Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 92. Will Ahmed: CEO & Founder, WHOOP

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92. Will Ahmed: CEO & Founder, WHOOP · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

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Speaker 1: There's probably people listening to this who are really driven
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Speaker 1: in their life and they think that the more time
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Speaker 1: they put into something, the better it's going to end
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Speaker 1: up being. And it actually may be the more time
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Speaker 1: they put into themselves, the better it's going to end
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Speaker 1: up being.
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Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, Emily, a body here coming at you with
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Speaker 2: episode ninety two of Hurdle, a wellness focused podcast where
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Speaker 2: I sit down with inspiring individuals to talk about everything
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Speaker 2: from their big wins to how they've gotten through some
0:40
Speaker 2: of life's toughest moments. On the show, you can expect vulnerability, motivation,
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Speaker 2: and candid discussions with everyone from top athletes to aspiring
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Speaker 2: entrepreneurs and what it really takes to follow your passions.
0:55
Speaker 2: My mission is simple to inspire you to be your
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Speaker 2: best self, move with intention, and have some fun along
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Speaker 2: the way. For today's show, I am sitting down with
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Speaker 2: Will Ahmed. He is the co founder and CEO of Whoop.
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Speaker 2: Now you all have definitely heard me talk about Whoop before.
1:15
Speaker 2: It's a wrist worn heart rate monitor that tracks things
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Speaker 2: like strain and sleep and recovery, and in today's episode,
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Speaker 2: Will talks to me about where that idea came from.
1:25
Speaker 2: When he was in college at Harvard. Before we into
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Speaker 2: No code necessary. All right, now, let's talk about Will.
2:48
Speaker 2: Back in college, he was a D one athlete on
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Speaker 2: the men's varsity swashed team, and in today's episode, he
2:55
Speaker 2: talks to me about how he was amazed by how
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Speaker 2: little he actually knew about his body. He tells me
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Speaker 2: that he was one of the, if not the fittest
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Speaker 2: on his college teams, and eventually would get so deep
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Speaker 2: in training that he was commonly overtrained. He talks about
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Speaker 2: the symptoms that went along with that, feeling like he
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Speaker 2: had mono at least once a season that got so
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Speaker 2: bad not only would his performance suffer, but arguably his
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Speaker 2: health would too. In today's episode, Will explains the goal
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Speaker 2: of Whoop from the beginning being so much about teaching
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Speaker 2: people when to take a break, when to take a
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Speaker 2: step back, versus some of the other options on the
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Speaker 2: market which might encourage you to keep going when your
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Speaker 2: body's really asking for just a little bit of TLC.
3:44
Speaker 2: We talked about the numerous challenges he faced with the
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Speaker 2: different iterations of the Whoop strap, as well as how
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Speaker 2: it felt for him to continually be told that his
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Speaker 2: big idea was going to fail. A quick note to
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Speaker 2: be fully transparent. Woop has sponsored Hurdle in past seasons,
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Speaker 2: but I think it goes without saying that Whoop is
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Speaker 2: a huge player in the health and wellness space, and
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Speaker 2: I'm really personally intrigued again by the company's emphasis of
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Speaker 2: taking a break, of listening to your body, of interpreting
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Speaker 2: data so that we can make smart decisions based on
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Speaker 2: more than just a feeling. As always, you have any
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Speaker 2: questions you're really digging some of the takeaways, please make
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Speaker 2: sure to hit me up on Instagram. It's at Emily
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Speaker 2: a body at Hurdle podcast. And of course if you
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Speaker 2: have a hurdle moment of your own to share, or
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Speaker 2: you just want to say hi, reach out to me
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Speaker 2: over email as well. It's Emily at Hurdle dot us.
4:37
Speaker 2: And with that, let's get to hurdling. Today. I'm sitting
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Speaker 2: down with Will Ahmed. He's the co founder and CEO
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Speaker 2: of Whoop.
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Speaker 1: Hi, Hi, thanks for having me.
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Speaker 2: How are you good? You and I share this thing
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Speaker 2: that we both podcast. Now you're fifty two episodes in.
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Speaker 2: I am yeah, how is that for you?
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Speaker 1: You know, it's a fascinating experience. I like the format
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Speaker 1: in that it does feel like an opportunity to delve
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Speaker 1: deeper with someone who maybe you actually know pretty well
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Speaker 1: but haven't kind of gone through the exercise of just
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Speaker 1: asking them a lot of questions. Yeah, for me, it's
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Speaker 1: been amazing to get to meet so many fascinating executives, athletes,
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Speaker 1: high performing individuals.
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Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite so far? It's kind of
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Speaker 2: hard to ask a podcaster to pick their podcast favorite.
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Speaker 1: I don't have a favorite necessarily. I think the people
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Speaker 1: who talk in great detail about their careers or their
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Speaker 1: lifestyles tend to be the most interesting guests. You know,
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Speaker 1: the Whoop podcast is focused on high performance lifestyle and
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Speaker 1: how you can better understand your body. So for us,
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Speaker 1: those tend to be the best guests.
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Speaker 2: So talk to me a little bit about what a
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Speaker 2: Whoop is. You and I are both sitting here wearing them.
5:54
Speaker 2: You have two on to tell the people at home,
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Speaker 2: So talk to me about a loop. Obviously, we know
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Speaker 2: it's a risk Warren Heart monitor, but it's a lot
6:00
Speaker 2: bigger than.
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Speaker 1: That yeah, you know. Look, our mission at Whoop is
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Speaker 1: really to unlock human performance. So we believe every individual
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Speaker 1: has an inner potential that you can tap into if
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Speaker 1: you better understand their bodies and their behaviors. And we've
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Speaker 1: developed technology across hardware and software and analytics really designed
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Speaker 1: to understand you. And in particular, WOOP measures strain and
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Speaker 1: recovery and sleep. And you can think of strain as
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Speaker 1: the amount of stress that you're putting on your body,
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Speaker 1: the intensity of a workout, your daily activity. And you
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Speaker 1: can think of recovery as really how prepared your body
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Speaker 1: is for strain. So if your body is more recovered,
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Speaker 1: Loop will tell you to push yourself. And if your
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Speaker 1: body's less recovered, WEOP will recommend maybe that you don't
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Speaker 1: exercise at all, You don't do much of anything, you
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Speaker 1: try to rest. In many ways, WOOP is the first
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Speaker 1: fitness product to tell you not to.
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Speaker 2: Exercise right, which is hard for some.
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Speaker 1: I think a lot of high performing individuals, which which
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Speaker 1: Whoop seems to cater well to our go go go,
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Speaker 1: you know, they're pushing their themselves all the time. And
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Speaker 1: in many ways, Whoop is a tool that helps someone
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Speaker 1: like that dial it back and recognize, you know, the
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Speaker 1: biggest way to take a step forward might be more rest.
