Dear investors, users, friends, family, and everyone passionate about basketball and youth sports.
Eugene here, founder and CEO of Level Up Basketball. Transparency has always been the cornerstone of our journey, inspired by lessons learned on the court—trust your intuition, play through challenges, and stay committed. These past five months have tested our resilience, but we’re emerging stronger and more determined than ever.
Challenges Faced
- Financial Strain: In August, we exhausted our funding, leading to the painful decision to let go of two team members, Dasha and Sasha. Their contributions were invaluable, and this was a tough but necessary step to sustain the business.
- Pick-Up Games Feature: Our attempt to launch this feature didn’t gain traction, primarily due to insufficient user volume. Timing is everything, and we’ll revisit this once our base grows.
- Technical Setback: In early October, a critical app issue caused all premium video drills to be unavailable. This disrupted user experience temporarily but has since been resolved.
Positive Developments
- Community Impact: Thousands of kids in the U.S. and beyond continue to engage with basketball through our app.
- Operational Resilience: Thanks to remaining AWS credits, we can run our servers until October 2025.
- Revenue Growth: With $1,000 in net revenue, we’re reinvesting into development and content creation.
- Visionary Focus: We’re exploring AR opportunities, particularly with Meta’s Orion glasses, as part of our long-term strategy.
- Organic Growth: New users are still discovering and using the app organically.
- Advertising Relaunch: Meta, Google, and Apple Search Ads are back on track, and we’re seeing promising revenue trends while maintaining profitability.
Product Vision & Roadmap
- Stability Enhancements: Addressing key app stability issues by December 2024.
- AI Innovations: Relaunching the daily NBA news summary with AI automation.
- Upgraded AI-Coach: Enhancing personalization with advanced scheduling and training recommendations for users.
- Future Vision: Over the next two years, we aim to integrate AR glasses and computer vision AI, creating a fully immersive and interactive basketball training experience.
