Will Ahmed - CEO of Whoop on The Future of Wearable Technology

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today we are joined by Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of whoop. Will, thank you so much for coming on today.

Casey, thank you for having me.

Of course, man. So I've really been looking forward to this podcast. Just for the context. I literally have a group chat with some of my closest friends and founders, and all we talk about is health data. And that has been a more recent trend over the last year and a half. And I'm just so excited to not only dive into the story of whoop, but just talk about the future of what you guys are building, because I've just been such a fan of it and quite frankly, just all things health data and being an athlete, growing up, excited to dive in. So before we really get into it, you started Whoop in 2012, is that right?

That's right, 2012. A while ago, the idea of continuous health monitoring was still, I think, kind of a far out idea.

Yeah, that's where I wanted to start. Like, what was it like back then in 2012, which is like a whole different lifetime ago when it comes to the technology that we utilize today. Like, what was the health tech space back then when you were getting into it?

Well, I'll even go back maybe 2010, because that's when I started thinking about WHOOP and doing research for WHOOP. I would say that the state of the market at the time was a lot of antiquated technology and then the very beginning of pedometers. So antiquated technology that included heart rate monitors, so chest straps that were, you know, pretty similar to, to how they had been invented in the 80s. They hadn't evolved very much. The electrocardiogram, which was very interesting technology but expensive, needed to be in a hospital setting. Sleep laboratories would be the best way to really understand your sleep. So that'd be like a PSG machine where you're putting all these different nodes on your, on your body and spending a night at a sleep clinic. And the idea of wearing something continuously that could measure your body didn't really exist. You know, there were companies just starting to come to market, like Fitbit, that were claiming to be able to measure your steps throughout the day and how that was going to be the, the next frontier for you as, as a, a healthier person. But I was also looking at it through the lens of being an athlete and having grown up my whole life playing sports, and I was playing squash while I was at Harvard, so I was a college athlete, and I felt like I didn't really Know what I was doing to my body while I was training. And that got me very interested in what could you measure about the body for athletic performance and what does it take to train optimally, to recover optimally? How does sleep fit into the mix? How do you peak on a given day? How do you avoid injury? These were some of the questions I was asking myself and it really didn't seem like there was technology in the space to answer. And so that began the very long process of building the courage, if you will, Casey, to start a company.

I love that. Wow. So definitely a different time in terms of health tech, in understanding what you were dealing with as an athlete. You know, going to Harvard, playing sports your whole life. I actually, just for the context here as well, I have this trophy, neck brace trophy, I like to call it in the back of my, my video here because I grew up an athlete, played hockey for 10 years, born and raised in Virginia. Then I started playing football in the cross and sophomore year of high school, I ended up getting injured playing football, which led me to being in a neck brace for six months. And it was really during that time when I really went all in, into business and entrepreneurship and marketing and ended up starting the show. And that mindset of an athlete. I'm curious to know what was your idea of your career when you were going to college? Did you want to go start a company or what was the initial game plan growing up? You know, growing up as an athlete, you're ambitious, you're, you're pushing yourself and that translate into business, which we can talk to. But what was your game plan prior to having these ambitions and like you said, building the courage to then starting a company, which was whoop, well, when.

I was a teenager, let's call it, I was hyper present. And I think that's generally a good thing. But it also meant that I, I didn't see further than, you know, six weeks in front of me, you know, maybe six hours. And so it was the idea of what I was going to do when I grew up seemed pretty far out as a concept. And I have this theory that as you get older, you can start to project further out in time, even while staying, you know, somewhat present, grounded person. But really as a teenager, I, I didn't have, I didn't have that vision for what was to come. I was really, you know, here right now, what's happening. And I think I naturally was sort of assuming I was going to follow in the footsteps of my father, who had worked in finance. He came to this country, Egyptian immigrant, came to this country as a 22 year old with very little and then over time rose the ranks in finance and in private wealth management. And so I was somewhat familiar with financial roles, investment banking and private equity and hedge funds. And, and after my freshman year at Harvard, I worked at a hedge fund. And after my sophomore year I worked at an investment bank. After my, my junior year I worked at a private equity firm. So I was, I was flirting with this idea of going into finance. But I will say this to the young people listening. Internships are a great thing to figure out what you don't want to do and because it doesn't take that much time to figure out you don't like something. And so I, I just realized that even though I was working for great people and at great companies, I did not want to be in finance. And so figuring out what you don't want to do can be just as good as figuring out what you do want to do.