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Speaker 2: Right, all right, So then tell me. A lot of
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Speaker 2: the big athletes are using this, and it's in their
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Speaker 2: wellness toolkit. What is in your toolkit aside from your
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Speaker 2: whoop strap?
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Speaker 1: I find that sometimes the best you know holistic approach
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Speaker 1: is a fairly simple one. I don't have a lot
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Speaker 1: of crazy stuff going on. From a lifestyle standpoint. One
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Speaker 1: of the most important things that I do is I
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Speaker 1: try to go to bed and wake up at a
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Speaker 1: similar time. Obviously that's hard when you travel a lot,
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Speaker 1: but we've been able to find that sleep consistency, which
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Speaker 1: is this concept of going to bed and waking up
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Speaker 1: at a similar timeframe, actually can boost all kinds of
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Speaker 1: statistics about your body without necessarily getting more sleep. It
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Speaker 1: makes your sleep actually more efficient, it makes the quality
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Speaker 1: of your sleep higher. So that's one sort of simple hack.
8:02
Speaker 1: I eat three meals every day, I don't snack at all.
8:05
Speaker 1: I try not to drink caffeine after two PM. I
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Speaker 1: meditate every morning, which I think is a is a
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Speaker 1: really powerful practice for anyone who's looking to, you know,
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Speaker 1: balance their mind a little bit and balance their lifestyle
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Speaker 1: a little bit. You know, I probably don't drink alcohol
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Speaker 1: as much as I did when I was, you know, younger.
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Speaker 2: Do you use any apps or anything for meditation?
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Speaker 1: I don't. I'm a little biased in that. I think
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Speaker 1: meditation is a single player game and you want to
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Speaker 1: develop a practice on your own if you can. That said,
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Speaker 1: I mean, we know the guys at Headspace, well, we
8:42
Speaker 1: know the guys at Calm well, like I think those
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Speaker 1: are both good apps for people who are trying to
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Speaker 1: get into meditation. For me personally, I just haven't used
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Speaker 1: I haven't found as much value in using them myself.
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Speaker 2: Okay, So it sounds like you're doing all of the
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Speaker 2: things to be a high performer yourself. Were you always
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Speaker 2: this interested in your all well being and level of fitness?
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Speaker 1: Well, I was always into sports and exercise. So growing up,
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Speaker 1: I played a.
9:06
Speaker 2: Ton of different sports in New Hampshire.
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Speaker 1: Well, I went I went to Saint Paul's was a
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Speaker 1: boarding school in New Hampshire, and I played about four
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Speaker 1: or five different sports while I was there, And I
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Speaker 1: ended up getting recruited to Harvard to play squash. And
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Speaker 1: so I was a college athlete in Harvard and I
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Speaker 1: was someone who used to overtrain. So overtraining is kind
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Speaker 1: of the ultimate betrayal as an athlete because you're able
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Speaker 1: to push yourself further and further, but all of a sudden,
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Speaker 1: you push yourself off a cliff. So, in a lot
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Speaker 1: of ways, starting Whoop was really the result of wanting
9:38
Speaker 1: to better understand my own body as a college athlete.
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Speaker 1: And so I did a lot of physiology research while
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Speaker 1: I was in school. I read something like five hundred
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Speaker 1: medical papers while I was there. Yeah, and I got
9:50
Speaker 1: fascinated in this concept of how could you better understand
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Speaker 1: the human body? You know, how could you train optimally?
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Speaker 1: How could you prevent overtraining, how could you prevent undertraining?
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Speaker 1: What does it mean to be optimal? How could you
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Speaker 1: measure recovery? How could you measure sleep? And so all
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Speaker 1: that research ultimately became became the business plan for Whoop.
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Speaker 1: And if I think about my lifestyle as a twenty
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Speaker 1: year old college student versus so today I'm thirty years old,
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Speaker 1: I think it was just much more one sided. You know,
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Speaker 1: I was just burning it on both ends as a
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Speaker 1: college athlete. You know, I would work out for three
10:24
Speaker 1: or four hours a day. I would be studying late,
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Speaker 1: I would party, like, you know, just go, go go,
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Speaker 1: And so if I look at my life now, it's
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Speaker 1: just a lot more balanced.
10:37
Speaker 2: Let's talk about getting recruited to play squash in college. So,
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Speaker 2: first of all, like not a sport. You hear a
10:42
Speaker 2: lot of totally yeah, were you playing squash in high
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Speaker 2: school as well? Yeah, how did you even get interested
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Speaker 2: in that in the first place, because it's again not
10:51
Speaker 2: a popular sport.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's an obscure sport in pockets of America for sure. However,
10:57
Speaker 1: it's a fairly big international sport. And my dad Egyptian, okay,
11:01
Speaker 1: and he was a professional squash player, and so I
11:05
Speaker 1: learned how to play squash in part from him, and
11:07
Speaker 1: then I got quite good at it while I was
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Speaker 1: at Saint Paul's, and so there was an opportunity to
11:13
Speaker 1: play it in college.
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Speaker 2: You go to college and you're playing squash, and you're saying,
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Speaker 2: you're like kind of burning the candle at both ends, right,
11:19
Speaker 2: It's like being a college athlete. You want to thrive
11:21
Speaker 2: in your sport, but you're also trying to like get
11:24
Speaker 2: something out of your college experience beyond being a college athlete.
11:27
Speaker 2: So how did you find balance in between, like all
11:30
Speaker 2: of that training you're saying was a lot pretty difficult,
11:33
Speaker 2: and you know, having a sense of time for your
11:36
Speaker 2: education and then also time for your social life.
11:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't think I found that balance
11:40
Speaker 1: at all as a college student. Frankly, I think I
11:43
Speaker 1: just was go, go go. I thought more was more,
11:45
Speaker 1: you know, the more the more you did, the better
11:47
Speaker 1: it would be. And look, I had a phenomenal I
11:50
Speaker 1: had a phenomenal college experience. I have no regrets, but
11:53
Speaker 1: I think as a college athlete, I was pretty misguided
11:56
Speaker 1: because I didn't really understand how to eat my body.
12:00
Speaker 1: I didn't understand the value of rest and recovery, and
12:05
Speaker 1: so you know, I probably didn't ever meet my potential
12:08
Speaker 1: as a as a college athlete as a result. But
12:11
Speaker 1: the positive of it is is it all led to whoop.
12:13
Speaker 1: So I've got no I've got no complaints.
12:16
Speaker 2: So pre whoop, though, were there certain instances where you
12:20
Speaker 2: just were like, Wow, I've really pushed it too far here? Yeah, totally.
