Huppa raises €1M pre-seed to build a single operating system for class-based gyms

Huppa (Amsterdam) has raised a €1M pre-seed backed by a syndicate of Dutch tech founders — alumni of Sentia, Keylane, TicketSwap, Moneybird, and Revue — alongside NL SportTech Ventures. No single lead investor was named. The company was founded by Sharief Mohamed (CEO) and Gino Arendsz (co-founder) and targets gyms, CrossFit boxes, and class-based fitness studios initially across the Netherlands and Belgium.

The problem Huppa is solving

Running a boutique gym or class-based studio requires software for member management, class booking, payment processing, financial reporting, and increasingly marketing automation. Most operators currently use several tools for these functions, none of which talk to each other without manual intervention. Huppa's pitch is a single platform that covers the full operational stack — member management, bookings, payments, financial insights, and AI-powered automation — so that a studio owner manages the business from one place rather than five.

The AI automation component is not specified in detail at this stage. The press release describes the ability to automate administrative tasks across the platform; the specific workflows are not named. That vagueness is typical of pre-seed positioning, where the AI promise is more directional than delivered.

A Dutch-tech syndicate with a market thesis

The investor roster is the most distinctive element of this round. Rather than a lead VC, Huppa has assembled a syndicate of Dutch operators: founders and early employees of Sentia (IT services), Keylane (insurance software), TicketSwap (secondary ticket marketplace), Moneybird (accounting SaaS for SMBs), and Revue (newsletter platform, acquired by Twitter). Each built or scaled a SaaS business targeting Dutch small businesses. Together they represent what amounts to a community-backed pre-seed — the kind of round that signals local market conviction more reliably than a brand-name VC writing a check from a thesis.

NL SportTech Ventures provides the sector-specific lens. The combination — SMB SaaS experience plus sports market knowledge — maps cleanly onto what Huppa needs to survive its first year: distribution into Dutch fitness communities and the product discipline to retain operators who could easily switch back to Mindbody.

The Netherlands and Belgium target is appropriately scoped for €1M. The fitness market in those two countries is fragmented — many independent studios, independent CrossFit boxes, yoga and barre studios — and poorly served by the global incumbent platforms, which were built around the US and UK markets. If Huppa can reach 150 studios by end of 2027 with strong retention, it will have an argument for a Series A. If it can't, the €1M is the lesson.