Yeah, absolutely. So when you're building up the courage to then you figured out what you don't want to do, you want to pursue Whoop. What were some of the first action, actions that you were taking to create something that a, you know, if someone was a founder today and they're listening to this and they wanted to go start some type of wearable company, like they have examples to, to see and a market to, to understand for you, like what were some of the first steps that you took after you built that courage that led to starting whoop. And what were some of the first hires you made or the first actions you took as someone that wanted to go build something in this space?

Well, it's worth saying, I mean I was, I was scared by the idea of, of starting a company. I didn't really know what that meant. And I think if you're nervous, be prepared. So my strategy was to just grind through it, to work through it. And, and so I did a ton of physiology research as a student. I did a ton of market research. I wrote a business, you know, 70 page business plan, I wrote a 70 page physiology paper. And these documents built, helped me build courage to be prepared and to say, I think, you know, I think I've done as much as I can now is it's am I going to take the leap? And the leap ends up being still the hardest part. But doing all that work got me very comfortable with the fact that this wasn't just some intellectual exercise in my dreams. It was, you know, I had put it on paper I felt like I had a plan. I felt like what I needed to do, I knew what I needed to do. And so that gave me the courage, my fall of my senior year to say, okay, I'm not going to go into finance, I'm going to start a company. And from that point forwards, I was in a mode of all in on whoop.

Love that. Absolutely. And I want to speak from questions that I've had and also my friends and I, as I talked about, we have this group chat of ideas that we have when it comes to health data and just questions. And I felt privileged to have you on the show today to really dive into some of these. But I've been someone that I have the eight sleep bed and I've been someone that I ran my first marathon last year and I've been really taking my training seriously. And when it comes to data, something that we always chat through, my founder, friends and I's is, you know, what are some of the most shocking health stats or trends that you have seen across user data that you can obviously speak to or personal experiences just in terms of having this, you know, the market share that you do with people that are training? What are some shocking statistics that you've seen from starting the company in 2012 to then where you are today, having this multibillion dollar company and being at the cutting edge of health tech. Just when it comes to the data itself, are there shocking things that you can share and speak to when it comes to the actual data, data and how it's changed over time?

Well, at the, at the professional level, which is where the business was founded. Now today WHOOP is a pretty broad consumer business around the world, but we started with the world's best athletes. And so I did a lot of research on athletes and one of the most interesting things was that about 70% of athletes over train and over training, just to define it, is when you go through, through a period of overreaching, overreaching being like you're pushing your body on a daily basis past what your body's capable of. In WHOOP terms, this would be your body has a low recovery, but you put on a lot of strain. Right. So overreaching is doing that for a few days in a row. Over training is doing that for weeks in a row to then the point where your body cannot recover even if you're not putting strain on it. So it's the ultimate sort of betrayal, if you will, for an athlete because they've done all this hard work thinking they're Getting fitter. And now what they've actually done is run themselves down. And so seeing that 70% of athletes did that was pretty eye opening. And of course, that was my lens into starting the company. Now, people who use WHOOP have a dramatically lower over training rates, but it's fascinating to me to even meet professional athletes who still don't measure these things, don't measure their sleep, don't measure their recovery. I mean, I think we'll look back on this period of time or 10 years earlier in which professional athletes didn't measure sleep or didn't measure their physiology similarly to how we look back on baseball players smoking cigarettes in the dugout. You know, it just seemed like what era were they in? Yeah, for sure, it won't make sense. So that's probably one of the biggest things that stands out to me in the, in the professional sports space is that over training, such a big deal. And it's highly preventable if you measure your body. You know, big picture for at least the United States is an obesity epidemic that for some reason the country doesn't really want to talk about. But, you know, this idea that like 60% of the country is going to be categorized as obese, you know, just what seems like a very short period of time, that, that's pretty staggering. And the way I think about some of that is it's education, it's lifestyle habits, it's diet, and. And what are certain roles that that WHOOP could play? I think that WHOOP in general today is operating with members who mostly sit outside of that 60%. We've certainly had people who've joined Whoop and who have lost a lot of weight and benefited from it. We're taking a population today that I would say is directionally motivated and driven and giving them more data to perform at a higher level. And it's really broadened beyond athletes to now being executives and doctors and lawyers and, you know, podcast hosts like yourself, and entertainers and. And so, you know, a lot of fascinating people use the product who are certainly well beyond sports.