12:24
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there were periods where I would
12:27
Speaker 1: get fitter and fitter and fitter, and I would be,
12:29
Speaker 1: you know, one of the fittest guys on the team,
12:31
Speaker 1: if not the fittest, But then like two or three
12:34
Speaker 1: days later, all of a sudden, I could barely practice
12:37
Speaker 1: because my body was so tired. And that's the feeling
12:40
Speaker 1: of overtraining for anyone who's truly overtrained, it's like, uh,
12:45
Speaker 1: it's it feels like you have mono. You know, have
12:49
Speaker 1: you're head mono.
12:50
Speaker 2: No, thankfully, And I've also never had the flu, so
12:52
Speaker 2: I feel like I could not on everything right now. Yeah,
12:55
Speaker 2: but wait when you say I'm the fitted like, was
12:58
Speaker 2: one of the fittest, if not the fittest guy team, Like,
13:00
Speaker 2: what are the benchmarks for that?
13:02
Speaker 1: Well? Squash is a very cardiovascular sport, and so it's
13:06
Speaker 1: your ability to run in and out of corners for
13:08
Speaker 1: a long period of time. And if you're able to
13:13
Speaker 1: do that for an hour, hour and a half and
13:16
Speaker 1: be able to sustain your heart rate at eighty to
13:18
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of its max for a lot of
13:21
Speaker 1: that period, you have a real advantage in college squash.
13:26
Speaker 1: College squash also, the ball gets really hot, so it's
13:29
Speaker 1: harder to end the point. For those of who have
13:31
Speaker 1: no idea what squashes like, picture a racquetball court with
13:34
Speaker 1: a softer ball with more running and that squash and
13:39
Speaker 1: so yeah, at various points, I think I was able
13:44
Speaker 1: to push myself to be one of the fitter guys
13:46
Speaker 1: on the team, but I was walking a tightrope because
13:51
Speaker 1: I would overdo it.
13:52
Speaker 2: So you'd literally feel like you had mono.
13:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would feel totally run down, like exhausted.
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Speaker 2: And what would the recovery time on that?
14:01
Speaker 1: Typically it takes somewhere from somewhere between a week and
14:04
Speaker 1: a month to fully balance back from overtraining.
14:07
Speaker 2: So for you when you go through these periods of
14:09
Speaker 2: over training, because I'm guessing it didn't just happen once, No, I.
14:12
Speaker 1: Mean I did it almost every season.
14:14
Speaker 2: Right, So first of all, when would that happen in
14:17
Speaker 2: the season, because then would that prevent you from doing
14:20
Speaker 2: what you wanted to do throughout the rest of the time.
14:23
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'd still play in matches, but you'd
14:25
Speaker 1: have sort of subpar results because you'd realize on the
14:29
Speaker 1: day of the match you weren't peaking.
14:31
Speaker 2: Right, And so what did the people around you think?
14:33
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you need some more rest. Yeah, but
14:36
Speaker 1: you know, all of it seemed to me in the
14:38
Speaker 1: moment to be very it was all based on feelings
14:42
Speaker 1: and eyesight. M hm, you know, will you look tired?
14:46
Speaker 1: Will how do you feel? Oh? I don't know. I
14:49
Speaker 1: feel okay, you know, and then fast forward next week,
14:52
Speaker 1: I'm like crushed, right, but I didn't see it coming.
14:55
Speaker 1: And what's amazing about what we do at WHOOP is
14:58
Speaker 1: that we can actually see it in data. And the
15:01
Speaker 1: real learning from founding WHOOP is that your feelings are
15:04
Speaker 1: largely overrated and there's physiological indicators that are like these
15:09
Speaker 1: secrets that your body is trying to tell you. And
15:11
Speaker 1: if you can measure those things, you can actually understand
15:14
Speaker 1: what is the status of my body. And that's one
15:17
Speaker 1: of the most interesting things we hear from WOP members
15:19
Speaker 1: today is they'll say, Oh, I didn't realize my body
15:23
Speaker 1: was so run down, and yet I had three or
15:25
Speaker 1: four red recoveries in a row, and so as a result,
15:30
Speaker 1: I didn't do that exercise, or I went to bed
15:33
Speaker 1: much earlier, or I thought twice about the international travel
15:37
Speaker 1: and how I'm going to approach that right. Yeah, So
15:41
Speaker 1: that's what that's the tool that we've built.
15:44
Speaker 2: Every season, you go through this thing where you feel
15:46
Speaker 2: like absolute junk, then you recover and then you're like
15:49
Speaker 2: fine again. You're back to being yourself. But when do
15:52
Speaker 2: you kind of realize that it's problematic and not just
15:55
Speaker 2: like kind of coming with the territory.
15:57
Speaker 1: Well, I think I recognized it as early as my
16:00
Speaker 1: freshman or sophomore year, just that like I was someone
16:04
Speaker 1: whose mind could betray him, right, which is sort of
16:08
Speaker 1: this the whole point of if you're a driven person,
16:11
Speaker 1: you can convince yourself that you can keep going in
16:13
Speaker 1: a lot of contexts. And I was convincing myself that
16:17
Speaker 1: and really all contexts of life. I was like, yeah,
16:20
Speaker 1: I can I can train for three hours today. Yeah,
16:23
Speaker 1: I can stay up till two in the morning working. Yeah,
16:25
Speaker 1: I can go to the party on Saturday night and
16:27
Speaker 1: drink you know whatever, six drinks or you know something,
16:30
Speaker 1: you just just go, go go. And so I think,
16:34
Speaker 1: you know, if I think about my life now, it's
16:37
Speaker 1: just much more thoughtful. You know, it's recognizing how all
16:41
Speaker 1: these different things in my life are actually affecting my body.
16:45
Speaker 2: This idea of my mind betraying me though, is like
16:48
Speaker 2: so poignant, right, You're like I was trusting myself to
16:51
Speaker 2: like I was trusting my gut. I was going with
16:53
Speaker 2: what I thought that I should do. Yeah, but I
16:56
Speaker 2: mean in college, you're definitely not at the point where
16:58
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, let's be realistic about this.
17:01
Speaker 1: Not always anyway, and look by the way that mindset
17:06
Speaker 1: can betray you in a lot of different walks of life.
