Raleigh-Durham, NC — Coming Soon

Baseball Lite.
A Real Homerun Derby Experience
Built for Everyone.

Real bats. Real baseballs. Real ball flight. Premium amenities. Unforgettable homerun moments. Coming to Raleigh-Durham. This is yours.

Be First to Swing Investors & Partners

Most people get kicked out of playing baseball. They never stop loving it. Diamond Derby is where they get to play again.

800K+
Brand impressions — pre-launch, organic
98.7%
Said they'd visit if it opened near them
72%
Of fans remember the first homerun they hit

For Every Fan

The Game
Is Yours.

Welcome back.

Baseball has over 100 million fans in the U.S. Almost all of them stopped playing as adults. Whether you played through college, never played at all, or haven't swung in twenty years — if you still feel something when you hear the crack of a bat, this is built for you.

Diamond Derby is creating Baseball Lite—a real homerun derby experience built for former players, lifelong fans, and first-timers.

Baseball Lite — The New Category

The space between fan and player has never had a venue. Adult leagues require commitment. Batting cages are transactional. Simulators put a screen between you and the ball. None of them are built for a group of friends who just want to feel like the hero for an hour. Diamond Derby is.

The Venue

Diamond Derby
Homerun Park.

An indoor venue with semi-private batting cages and an outdoor Homerun Park. Built around group play — book a time slot, take swings with real bats and real baseballs, and try to clear progressively further homerun walls. The group brings the energy. Integrated food and beverage. No instruction. No equipment to bring. No experience required.

Side-by-side scale comparison: Little League field vs Diamond Derby Homerun Park — same baseball experience, fraction of the footprint

Batting Cages

Semi-private. Built for group play. Reserved by time slot.

Real Equipment

Real bats. Real baseballs. No screens. No projections. No simulations.

Progressive Walls

Tiered homerun fences. Every skill level has a wall in reach.

Integrated F&B

Sports bar, ordering from your batting cage, and social spaces. A clubhouse for the group to hang out and socialize, not just swing and leave.

3x Smaller Footprint

Than the average sportstainment site. Most need 5–15 acres. We fit where they can't.

Raleigh-Durham

Deep baseball roots. 2M+ residents. No venue like this exists.

The Experience

Baseball.
Simplified.

No teams. No pressure. No instruction. Just a bat, a ball, and the chance to launch one over the wall — together.

Empty batting cage at sunset looking out at the Homerun Park range
Step In.
Swing.
Go Yard.

Group play. 60-minute sessions. No experience required.

Be First to Swing

The Technology

Built on
Derby Box.

Every Homerun Park experience is powered by Derby Box — our patent-pending autonomous pitch delivery system. No machine in the hitting zone. Just a meatball, every pitch.

Obstruction-Free Delivery

Everything else in baseball puts something in the hitting zone. A person. A machine. A safety screen. Derby Box puts nothing there — a free swing and a clean ball path, with no ricochets, no stops, no eyeballs staring back at you.

Proven Delivery. Not a Novelty.

The ball rises into the zone on the same close, hittable trajectory coaches have used for batting practice for decades. This isn't a new way to deliver a pitch — Derby Box just removes the person standing in front of you, and makes it consistent every time.

You Can't Strike Out Here.

Everything in baseball wants to challenge you. Derby Box wants you to win. Calibrated for contact. Tuned for confidence. Right down the heart of the plate, every time. The intimidation is the bug. Derby Box eliminates it.

The Bat. The Ball. The Wall.

No pitcher. No coach. No screen. No projection. No simulation. Just real bats, real baseballs, and a wall asking to be cleared. The most direct version of baseball that exists.

Patent-Pending · Provisional Filed Sept 2025 · Full Filing August 2026

Derby Box makes the real game — real equipment, real ball flight — accessible to anyone: the kid who's never played, the guy who still plays every weekend, and the former player who hasn't swung in years. That's the mechanism Diamond Derby owns, and the patent that protects it.

By The Numbers

The Fans
Have
Spoken.

You already chose the moment. We're just building the place.

1,671 total responses · 11 survey questions · 4 audience channels · November 2025 – May 2026

We got 1,671 responses from fans about the sport — across eleven survey questions, four audience channels, six months of collection. The data made one thing clear: the audience isn't waiting for us to convince them. They're waiting for us to open.

72%

of fans remember the first homerun they hit.