Yeah.

And, and it might be as simple as a woman becoming a new mother. And the process of going from, you know, getting pregnant to being pregnant to having a child to deal, dealing with a newborn, to the evolution of your body. So for whoop, I think the. The definition of human performance has evolved dramatically over the course of the 10 years that I've built the company.

Absolutely. Now that's what has been, you know, when you launched speaking of athletes and that changing over time, what Was what did that change look like? Right, like starting with peak athletes and then now, you know, leaning into the percentage of people that want to just, you know, are every day tracking their health. How did that change over time coming from, you know, the hyper focused on peak athletes? And from a business perspective, how did some of the efforts change when it comes to the marketing efforts and going to the consumers? And even before we really dive in deep there, I want to start off by when was the first prototype that you, you had and what were some of the feedback that you got and how did you think about it back then?

Well, the, the very first hardware we built was focused on being able to do three things and it was to measure heart rate, measure heart rate variability, and measure sleep. And if you think back to our earlier conversation about technology, we were really trying to replace the chest strap, the heart rate monitor which people use during exercise, the electrocardiogram which could measure heart rate variability, which we, we learned was this fascinating lens into recovery. And the PSG machine, which was the gold standard for measuring sleep, the one where you have to put all these words on your body. And, and so we wanted to do that in a very small continuous form factor, I would say the, the heart rate and the heart rate variability piece, that was really the first, the very first prototype and it was quite preposterous looking. People can probably Google what it looks like on the Internet. But, you know, it was like a Velcro thing that you would put around your wrist and there was a big sensor on top of it, and then it had a long wire that connected to a big box, and then that big box had a long wire that connected to a computer. So, you know, you weren't really, you weren't really able to move around all that much with it. But we were able to show that it was able to measure heart rate during a lot of forms of movement, not all forms, but a lot, and measure heart rate variability, which was this lens into your autonomic nervous system. And we were the first to do it. So that was, you know, a big leap forwards over time. We were able to get that, that set of technology into a smaller form factor, albeit one that we still weren't super proud of. But by, say, 2014, we had a product that we could be using with Pro athletes, and two of our first hundred users were people like LeBron James and Michael Phelps. So we started with these unbelievable athletes, and then from there we broadened, I would say in 2015 and 16, to a lot of sports teams and Sports leagues. We became, you know, the first wearable in Major League Baseball. It became the official wearable of the NFL Players Association. We had all these teams in the NBA and NHL players and college teams. We had lots of really, really good athletes wearing the product. And then in 2017, we came out with our next generation and we entered the consumer market. And that was really, I would say, targeting fitness enthusiasts. So people who aspired to be like these great athletes, but in their own way. And then we had this big sort of pivot in the business where we shifted the whole business to being a subscription. Yeah, and I can talk more about.

That, but yeah, you were talking about this on the Jason Calacanis show and how it changed over time and yeah, please dive into that because I think it's such a fascinating concept where I know I remember you saying how you didn't plan to create this massively innovative approach to the business model, but you did. And I'd love for you to dive in for those that may not know what it is.