17:08
Speaker 1: I mean, we're just talking about this as being a
17:11
Speaker 1: college athlete, but it happened to me as a young
17:13
Speaker 1: entrepreneur too. I founded Whoop as a twenty two year
17:16
Speaker 1: old and started the company in a dorm room, right,
17:21
Speaker 1: And you know, today we've got one hundred employees, We've
17:25
Speaker 1: raised over one hundred million dollars. Like, there's a lot
17:27
Speaker 1: of responsibilities. And if I think about what I looked
17:31
Speaker 1: like as a twenty two year old CEO versus today,
17:33
Speaker 1: it's very different. But a lot of the same problems
17:36
Speaker 1: that I faced as a young athlete I faced as
17:38
Speaker 1: a young entrepreneur, where yeah, I believed I could stay
17:42
Speaker 1: up really late and still be fine the next day
17:44
Speaker 1: in an important meeting, or be fine managing people, you know,
17:48
Speaker 1: under not enough sleep or under too much stress. And
17:52
Speaker 1: you know, I think, I think there's probably people listening
17:55
Speaker 1: to this who are really driven in their life, and
17:58
Speaker 1: they think that the more time they put into something
18:00
Speaker 1: the better it's going to end up being. And it
18:03
Speaker 1: actually may be the more time they put into themselves,
18:05
Speaker 1: the better it's going to end up being.
18:07
Speaker 2: Right, you have these hurdle moments of sorts where you're
18:11
Speaker 2: overcoming feeling like absolute crap and you get to a
18:16
Speaker 2: point when you're graduating. Are you having a little bit
18:18
Speaker 2: of that? You graduate and you're like, what am I
18:20
Speaker 2: going to do with my life? Or did you? Were
18:22
Speaker 2: you on a path until you had this idea for
18:25
Speaker 2: what Whoop would become.
18:26
Speaker 1: I don't know if I was as conscious about creating
18:30
Speaker 1: Whoop as it may seem in hindsight, like I just
18:34
Speaker 1: became totally obsessed with this idea of how to understand
18:37
Speaker 1: the body. And I also, throughout my life I was
18:40
Speaker 1: into technology. You know. I had one of the first
18:43
Speaker 1: palm pilots in my sixth grade class that could connect
18:47
Speaker 1: to the Internet. I was always buying the early Apple
18:50
Speaker 1: products and I've only felt that there was going to
18:53
Speaker 1: be this evolution of computers from you know, from your
18:56
Speaker 1: desk to your lap to your pocket to being on
18:58
Speaker 1: your body, and that was something that really excited me.
19:02
Speaker 1: And I worked for a number of summers while I
19:06
Speaker 1: was a student in finance. So I worked at like
19:10
Speaker 1: a hedge fund and an investment bank and a private
19:12
Speaker 1: equity firm, and they are all awesome places. But the
19:15
Speaker 1: question I kept asking myself is like, did I want
19:17
Speaker 1: to be my boss's boss's boss right that I would? Would?
19:21
Speaker 1: Would that want to be what I wanted to be
19:22
Speaker 1: when I grew up? And I didn't feel that strongly
19:24
Speaker 1: about it. And at the flip side, I kept finding
19:27
Speaker 1: myself thinking about this idea for a business and thinking
19:30
Speaker 1: about this idea for for monitoring health and that I
19:35
Speaker 1: was super passionate about and it didn't feel like work
19:38
Speaker 1: thinking about it. So you know, in many ways it
19:41
Speaker 1: seemed like a natural progression. Now, over the course of
19:44
Speaker 1: my whole senior year, it took me a while to
19:46
Speaker 1: really find people to help me build the business. I
19:51
Speaker 1: met John Captain Lupo, our chief technology officer, fortunately, about
19:56
Speaker 1: a month before I graduated, and he really became a
19:59
Speaker 1: key partner in the whole business.
20:00
Speaker 2: First of all, did someone tell you to think about
20:03
Speaker 2: it like that? Like I was thinking about my boss's
20:05
Speaker 2: boss's boss, and I thought about if I wanted to
20:07
Speaker 2: be them? Or is that just kind of a train
20:09
Speaker 2: of thought? That you started to have because that's such
20:11
Speaker 2: an interesting perspective career growth.
20:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, no one told me that. It just seemed
20:16
Speaker 1: like the right way to think about it. Yeah, which
20:18
Speaker 1: is like, okay, so let's pretend that you can crush
20:22
Speaker 1: your particular industry and you can like be the person
20:26
Speaker 1: running this thing. If that's you know, do you want
20:29
Speaker 1: to be that? Yeah? And in a lot of ways,
20:32
Speaker 1: I think internships are important for young people because they
20:35
Speaker 1: teach you more about what you don't want to do
20:37
Speaker 1: than what you do want to do.
20:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
20:39
Speaker 1: You know, I have a number of friends I'm sure
20:42
Speaker 1: you do too, who went down these career paths age
20:45
Speaker 1: twenty two and are sort of like waking up to
20:47
Speaker 1: the fact that they've spent six, eight, ten years in
20:50
Speaker 1: an industry that they actually don't really want to be in.
20:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
20:53
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's tough to hear that because
20:55
Speaker 1: you realize, like it would have been great if you
20:59
Speaker 1: figured that out.
21:00
Speaker 2: But it's also like, for so many people who are
21:02
Speaker 2: wondering if they want to make a career pivot, this
21:04
Speaker 2: idea of how do I start over without completely having
21:08
Speaker 2: to start at square one with something like salary, And
21:10
Speaker 2: that's a big deterrent. But when you think of overall happiness,
21:13
Speaker 2: the last thing you want to do is stick with
21:14
Speaker 2: this career just because you're going to have to take
21:16
Speaker 2: a twenty thousand dollars pay cut, Because in the meantime,
21:20
Speaker 2: you could be doing something that you love, getting back
21:22
Speaker 2: to a place where you know you're making the kind
21:24
Speaker 2: of money that you want to make.
21:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, and plus you'll be better at it.
21:27
Speaker 2: Okay, So you're a senior at Harvard and you have
21:32
Speaker 2: this idea about like finding really interesting fitness data. But
21:36
Speaker 2: the thing is is like at the time, there are
21:39
Speaker 2: already like other wearables and companies kind of doing this.
21:42
Speaker 2: So where was your head at with that?
21:45
Speaker 1: Well, interestingly, there wasn't that much technology out there, So
21:49
Speaker 1: we're talking like twenty eleven. I decided I was going
21:52
Speaker 1: to do this. Well, Fipbit was about a forty million
21:55
Speaker 1: dollar company, so it's pretty small relative you know, they
21:59
Speaker 1: just sold for two million dollars, but they were pretty
22:01
Speaker 1: small relative to what they became at that point. I
22:04
Speaker 1: actually met the CEO of Fitbit at a Harvard recruiting event.
22:08
Speaker 1: He was showing up to Harvard to do the recruiting event,
22:10
Speaker 1: which shows you how early stage they were.
22:13
Speaker 2: And at the time they only had like the flex
22:15
Speaker 2: Like it was like you could just walk around me.
