completely agree with conviction and to raise capital, truly does take conviction. Conviction. And what I mean by that is like in order to feel the conviction, you have to put in the work to make it feel like you have to get there. Right. Unless you're just like completely delusional, which is also right. You Yeah, you know, and do we work and just keep it going and never stop and you know.

Sometimes useful.

Speaker 1 (46:37.42)
That's the story for the day. like the the founders that truly got there and they figure out they validated it for themselves walking into those. Like that's basically what they're after. Yeah. The reason why I think sometimes fundraising gets a bad rap and I talk to like investors and things like that is less because like investors write checks. Yeah, that's their job. That's like that is what they're doing. They're capital allocators. They raise money from LPs or they have cash and that's a differentiated asset that is

clearly high risk and the only thing you're looking for is like a true venture back return. So as long as the math checks out and this guy actually has conviction as it's worth the shot, they're going to put in 10 to 50 bets depending on the fund and hope that one of them hits. So their job is to deploy capital, your job is to walk in with conviction and you walk out with the check. And so make sure you have those three things.

love that actually reminds me of a quote. actually hear a lot of basketball players say it, so I don't know who to attribute it to. I'm going to attribute to Eric Joseph Roberson, know, mediocre junior college basketball player. He once said that, you know, I trust my work. the, you know, people reported would always ask like, this is the context I would always hear this quote. Like they'd ask players like, are you nervous? Are you nervous such and such is going to be in the audience or the

List yourself now if you forgot who we wrote that rule down in this podcast.

Speaker 3 (47:57.378)
the

That this is your plane is on a team. Yeah.

Yeah, and they say, no, I've been in the gym. Yeah. You know, I trust my work. I've put in I've validated. I've had over 50 conversations. I've I've had 500 respondents to my surveys. I've you know, I've tested and truthfully, you know, you talk about it from a venture capital perspective and getting funding for me. It was I needed that in order to make the leap from my job. Exactly. I need to trust my work. And, know, like I

I initially got into entrepreneurship, I was laid off my most recent job. And I, you you get unemployment, I give you some cushion, but it is, you got to the point where I'm like, man, I'm getting some traction from Hoop Tech. You know, I got into the pre-accelerator with M-Hub and having these interviews and I raised some money and you know, I did these different things that kind of came to the point. And shout out to my wife, because truthfully, she was like the biggest supporter of like, she's like, go for it.

She's got to gas you up. Someone's got to. You can't always be your own cheerleader. And in every founder relationship, there's either a parent or a significant other or a friend or an uncle or insert a relation that you have in your community, back to community, that is behind the scenes just gasping that person out. You got this, no matter what, you can do this. And it takes that push to have someone else believe in themselves enough to have the conviction.

Speaker 3 (49:18.218)
Exactly. Yeah. And you can do it two ways. One, can be delirious, like you said. That's true. That could get you in trouble, but sometimes it works out. Yeah. But then another way is to trust your work, put in the work and then have people like my beautiful, amazing, pretty wife who says, like, honey, I've seen you every day after work working on this and I've seen you networking and I've seen, you know, I've seen you putting the work like I believe in you go for it. And, you know, so that I love that conviction that's spot on.

conviction and go for it. Everybody, this is the Hard Tech Podcast with our guests Eric Roberson and Grant Chapman. I'm Deandre Hericus. Look forward to you guys tuning in next week.

and go for it.

Speaker 2 (49:56.568)
Take care. Thank you.