So essentially, Whoop sells our product entirely as a subscription and you can sign up for paying just 30 bucks a month and we send you the hardware for free as part of that. Or you can spend $240 and get an annual membership. So the equivalent of 20 bucks. But again, the hardware is included. So you know, it's our responsibility to continue innovating on the software and the analytics and releasing new features. And this is pretty innovative in the space because if you look at other products, they're all hardware sales. Yeah, you pay one price and you get the thing and that thing really doesn't change much. Whereas we're on the other side of the spectrum where we ship you a piece of hardware, but then we're constantly updating it and evolving it and adding new features and new software. So we feel this sort of strong desire to be innovating and constantly updating the product. I would say that the transition to going from being a one time hardware sale to being a subscription where people are paying every month was a bit of a bet. The business change, like it was a big deal for us to make that change because we went from getting $500 upfron to getting as little as $30 up front. So it has all kind of cash flow implications. But we ultimately felt it was the right business model for the mission of the company, which was to improve your health or your fitness and be with you at every step of the journey. You know, a consumer's health and fitness journey changes enormously. Over the course of six months or a year or five years. And we felt as a subscription, we needed to continue to evolve with you rather than just be this one time transaction.

Such an innovative concept. I'm curious, when you and the team conceived of this idea, was there a lot of pushback from investors or people on the team, or what were some of the first thoughts around that concept?

Well, we liked it in the sense that it aligned our members directly with our success as a product. So the better the product was, the more likely people would be to stay on it and pay for it. So we'd have this immediate feedback loop on how good the product was.

Yeah.

We also liked it because it allowed us to dramatically lower the upfront cost to a consumer. So now a consumer could sign up for very little. In fact, if you're listening to this right now, you can sign up for free. That's how aggressive we've gotten.

Wow. Really?

Subscription, you can literally sign up for free for 30 days. We send you the hardware, you get the full membership experience.

Wow.

And at the end of 30 days, you either become a member or you send the whoop back, but it's. It's completely free, which is quite innovative.

Absolutely.

Now, the risk, the other thing that we liked about it, just to close the loop on that, is it it positioned the business as being more of a SaaS business than a hardware business, which is better from a public markets standpoint. And being able to raise capital from investors.

Yeah, absolutely.

The challenges with it were, one, it's very hard to keep someone on a product for a long time and paying a subscription for a long time. You don't have to look very far in the wearable space to see a lot of failed products. The other challenge is just the cash flow implications of sending a hardware to someone that's more expensive for us to make than they're actually paying for. You're betting that they fall in love with the product and stay on it for a long time.

Yep.

So those were areas of real pushback from investors and team members. But we made the decision and. And it's probably one of the single best decisions in the company's history.

Wow. Yeah. I was gonna say. Cause I assuming, obviously with the track record, it was a. It's been an incredible decision. I want to talk about, you know, you guys have raised, I believe, over $400 million. Is that right?

Correct.

What has the additional capital not only helped you guys do, but when it comes to the development of the product. Right. There's people out there That I know I was once this person where it's okay, you see things like the eight sleep mattress, Oura ring, whoop. And you have all these different options. And of course Apple and the Apple Watch. There's so many different not only products, but use cases from, you know, it being sorry about that on your wrist, on your finger, to Applewise versus sleeping with it or not, or obviously the eight sleep you're actually sleeping on the technology. I would love to hear sort of your experience with the research of different form factors from what you guys have thought about and just sort of the lens on the industry of wearable technology and what this capital that you've raised has allowed you to do from a research perspective. Because I think a lot of people, including myself and people that I interview that, you know, athletes and entrepreneurs that love this whole space, they're always curious about where the industry is going, how things will change, how small can things get from a ring, from a on the wrist? And just curious to get your thoughts on that from a R and D perspective from the fundraising and, and sort of the future of wearable technology overall.