22:17
Speaker 1: They had one product, and it was completely useless from
22:19
Speaker 1: my point of view, right, it was like a step monitor,
22:22
Speaker 1: right step. Yeah, the steps wasn't going to tell me
22:25
Speaker 1: whether or not I was too driven or not driven enough. Like.
22:29
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that there was like about
22:31
Speaker 1: ten million chess straps being sold a year, so the
22:33
Speaker 1: heart rate monitor, and so I just got very interested
22:37
Speaker 1: in this idea. If you could build technology that could
22:39
Speaker 1: measure a lot more about the body, and you could
22:42
Speaker 1: put it in a seamless form factor. And to me
22:44
Speaker 1: it was obvious that it was a technology problem initially,
22:47
Speaker 1: like the technology did not exist, and we spent the
22:49
Speaker 1: next three years frankly, investing a lot of money and
22:53
Speaker 1: trying to build that technology.
22:54
Speaker 2: So how do you even like go about that. It's
22:57
Speaker 2: like what came first a chicken or the eg? How
22:59
Speaker 2: do you even concept I'm going to figure out how
23:01
Speaker 2: to make this technology?
23:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. First of all, you have
23:06
Speaker 1: to have great you have to have great partners and
23:08
Speaker 1: great people around you. And John, one of my co founders,
23:12
Speaker 1: is a really brilliant technical mind, and we came up
23:15
Speaker 1: with some strategies around how we thought we could do
23:17
Speaker 1: some initial prototypes and health monitoring. And I think the
23:21
Speaker 1: key for anyone who's actually trying to build a technology
23:25
Speaker 1: business is you try to figure out what's the first
23:28
Speaker 1: milestone that can then get me to the next milestone.
23:30
Speaker 1: So for us, we felt that if we could build
23:33
Speaker 1: a prototype that could really accurately measure something called heart
23:36
Speaker 1: rate variability from the risk heart variability for the risk
23:40
Speaker 1: is this lends into your autonomic nervous system, which is
23:43
Speaker 1: one of the most important things WOOP does in order
23:45
Speaker 1: to understand recovery. You know, if every business is built
23:48
Speaker 1: on a contrarian point of view that other people disagree with.
23:53
Speaker 1: The Whoop point of view was that actually rest in
23:55
Speaker 1: recovery was more important to an athlete or to a
23:58
Speaker 1: high performing individual than stress and exercise. Right, if you
24:02
Speaker 1: talk to a coach in twenty twelve, all they wanted
24:04
Speaker 1: to better understand was the speed of a throw, the
24:09
Speaker 1: you know, the mechanics of this, the GPS of that.
24:12
Speaker 1: And I believed, actually that was pretty much irrelevant beyond
24:17
Speaker 1: what they already knew about these things. And what they
24:21
Speaker 1: didn't know at all was the other twenty hours of
24:23
Speaker 1: the day. How is someone's body responding to the other
24:25
Speaker 1: twenty hours of the day. So that was the contrarian
24:27
Speaker 1: point of view, and as a result, we wanted to
24:29
Speaker 1: be able to prove that we'd be able to measure that.
24:32
Speaker 1: And so our very initial prototypes, which I can show
24:35
Speaker 1: you actually over there before you leave. Our initial prototypes
24:39
Speaker 1: were really focused on can we do that? And so
24:41
Speaker 1: we developed these enormous, ugly, clunky computer looking systems. I mean,
24:48
Speaker 1: picture an enormous box of technology the size of a
24:51
Speaker 1: shoe box that's got a wire coming out of it,
24:54
Speaker 1: that's then got a you know, that's then got a
24:58
Speaker 1: wrap that goes around your arm, has sensors in it,
25:01
Speaker 1: and okay, lo and behold that whole contraption could measure
25:05
Speaker 1: heart rate variability from the wrisk and we were the
25:06
Speaker 1: first company in the world build to do it.
25:08
Speaker 2: So you wouldn't wear that, but you never wear that.
25:10
Speaker 1: But we proved that we could build technology that could
25:14
Speaker 1: measure this thing that no one else could measure on
25:16
Speaker 1: the rest, and based on that we would be able
25:19
Speaker 1: to raise capital that said, all right, we're gonna take
25:21
Speaker 1: this big, ugly contraption and we're gonna make it cool. Yeah, right,
25:25
Speaker 1: and we're gonna make it small, we're gonna make it comfortab,
25:27
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it manufacturable. And then once you get
25:29
Speaker 1: to that phase and you're able to build the thing,
25:31
Speaker 1: then you tell a story about why you're going to
25:33
Speaker 1: sell it, and so on and so on and so on.
25:35
Speaker 1: So most of I think entrepreneurship is having this big
25:39
Speaker 1: picture vision of where you're gonna end up, but having
25:42
Speaker 1: these very tiny steps to get.
25:44
Speaker 2: There, either in sport or some other scenario. Growing up,
25:48
Speaker 2: was there a time that you set a big goal
25:51
Speaker 2: and learn this lesson that it was kind of smarter
25:54
Speaker 2: to set smaller ones to get there along the way,
25:56
Speaker 2: or focus on the smaller wins to get to the
25:58
Speaker 2: bigger picture. Because I think for a lot of people
26:01
Speaker 2: they do that right, Like, they'll set this huge goal
26:04
Speaker 2: and then it feels intimidating and impossible and then you're like,
26:06
Speaker 2: I'm never going to be able to do this thing.
26:08
Speaker 2: And you almost have to go through that experience to
26:10
Speaker 2: understand the value of setting smart, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic,
26:15
Speaker 2: and time bound goals to get to the bigger picture.
26:19
Speaker 1: I think that I was probably always pretty good at
26:23
Speaker 1: visualizing outcomes that I wanted throughout my life, whether or
26:28
Speaker 1: not I fully realized that I was doing that, I've
26:30
Speaker 1: now studied enough about visualization to understand that I was.