98.7%

said they'd visit Diamond Derby if it opened near them.

46.5%

of survey respondents were between the ages of 25–34 — the generation baseball stopped building for is the one asking for this most.

Our Story

People Don't
Miss Baseball.
They Miss the
Feeling.

"The moment the ball cleared the wall was always the point."

Diamond Derby started with one observation: baseball has over 100 million fans and almost no casual, social way for them to play it as adults.

Traditional batting cages feel transactional. Adult leagues require commitment. Simulators are screen-based and isolated. None of them are designed for a group of friends who just want to feel like the hero for an hour.

The answer wasn't a better batting cage. It was a new kind of venue — and patent-pending technology that makes it work. Derby Box is the moat. The Homerun Park is what gets built around it. One mechanism. One destination. Built from scratch since 2020.

That's what we're building.

Meet The Founder

Tanner Bykowski

I'm Tanner. I grew up turning my backyard into a baseball field. Now I'm building a Homerun Park for grown-ups like me who never stopped caring about baseball but lost access to playing it. Six years bootstrapped. Packed everything I owned and moved 2,200 miles from Arizona to Raleigh with no guarantees—just a belief that baseball deserved something better. Undefeated Milwaukee Brewers Racing Sausage (yes, really).

Follow the Founder on LinkedIn
Adults gathered at the Diamond Derby lounge and patio at sunset

Patent Application In Progress

Patent-pending Derby Box pitch delivery system. Provisional filed September 2025. Full filing in process — expected August 2026.

100+ Industry Connections

Athletes, venue operators, real estate, construction, finance, and technology.

The Raise Is Open

A pre-revenue round to fund the Derby Box prototype, full patent filing, and architecture. The technology is what makes the venue defensible.

LLC Incorporated in NC

Fully bootstrapped since 2020.

Investors & Partners

The Raise
Is Open.

This round funds Derby Box — the patent-pending pitch delivery platform that makes Diamond Derby work. Not a venue build. Not construction. This is pre-venue: mechanical prototype, full utility patent filing, and locked architecture — the proof that earns the flagship build.

The Diamond Derby Homerun Park is Deployment 1 — the first place Derby Box goes public. Real bats. Real baseballs. Real ball flight. At a footprint 3x smaller than the average sportstainment site.

This is a pre-revenue, pre-prototype round at the highest-leverage moment the IP can be funded — before construction, before staffing, before any risk that better-funded competitors can't absorb.

We're not looking for everyone. We're looking for the right people.

33% of the raise is closed. If you're the right partner, the conversation starts now.

Talk to the Founder
1,671
Survey responses across 4 audience channels
800K+
Brand impressions — pre-launch, organic
98.7%
Said they'd visit if it opened near them
25K+
Website views — pre-revenue, pre-launch
5K+
LinkedIn followers — organic, no marketing spend

Common Questions

Got
Questions?

Is this a batting cage?

No. Diamond Derby wasn't built for training—it was built for the fan and player who lost access to playing but never stopped loving the game. Traditional batting cages are designed around repetition and improvement. Diamond Derby is designed around the feeling of hitting a homerun: real bats, real baseballs, real ball flight, and human-scaled walls, simplified so anyone can step in with confidence and experience baseball again.

What makes Diamond Derby different?

Baseball has always forced people to choose between real and accessible. The real options are difficult, intimidating, and built around failure. The accessible options often replace the game with screens, arcade mechanics, or modified equipment. Diamond Derby bridges that gap. We're creating Baseball Lite—a new category of real, accessible homerun derby experiences built around baseball's most memorable moment.

When does Diamond Derby open?

The Homerun Park is Deployment 1, and it's not built yet — this raise will fund the technology and the proof needed to earn the construction round. Get on the list to hear the moment that changes.

Where will it be located?

Raleigh-Durham, NC. Exact site details lock in as the round progresses.

What is Derby Box?

The patent-pending pitch delivery platform that makes the whole thing work — real, hittable pitches with nothing standing between you and the ball.

How do I invest or partner?

Email tanner@diamondderby.com to start the conversation directly.

Founding Members

Want To
Swing?

If yes, get on the list. Founding members get first access when we open.

Diamond Derby is creating Baseball Lite—a real homerun derby experience in Raleigh-Durham built for former players, lifelong fans, and anyone who's ever wanted to hit one over the fence.

Be First to Swing Investors & Partners