Well, one of the important things when you raise capital or when you receive a lot of capital, I think is still to stay focused. And raising $400 million probably sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, I mean, we've been up against at various points in time, Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, Nike, Under Armour, Adidas, Puma, you know, these are companies that are really enormous and many of the ones I just listed have spent billions of dollars in the category. So it's, it's worth reminding yourself that in the grand scheme of things, the amount of capital you've raised is still kind of small. We've been successful because we've been able to stay pretty focused on our mission, which is health and fitness. And as you raise more capital, ideas will seep in, people will come up with new and new new directions that you can go. And I think it's really important to ask yourself whether you're ready for that, whether you can be great at that. Now, some companies may be excellent at doing 10 different initiatives at once, but we've been really focused on being great at health and fitness, having hardware, having software, having analytics, innovating in those categories and keeping our focus narrower. I think that's been an advantage for us against, say, smart watches, which obviously they're a watch, but then they also have apps and they have email and they have phone calls and da, da. And so by the time you're done doing the product spec for a smartwatch. Health is like one of 25 things, maybe even one of a hundred things that the product does. And so how good is it going to be at health then? We've just tried to stay very focused. And so I think that that's benefited us even as other products have come to the market now. Interestingly, there's less products in the market today than there were five years ago, and yet at the same time, the market's expanded. So if you operate from a headspace like I do, which is in some near future, every human on earth will be wearing a continuous health monitor. The market is just expanding and you need to be one of the key players and you need to be really good at what you do.

I love that approach and that mindset towards it. As a founder and as the company has grown. I heard you recall a moment where the company almost went bankrupt, Is that right?

Yeah, we've had that moment for sure.

I would love to just take us back to that moment. As a founder, you see the company and you guys have been so innovative in the space. But I'd love to talk about some of the hardships of the journey for you. I know you mentioned that on the show with Jason, but what was that moment like for you and for founders out there that are going through hardships right now? How are you able to mentally prepare yourself and know, be ready for those hardships as a founder? And what would your advice be for early stage startups or even growth stage startups that are either fundraising or at a crossroads or dealing with potential bankruptcy and really just needing to know where, what mindset to tap into and who to call and how to operate in that space.

Well, I mean, thinking back on the period of time when Whoop almost went bankrupt and there was a period where we were a few days even away from bankruptcy, I, I think that you have to know that you're, you're eating glass like you're, you are in a very dark place. And I, I was aware of that when I was in that moment, but it's really painful. It's very painful. And the idea that you're going to build this product or this company and have it be all up and to the right is some fantasy land that no great entrepreneur probably believes or experiences. So hardship and sacrifice and pain, I think, unfortunately, are part of the journey. But here's the positive thing. Once you've gone through that period of darkness and come out the other side, your back was against the wall, you Looked like you were gonna fail, and you figured out a way through. That's where the magic happens. That's where you've. You've found something new inside of yourself. The, you know, the athlete equivalent is the second wind or the third wind or whatever. Like you. You realize that your body was capable of something that you didn't know you were capable of before. That's what it feels like to overcome that moment of darkness or that really incredibly painful situation for your business and still come out the other side. This is part of the reason that I'm a little critical of the way that people talk about failure. They romanticize failure in the startup world to a point where it sounds like failing is a. Is the goal. And I've been on the verge in this company a number of times of pure failure where, hey, we're shutting this thing down. It's over. And I can tell you for a fact, if that had happened, I would have learned a lot of the wrong lessons from the experience by. By facing that moment of failing and figuring out a way through it. I think the. The learning is more powerful, and at the end of the day, then it gives you the chance to truly fulfill what you set out to do, which, of course, is invigorating. Right. And exhilarating. So the thing I'll just say on failure is you want to overcome a fear of failure. And I think that's where a lot of this romanticizing of failure comes from. You don't want people to be held back by being afraid of what happens if I fail. But you want to push through. You want to overcome. You want to win. You want your product to be successful. You want to create a product or a service that changes people's lives. That's where I feel you want to find the way through.

Absolutely. And hearing that story gives me the chills. Just you reflecting on that. As a founder, you know, being an athlete yourself, I would love to talk about where you spend your time today in health efforts. Right? Like, where do you. What's. What's. What are things that challenge you? What are physically, emotionally, mentally when it comes to staying fit yourself? And how has that changed over time? As you know, you being a founder and the CEO of whoop, Understanding the Data, how do you personally apply health in your life, and what does that look like?