26:34
Speaker 1: Where Essentially, you're picturing very clearly an outcome, and you're
26:41
Speaker 1: doing that over and over in your mind. And sometimes
26:44
Speaker 1: people do this very intentionally, and you can read all
26:46
Speaker 1: about that, and sometimes people do it naturally and it
26:50
Speaker 1: helps guide their behavior. And I think as a young person,
26:53
Speaker 1: I was doing it somewhat naturally. And what that forces
26:57
Speaker 1: you to do is that it heightens your away fareness
27:00
Speaker 1: for other things in your life, so that you take
27:02
Speaker 1: you make decisions, and you take steps that ultimately push
27:05
Speaker 1: you towards that that end goal or that outcome. So
27:09
Speaker 1: all that's to say is I don't think it was
27:11
Speaker 1: quite as conscious as the way you described it, but
27:14
Speaker 1: it is the product of being pretty focused about where
27:17
Speaker 1: you want to be and then once you get there,
27:19
Speaker 1: move the goalpost. You know, people ask me today, did
27:23
Speaker 1: you picture that whoop would be worn by all these
27:27
Speaker 1: you know, crazy athletes, or that you would raise all
27:29
Speaker 1: this money or you'd have all these employees or whatever,
27:32
Speaker 1: and I guess what I tell them is actually, yeah,
27:35
Speaker 1: like that's how we got here because we believed we
27:38
Speaker 1: were going to get here. You know, you have to
27:40
Speaker 1: you have to picture that. And then, by the way,
27:41
Speaker 1: I'm picturing the next thing in my mind right now too,
27:44
Speaker 1: which is how we're going to grow further.
27:45
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So you get to a place where you
27:48
Speaker 2: have this like shoebox size amount of stuff that can
27:51
Speaker 2: measure heart rate variability, and what happens to the shoebox
27:55
Speaker 2: like from that step.
27:56
Speaker 1: Well, right now it's sitting in the Woop Museum. That's
27:58
Speaker 1: what happened to it. No, look, I mean you try
28:01
Speaker 1: to figure out how do you take a lot of
28:04
Speaker 1: components that aren't efficiently put together, and how do you
28:08
Speaker 1: do it efficiently?
28:09
Speaker 2: And what does your life look like at this point,
28:11
Speaker 2: like where you're living in Boston.
28:14
Speaker 1: So I lived with John, co founder, and we lived
28:17
Speaker 1: in a small apartment together in Coolidge Corner, and we
28:23
Speaker 1: commuted every day to the Harvard Innovation Lab, which gave
28:27
Speaker 1: us free office space at the time, and you know,
28:31
Speaker 1: we spent seven days a week working on Whoop and
28:36
Speaker 1: you know, kind of being geeks.
28:37
Speaker 2: Together and you had already graduated at this point.
28:40
Speaker 1: I graduated and John ultimately dropped out of school.
28:43
Speaker 2: Wow, but he was also at Harvard. Yeah, okay, so
28:46
Speaker 2: you and one college dropout are working on.
28:49
Speaker 1: MOP and then we met a realion and it turned
28:52
Speaker 1: out a realian. It was a mechanical engineer who was
28:55
Speaker 1: great at prototyping, and he joined us, and so it's
28:58
Speaker 1: really the three of us for a while. And then,
29:01
Speaker 1: you know, probably about twelve months later from that first summer,
29:05
Speaker 1: we had you know, a few full time employees and
29:08
Speaker 1: we'd raise some money and and you know, we were
29:10
Speaker 1: kind of marching to the beat of an early startups drum.
29:14
Speaker 2: Would you say that at the beginning stages of Whoop
29:17
Speaker 2: you were kind of going all in on it, just
29:20
Speaker 2: like you were kind of going all in on college squash.
29:22
Speaker 2: Was there any recovery time from Whoop? Or was life
29:25
Speaker 2: all Whoop all the time?
29:27
Speaker 1: Well? It was an example again of where I wasn't
29:30
Speaker 1: really making that much time for you know, myself to
29:33
Speaker 1: be sort of healthy necessarily.
29:36
Speaker 2: What did health look like at that time?
29:38
Speaker 1: Health looked like, you know, I still exercised a lot,
29:41
Speaker 1: but I was you know, spending pretty much every free
29:44
Speaker 1: minute working and and you know, I still think I
29:49
Speaker 1: was probably blowing off steam by by going out and
29:53
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a party lifestyle. And and you know,
29:56
Speaker 1: you you realize over time, especially if you're trying to
30:01
Speaker 1: create something that involves a team, that you have to
30:04
Speaker 1: become less of an individual contributor, you have to become
30:07
Speaker 1: more of a you know, a manager or a leader.
30:10
Speaker 1: And in that process, how you how you appear, how
30:15
Speaker 1: you seem, how you act all become actually even more
30:18
Speaker 1: important than your individual contributions. And so that's that's something
30:23
Speaker 1: that it takes a minute to learn. And you know,
30:26
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, getting to a moment of
30:28
Speaker 1: crisis too can help.
30:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, so are there and I'm sure there are in
30:32
Speaker 2: any early stage startup, Like can you reflect on any
30:35
Speaker 2: of the like major moments of crisis and did they
30:38
Speaker 2: at any point make you think like what the hell
30:41
Speaker 2: are we doing here?
30:42
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean absolutely well a lot of those moments.
30:44
Speaker 1: I mean, the most memorable was probably around I think
30:47
Speaker 1: it was in twenty fourteen and whoop was maybe fifteen
30:53
Speaker 1: or twenty people. At that point, we had raised you know,
30:58
Speaker 1: a few million dollars and we were running out of money,
31:01
Speaker 1: and I felt like I wasn't doing a good job
31:03
Speaker 1: keeping up with everything, and my lifestyle was totally strung
31:07
Speaker 1: out and I was stressed, and uh, and I just I,
31:11
Speaker 1: you know, I hit a wall. We're pretty hard, and
31:14
Speaker 1: I realized I need to completely reset the way that
31:17
Speaker 1: I treated my body and the way that I thought
31:21
Speaker 1: about being an entrepreneur. And that's actually when I got
31:24
Speaker 1: I got into meditation.
31:25
Speaker 2: What does hitting the wall look like? Though?
31:28
Speaker 1: You know, I was going through these periods where it
31:31
Speaker 1: almost felt like I don't know if I was actually
31:33
Speaker 1: having panic attacks, but it just felt like I was
31:35
Speaker 1: out of control. It didn't feel like I was in
31:37
Speaker 1: control of the moment. And you know, just notice that
31:42
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of anxious, or you're nervous, or you're
31:46
Speaker 1: not you're not in the moment, you're not present, You're
31:50
Speaker 1: you're strung out, right, And for me, that was just
31:54
Speaker 1: it wasn't a place that I wanted to be in life.
31:56
Speaker 1: And so but I recognize that you have to rise
31:59
Speaker 1: to that challenge, right if you want to build a company,
32:02
Speaker 1: if you want to employ people, if you want to
32:04
Speaker 1: drive towards something that people haven't done before, guess what,
32:08
Speaker 1: you have to rise to the occasion, right. I didn't
32:10
Speaker 1: feel bad for myself. I just recognized that I wasn't
32:13
Speaker 1: rising to the occasion, right. So that's where I kind
32:15
Speaker 1: of looked myself in the mirror and I was like,
32:17
Speaker 1: we got to figure this out.
