Hoop Book wins DePaul University Entrepreneurship Competition

Last week was pretty exciting for us at Hoop Book. It marked the end of the Launch DePaul competition. Several weeks ago we entered Hoop Book into the Launch DePaul entrepreneurship competition and this past Wednesday was the finals.

Along with several other entrepreneur teams, Andy and I pitched Hoop Book  to a panel of entrepreneurs, angel investors, and DePaul faculty.  We were fortunate enough to win the competition and were awarded some amazing prizes.

Andy and I have been confident in Hoop Book all along but it was great to be recognized and reassured from experienced professionals.

First of all, we want to thank our customers that took our survey and supplied us with testimonials. All your support was incredibly helpful!

Next, we want to thank everyone involved with the competition especially Professor Chadha, April Lane, and the judges from the Coleman Center. It was a great experience!

We also want to give a shout out to the other four finalists. Nicecream, Redeal.me, Sunrise Center North, and The L Stop. Everyone did a great job and we wish you the best of luck!

For more information on the competition visit http://cec.depaul.edu/blog/2010/04/2010-launch-depaul-winners.php

More Hoop Book updates to come shortly!

Press Release Glitch (we messed up)

Our bad..

Over the weekend we noticed a glitch in HoopBook’s Press Release report. For some reason, in the PR report HBL was not counting freethrows made towards each teams pint total. We think the error was created when we added the Point differential function. The goods news is that the PR  seems to be the only report effected. Regardless, we apologize for the error and are working to solve the problem. We hope to get an update out to all users within the next week. Until then, we have temporarily suspended the free trial download of HBL.

Again we apologize for the inconvenience.

Matt

Grade School Basketball Teams using Hoop Book

When we were in the development phase of Hoop Book we wanted to address the hassle of using the basketball scorebook at grade school games. If your grade school team is anything like the leagues that we played in and coach for you understand our frustration. In grades 3-8 there are rules that require every player to make an appearance in at least 2 quarters and no more than 3. Keeping track of this is a pretty difficult responsibility. Not only can a coach receive a technical for failing to follow this rule, the more daunting pressure comes from the errr…. “vocal” parents that won’t let you forget to put in their kid. No coach wants to deal with that so using Hoop Book is a great alternative to the normal basketball scorebook because it automatically keeps track of player appearances per quarter and it allows the scorekeeper to immediately see each players quarter total without worrying about mistakes or poor handwriting.

When a player is substituted into the game the corresponding quarter bubble automatically becomes illuminated (see picture). We think that this makes it easier that using the paper scorebook and having to fill in the appropriate quarter box by hand. Also if a player is on the bench and you want to see how many quarters a player has played you can quickly glance at their player square and to the right of his/her number will be 4 vertical boxes. The number of filled-in boxes represents the corresponding quarter that player appeared in. Also if you use the mouse to hover over the players number on the bench a pop-up window appears with that player’s point total, foul total, and number of quarters appeared in. (see picture)

Rec leagues using HoopBook

Andy and I’s first intention is to get grade schools through the college level using HoopBook. But where else could you see HoopBook being used?

One of our goals is to partner with a recreation center and have them use HBL in their basketball leagues. It doesn’t matter if it is a Lifetime Fitness or a local rec center. We think HBL would be a great addition to any program or league. To illustrate why we think this would be beneficial requires a short story.

Andy and I have had the, call it pleasure, of playing in the “old man rec leagues”. You know, the leagues where everyone believes their role on the team is to be the game-changing scorer. Where some guy could be 0 for 10 but then knock a three off the glass and think he should be rewarded the next 4 trips down the floor for “heat checks”. Well, one thing we have found in common among all these rec teams is the guys who play love boasting via email chain with everyone on the team about their performance in the past game. After two days of emails, 10 points, 2 rebounds, 3 assists, and 7 turnovers (from behind the back passes and failed ally-oop attempts) quickly turns to 22 points, 10 rebounds, 12 assists, and no longer any turnovers.

I say lets keep these people honest! How cool would it be if you had the game summaries and you could call your buddy out on his exaggerations? The day after the game all the players could receive an email with the game summary and if they happened to drop 40, they can put it up on the fridge right over their kids’ report cards. But in all seriousness, we think it would be pretty neat if the players had a record of their game. Maybe this would help teams point out their mistakes and become more competitive.

If anyone works at a rec center or has any connections at one let us know. We would be happy to work something out to get HoopBook running in their program.

Matt

New feature: Player Point Differential

Ever wonder how much better your team does when an individual player is on the floor? Ever though about it? Today we are releasing the newest HBL feature, point differentials. This automatically tracks the game score when a player checks into the game and compares it to the score when a player checks out of a game. For example, if I check in and  we have a 25 to 15 lead but when I  check out the score is tied at 25 because I had I bunch of turnovers, I will have a -10 point differential.

This stat shows up on both the home and guest team game summaries.

It is a pretty cool stat to keep track of because it helps you measure the intangibles a player brings to the game.

If you guessed that this was Andy’s idea, you’re correct. (Secretly, he thinks that he would have got more pt if his coaches had this stat… probably not though. He couldn’t play defense.)

Matt

Hoop Book is named as finalist in B-plan competition

Last weekend we entered Hoop Book in Northwestern University’s annual “Entrepreneur Idol” competition. 30 teams were accepted and presented HBL in the first round Saturday. Later in the day we were named one of 6 finalists. Although it was disappointing that we didn’t win (didn’t have any basketball fans on the panel of judges), overall it was a great experience. Met some cool people and got some great feedback on HBL.

We plan to launch HBL early this week so stay tuned!

Matt