Well, I would say I probably optimize my life still today to be a better CEO, then I optimize my life to be a better human. And I'll give you an example of that. If I was all about optimizing my life to be a better human. I probably wouldn't look at screen devices and cell phones, stuff like that leading up to bed. But because I'm running a company and it's a global company and I'm in it, right. Like I'm obsessed with it, I care a lot about it. I'm looking at my phone up until the moment I go to bed and maybe I'm answering emails or whatever. And so the way I offset that is by wearing blue light blocking glasses which we've been able to prove block all this blue light which otherwise keeps your mind awake when you go to sleep. So it's just one example of many where it's like I find the thing that helps me still be a hard charging individual.

Yeah.

You know, I probably don't spend as many hours in bed as you would assume that the CEO of WHOOP spends.

What does that look like?

I'm more in like the seven to seven and a half hour in bed range where people are like, oh, you must get nine hours of sleep. I'm like, well I wish, but I wake up too. So. But I try to take that seven and a half hours and make it very efficient. So I can still get, you know, over three and a half hours of REM and slow wave sleep, which is this restorative period. How do you do that? Well, dark room, cold room, go to bed and wake up at similar times, limit caffeine in the afternoon. You know, don't drink too much alcohol, drink more water, don't eat too close to bed. Okay. These are ways that by wearing WHOOP and being self aware, I've managed to take maybe less time in bed and make it more, you know, high quality.

Yeah.

From an exercise standpoint, that's something I still try to keep up with. So, you know, probably work out five days a week, work out a couple times a week with a trainer, still play squash a couple times. Maybe I'll do something more fun like play golf once in a while, go for a run. So you know, those are, those are some of the things. From a sleep and exercise standpoint, I would say my diet is pretty simple. I eat three meals a day every day and I don't snack, I drink a ton of water. I'd say my diet somewhat Mediterranean in nature. A lot of meats and vegetables and fruits and, and I still eat carbs, you know.

Yeah.

Not afraid of them for sure. And then I meditate every day. That's really, for me, that's been the the cognitive unlock and be able to do that every day.

What kind of meditation do you practice?

Well, the meditation practice I learned is transcendental meditation. I would say over time it's become a practice of closing my eyes and breathing and figuring out what I'm going to do for the next 15 or 20 minutes.

So usually 15, 20 minute meditation.

Yep, got it.

Love that. No, I love hearing that. In terms of. It's funny, right? Being the CEO of whoop and people are probably curious, oh, how long does he sleep? What does he training? I always love hearing that, especially from you, just in terms of the position that you're in. And that all sounds great. Working with all the athletes that you've worked with over the years, what are some common traits that you've seen, Whether that's from the data from them and what you've learned, but also some of the mentalities because you've been able to surround yourself with, you know, the top tier athletes of the world, being able to not only just be friends with them and work with them, but to understand their data and how they physically operate. Which I believe is a very rare thing and would love to hear your thoughts on that.

It's a great question. I've gotten to know some amazing professional athletes personally. I've. I've hosted the WHOOP podcast, which now has 250 podcasts on it, where I've explored this in great depth with many pro athletes. I think the first thing which has helped WHOOP be successful in the space is is that the world's best athletes are actually pretty open minded about what can give them an edge. And so it's been fascinating to hear from the likes of a Patrick Mahomes or a Rory McElroy or Michael Phelps or LeBron James. Like these guys are at their very top of their sport and yet they still want to try to experiment with something. They still want to try to find some new level, some new gear. And I think it's been part of what's gravitated. Not just good athletes, but like we're talking the best in their sport to whoop because they are programmed to try to keep finding that edge. I can always be a little better. I can always be a little better. And a lot of that from a WHOOP vantage point has revolved around recovery and figuring out what are all the things I can do to recover better. So that's probably the, the big theme and especially as it relates to Woop. I think the, the other theme is around mindset and a certain a Certain confidence combined with discipline to achieve their goals. They. They believe they can be the best, but they also put in an insane amount of work to be the best. And there's. There's a recurring sacrifice that you feel when you talk about that with them. There's sort of a hardship that comes with that. There's a lot that you don't see. You don't see the four or five hours a day that Tom Brady is spending stretching or, you know, working with a pliability ban. Just don't see that. And when you really think about it, from a. From a total hours in the day, you realize that a lot of these guys, from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep, they're positioning their life to be the very best at something. And it's just. I mean, it's a good reminder if you want to have some kind of outlier, true outlier performance, you have to have a certain disposition that's very different.