32:18
Speaker 2: And I can only imagine how overwhelming it must have been,
32:21
Speaker 2: because you're saying, like, granted, whoop is much larger now,
32:24
Speaker 2: but we have twenty people that are like counting on you,
32:26
Speaker 2: and you're paying them, and they're going to like their
32:28
Speaker 2: health benefits from you.
32:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally, totally, And you're like twenty five. Yeah,
32:35
Speaker 1: I was twenty four. I remember when all this was
32:38
Speaker 1: happening and I felt like I was sort of out
32:40
Speaker 1: of whack. But the good news is that it got
32:43
Speaker 1: to a point where I felt so out of whack
32:45
Speaker 1: that I knew I had to really reset.
32:49
Speaker 2: And where are you living at this time? Have you
32:52
Speaker 2: split up? Are you living on your own yet?
32:54
Speaker 1: I had moved to the South end of Boston with
32:57
Speaker 1: a friend from college, and I think he was in
33:00
Speaker 1: Harvard Square because you wanted to be closer to some
33:02
Speaker 1: of his classmates were graduating at that time. John was
33:06
Speaker 1: twenty one or twenty two. Oh my god, we're young,
33:09
Speaker 1: you know, And we were always the youngest people in
33:13
Speaker 1: the room.
33:14
Speaker 2: Right, I was gonna say, because when you're hiring.
33:16
Speaker 1: We weren't hiring people who were eighteen, Right, We're hiring
33:18
Speaker 1: people who were forty five. I recognize that I needed
33:22
Speaker 1: to find a way to be able to take on
33:24
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of stress and manage it. And so
33:29
Speaker 1: that's where I got really interested in transcendental meditation. And
33:32
Speaker 1: I took this four day course, which at the time
33:34
Speaker 1: seemed like a fortune. It was like nine hundred dollars
33:37
Speaker 1: or something for four hours of my life, and I
33:39
Speaker 1: went into it thinking it was a total ripoff, but
33:41
Speaker 1: honestly it was. It was really one of the best
33:44
Speaker 1: things I've ever done in my life because it taught
33:47
Speaker 1: me this method that I now do literally every day
33:51
Speaker 1: that I find super centering.
33:54
Speaker 2: And did someone talk to you about this type of meditation,
33:56
Speaker 2: which is why you found this course? Or do you
33:58
Speaker 2: literally go on Google and you were like meditation, I
34:01
Speaker 2: googled it? Yeah, who doesn't google it?
34:03
Speaker 1: Yeah? I google it?
34:05
Speaker 2: And what's wrong with my right arm? Like you google everything?
34:07
Speaker 1: Yeah? I googled it. And look, anyone listening to this,
34:11
Speaker 1: I highly recommend meditation of any kind. What's interesting about
34:14
Speaker 1: transcendental meditation is that you're repeating a mantra over and
34:17
Speaker 1: over again, and what that does is it effectively allows
34:21
Speaker 1: you to scroll through your thoughts because you're repeating this mantra,
34:25
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you recognize a thought
34:27
Speaker 1: has now interrupted you saying your mantra, and you have
34:31
Speaker 1: this moment almost like you're in the third person, where
34:34
Speaker 1: you can recognize that you're thinking about a thought versus
34:37
Speaker 1: saying your mantra. And so you get to decide do
34:40
Speaker 1: I want to keep thinking about this thought or do
34:42
Speaker 1: I want to return to the mantra. And sometimes the
34:46
Speaker 1: thought will be a really creative idea. Sometimes it'll be
34:49
Speaker 1: something that you realize that you're wrestling with. Sometimes it
34:52
Speaker 1: will be the stress of the moment or the day,
34:55
Speaker 1: or the week, what have you. And that process of
34:59
Speaker 1: getting the psycho through these thoughts then has this separate benefit,
35:05
Speaker 1: which is that in your day to day life, you're
35:09
Speaker 1: able to zoom out of a moment that you're in
35:11
Speaker 1: and actually look at yourself in the third person. So
35:14
Speaker 1: I will find myself, you know, in any given moment
35:18
Speaker 1: saying oh, Will's about to get angry, or oh Will's
35:21
Speaker 1: about to be upset, or oh you shouldn't say that,
35:25
Speaker 1: And it's almost like I have a third person that's
35:28
Speaker 1: talking to me now that's a step ahead of me,
35:32
Speaker 1: rather than the opposite, which is probably life before this
35:36
Speaker 1: where I feel I felt like I was I was
35:40
Speaker 1: just reacting to things, And as an entrepreneur, you want
35:44
Speaker 1: to try to avoid being in constant reaction mode. You
35:47
Speaker 1: want to feel like you're anticipating things, you're a step ahead.
35:50
Speaker 2: Of things, right, So you start to meditate based off
35:54
Speaker 2: of your Google search. And obviously, like many things, it's
35:58
Speaker 2: not like all of a sudden, meditate one time and
36:01
Speaker 2: you're like, wow, my life is instantly better. It's a process,
36:04
Speaker 2: like it takes some time to get used to it
36:06
Speaker 2: and to feel the effects of that and get to
36:08
Speaker 2: a point where you do feel more removed from the
36:10
Speaker 2: situation to be able to better handle it. How do
36:13
Speaker 2: you see this start to reflect in how you're feeling
36:16
Speaker 2: and like then in turn with your business.
36:19
Speaker 1: Well, it was interesting, actually, I mean I still remember
36:22
Speaker 1: some of the first times I did the practice, and
36:25
Speaker 1: by the way it takes about twenty two minutes, and
36:27
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do it twice a day. Now, probably
36:31
Speaker 1: today most of the time I do it once a day,
36:33
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning. But the interesting thing I
36:37
Speaker 1: remember about twenty two minutes is how fucking hard. It
36:42
Speaker 1: seemed like it felt really long, sitting still and just
36:46
Speaker 1: thinking for twenty two minutes. And in some ways, I
36:48
Speaker 1: guess it being hard actually tapped into my ego a
36:52
Speaker 1: little because it was like, oh, can you do this?
36:55
Speaker 1: Are you capable of doing this? Will? And so that
36:59
Speaker 1: made me actually more interested to see if I could
37:01
Speaker 1: push myself through learning this practice. And so some people
37:05
Speaker 1: will say, oh, you know, I'm trying to get into meditation,
37:08
Speaker 1: I'm just going to try to do it for two
37:10
Speaker 1: minutes a day or five minutes a day, and I
37:11
Speaker 1: actually think you may lose the benefits of starting that way.