That perspective is so great. And for those that are interested in hearing, you said 250 episodes of the podcast would love to have you just let people know where they can best find that. And also, what inspired the podcast, the Whoop podcast.

It's a great question. I said in 2000. Must be 2018. Yeah. So it's about five years old, 2018 or 19. Like, let's do 10 of these and see how it goes. And so now we're on 250. We've been releasing it every. Every week since, so.

Good.

I think a lot of it started with this feeling that I had when I would sit alone with a pro athlete and hear the way they were talking about the product or their bodies or their mindset. And I just thought to myself, this would be a very interesting conversation for more people to hear. And then, you know, also from the lens of Whoop, it's a product that interesting people wear that we don't have any formal relationship with as a company. And how can we create some bridge to be able to engage with them and work with them in a way that's casual.

Yeah.

So the podcast has just been that forum where I, you know, I'll get sent a photo on Instagram of. Fill in the blank. Musician, athlete, executive, you know, famous person wearing Whoop. And it'll be. It'll just be a good opener for, hey, let's. Let's spend an hour getting to know each other.

Yeah.

So it's. It's been great. I think it's helped our brand. We've. It's evolved beyond just conversations with interesting people where we'll do podcasts that are very health specific. So go deep on sleep, go deep on recovery, go deep on exercise, go deep on Zone two training, go deep on meditation. You know, what's the latest diet, what's the latest supplements? How does alcohol affect your body? Like there's, there's podcasts for all of these things and you can find the WHOOP podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, et cetera.

Love that. Couple more questions before we wrap up here. Will all this insight has been so incredible when it comes to form factors. Obviously you've from the earliest days, from, you know, the band being very big to getting it to more consumer friendly. What would you say if you think about the future of wearable tech? Do you guys have anything that you can speak to that is in the pipeline for those that you know whether they want and I'm curious to hear like what the feedback has been over the years up until today about the wristband and sort of questions and feedback from users. But do you guys have any, have anything in the pipeline or things that you're excited about that you can share regarding the product, whether that's the tech or the actual form factor of the wristband?

Well, we think about wearable technology is really living in two categories, cool and invisible. And a lot of wearable technology is neither of those things. And therefore it's really in a no man's land. You know, it has some functionality which needs to justify why aesthetically it's compromised and, and it's highly visible. So, you know, cool is, is making it a technology that people feel comfortable wearing, speaks to their aesthetic, says something about who they are. I mean, what's been so lost in the wearable technology space is this idea. If you're going to wear something on your body, it starts to say a lot about who you are. And there's a certain arrogance that technology companies have had by not almost leading with that, like figure that out first. Don't tell me what all the features are. So that's probably one of the hardest areas of, of getting someone to wear something 247 is making it resonate for them. And of course then brand, brand plays a big role in that. We like to think by wearing Whoop, it says that you care about your health and fitness. It says that you're motivated. It says that, you know, you're, you're pushing, you're driving. So it has a positive brand aspiration. Invisible is maybe the more difficult and Cutting edge technology challenge because it means you're making the sensor effectively disappear. And for those of you watching this on the video, like you can see as I take the sensor off, it's really just a small little sensor. And we've now made it such that you can put it in different locations on your body inside various garments. So you can wear it in boxers, shorts, women's underwear. We now have bras, arm sleeves. And what this does is it allows the sensor to go into different locations. And maybe you don't want to wear something on your wrist because you're going out, maybe because you are in a job that doesn't allow you to wear it on your wrist. You know, doctors, for example, or people working construction, professional athletes, I mean, often their sport, you can't wear a product on your wrist. So that's the invisible frontier, which is how do we make it disappear? And at the end of the day, you're coming back to that interface and getting the insights that you need.

Very well said. When you think about the future of Whoop, you've been building Whoop Idea, ideating on it since 2012 as CEO and with all the progress that you and the team have made, what excites you the most from software perspective, from a brand perspective, from a team perspective, just with everything that you've built up until this point.

I mean, what I love most about WHOOP is some combination of the people and the product. You know, the people at Whoop, we're now about 550 people and it's a really, really talented group of people because what we're building is so difficult and requires you to be good at so many things. Like you have to be really good at hardware, software, analytics, design, probably some notion of brand and community just to have a chance in wearable technology.

Right.

Because of all the issues with wearable.

Technology and all those problems are hard in and of itself.

Right. So it just is ambitious such that it attracts really good people.

Absolutely.

And then, and then you also realize you're working in an environment where in one minute you're talking to someone who, with a deep expertise in materials and design and the next meeting you're talking to some signal processing engineer who used to design weapon systems. And then the next meeting you're, you know, you're with someone who used to do brand campaigns for Nike and in the next meeting you know, you're with someone who's built software for Fill in the Blank EPIC software company. So it's, you know, it just stretches, it just stretches Your imagination and it's working in your left and your right brain all the time. And so it's a very dynamic environment is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, to get to lead and to have the privilege to work. And then, you know, the product, it's a product that improves people's health and fitness. And so I get messages every day from Whoop members about, hey, I lost 40 pounds on Whoop or finally figured out how to sleep properly or increasingly it's been, you know, subject, whoop saved my life. And you'll hear some amazing story about an individual who was consistently getting red recoveries. They didn't know why. They went to go see their doctor and they were about to have a heart attack or a stroke or fill in the blank, some horrible thing. But by measuring their bodies, by being in tune with data that they couldn't feel, they had some insight that really helped them. So, yeah, I feel very grateful to be building this technology at this moment in time. I think we're on the frontier of something very exciting and really a health revolution. So it's pretty amazing.

I love that and this podcast, I've learned so much from you. And last question before we wrap up. Will, if you were to give your younger self a piece of advice from the aspect of team building, I heard you say you're 550 plus people and a culture that has to strive in these multiple facets of areas that you talked about, software, hardware, brand. What advice would you give to your younger self if you were starting woop over again today so that early founders can walk away from this conversation knowing all the information or an aspect of it of what you've learned throughout the years?

Well, the general advice I find that I'm always giving myself is keep going. And that's been a good soundtrack in my mind when things are hard or when things are great, at the end of the day, it's like, just keep going. Consistency, consistency, consistency. I think the hiring, the hiring lens is don't sacrifice on intensity or humility. You really want high intensity people and you want high humility people. And the reality is, if you're building something very difficult, if you're not working with someone who's got that drive, they're not going to be successful. And if you're working in an environment that's incredibly multidisciplinary and collaborative, they have to be humble. Otherwise the ego and the arrogance and the attitude is going to kill, it's going to kill the, the important interconnectivity of the company. So don't sacrifice on humility. Don't sacrifice on intensity.

Love to hear that. And I feel like that's a great way to end before we wrap up. Will, for everyone that's listening, watching, that's either looking to become a WHOOP member or very interested in the product and just wants to follow you and your journey, where is the best place, place for everyone to learn more about whoop, follow you and just stay connected with the community?

Yeah, I mean, check us out on Whoop.com. i mean, you can get a free trial on Whoop, sign up for 30 days for free or buy a prepaid membership. You can learn more about the product there. We're on social at whoop across all the various social medias. I'm at Will Ahmed and you can check me out there. I also host our podcast, which is the podcast, so you might find some episodes of that interesting.

Love that. Well, again, Will, I appreciate you so much for coming on the show today. I'm very excited to just continue to watch and see what you guys do in this space over these next decades and once again, appreciate you coming to the show. If you're watching or listening, make sure you go check out whoop. Everything will be linked down below. And once again, Will, I appreciate your time today.

All right, Casey, I appreciate you. Thank you.