37:14
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the benefit is to force
37:16
Speaker 1: yourself to do this thing that's hard, and to do
37:20
Speaker 1: it for twenty minutes. And for me, I actually almost
37:24
Speaker 1: immediately found benefits in it. So it was a little
37:26
Speaker 1: bit of a wonder drug in that regard, because it
37:30
Speaker 1: immediately made me realize how crazy what was going on
37:33
Speaker 1: in my mind was. It made me realize how much
37:36
Speaker 1: calmer I felt immediately afterwards, and then again I started
37:40
Speaker 1: to feel it trickle in to my life. You know,
37:43
Speaker 1: that third person concept. I started to feel that almost immediately.
37:48
Speaker 1: And they say that's something like after I think it's
37:52
Speaker 1: like four days, four weeks, four months, and four years.
37:55
Speaker 1: Your brain is changing as you meditate, which is a
37:58
Speaker 1: pretty interesting time which are pretty interesting time frames, and
38:01
Speaker 1: now I'm north of four years, and I have to
38:05
Speaker 1: say it's it's really a superpower.
38:07
Speaker 2: Aside from the meditation, what does your morning routine usually
38:10
Speaker 2: look like?
38:11
Speaker 1: Like?
38:11
Speaker 2: What time are you up? What time are you getting going?
38:13
Speaker 1: You know, depending on the day, I probably wake up
38:16
Speaker 1: between six thirty and seven thirty, and then I get
38:20
Speaker 1: out of bed, I go take a shower. I take
38:23
Speaker 1: a really cold shower, always end cold, and in Boston
38:28
Speaker 1: a cold shower is quite cold. And I've found that's
38:31
Speaker 1: also a great life back. It just wakes you the
38:33
Speaker 1: hell up, and it's hard to have. It's hard to
38:35
Speaker 1: be in a bad mood after a super cold shower.
38:38
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that is it really though?
38:40
Speaker 1: Yes? Absolutely, I mean, look, anything that can naturally make
38:44
Speaker 1: you happy, you should try to do.
38:46
Speaker 2: Okay, right, what else is on the happy list? Then?
38:48
Speaker 1: Well, we've talked a lot about meditation that's done to
38:50
Speaker 1: make you happy. Exercise makes you happy. Different forms of
38:54
Speaker 1: hot cold contrast therapy make you happy. So sauna, steam room,
39:00
Speaker 1: sex makes you happy. I mean, you know, there's a
39:03
Speaker 1: whole laundry list of things that just naturally make your
39:06
Speaker 1: body happy, right, and in general, you want to do
39:08
Speaker 1: those things right?
39:09
Speaker 2: Okay, So we cold shower, be out, we're smiling.
39:12
Speaker 1: Cold shower, smiling, get dressed, I go meditate on my
39:16
Speaker 1: couch for twenty two minutes, go back, kiss my wife
39:20
Speaker 1: who's probably still sleeping, and I march off to the office.
39:23
Speaker 2: March off, just like that. When does the exercise.
39:25
Speaker 1: Happen either during lunch or at night?
39:29
Speaker 2: Gotcha? What does that look like for you? These days?
39:32
Speaker 1: I still play squash pretty competitively. I'm also in two
39:34
Speaker 1: different leagues, so I'm in a soccer league and a
39:37
Speaker 1: basketball league, neither of which I'm particularly good at. But
39:40
Speaker 1: I actually feel like I'm getting better at both of
39:43
Speaker 1: those sports. So I encourage anyone listening to this to do,
39:47
Speaker 1: you know, do sports and activities that you can keep
39:48
Speaker 1: getting better at. Even if you're pretty bad at them
39:52
Speaker 1: in the moment, which I seem to be. And then
39:55
Speaker 1: I do you know, I work out with a trainer
39:57
Speaker 1: once or twice a week, or do weightlifting and and
40:00
Speaker 1: simple things like that.
40:01
Speaker 2: You using the meditation start to see pretty immediate benefits
40:05
Speaker 2: in like how you're feeling and maybe how you're able
40:07
Speaker 2: to interact and like better handle situations at the office.
40:10
Speaker 2: Where is whoop at that time? Like am I looking
40:12
Speaker 2: at a risks worn heart remoitor? Or am I looking
40:16
Speaker 2: at a box of stuff?
40:18
Speaker 1: We were just about to launch to professional teams. At
40:22
Speaker 1: that point, we had been working with like individual professional athletes.
40:26
Speaker 1: Two of our first hundred users were people like Lebron
40:29
Speaker 1: James and Michael Phelps.
40:31
Speaker 2: Was it just the promise of what you were building
40:33
Speaker 2: and what it could potentially do and the insight that
40:35
Speaker 2: it could give them that made them interested enough to
40:38
Speaker 2: want to get on board or was it the conversation
40:41
Speaker 2: deeper than that?
40:43
Speaker 1: Well, look, the secret to getting to anyone's super high
40:46
Speaker 1: profile is to get to someone super influential in their
40:51
Speaker 1: life who other people don't know. Presumably you know who
40:54
Speaker 1: Lebron James's coaches, you know who his wife is you
40:58
Speaker 1: know who his agent is, But it turned out in
41:01
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen you didn't know who his personal trainer was.
41:05
Speaker 1: And it also turned out that his personal trainer Mike Vincias,
41:08
Speaker 1: who's a friend of mine, he spent like most of
41:10
Speaker 1: his day with Lebron. So the key to getting to
41:14
Speaker 1: these high profile athletes was to see if their personal
41:17
Speaker 1: trainers liked our product. And so you know, we were
41:21
Speaker 1: able to get introduced to personal trainers of high performing
41:24
Speaker 1: athletes and then look, the technology has to perform, right,
41:29
Speaker 1: Your product has to perform. If they don't like it,
41:31
Speaker 1: it's not going to get to the superstar. What was
41:35
Speaker 1: validating for us, even at that really early stage was
41:38
Speaker 1: that the trainer said, hey, this is really interesting, and
41:40
Speaker 1: the players wore it and they said, hey, this is
41:43
Speaker 1: really interesting. Look with most things that are early stage,
41:47
Speaker 1: there's these huge swings of emotion. Right if you're a
41:50
Speaker 1: five person company and you just signed this new great person,
41:55
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, our company just grew twenty percent. We've
41:58
Speaker 1: got this awesome person, and this investors excited, and then
42:02
Speaker 1: the next day it's like, oh no, someone quick, we
42:05
Speaker 1: just lost twenty percent of our company. This investor is
42:08
Speaker 1: not going to invest they pass, the customer isn't going
42:11
Speaker 1: to buy it. You can't be riding that sin sort
42:13
Speaker 1: of wave of like ups and downs. You have to
42:16
Speaker 1: learn how to kind of roll with it. And so
42:18
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things that I try to do
42:20
Speaker 1: today is just be as even keel as possible. And look,
42:24
Speaker 1: that's in part easier because if one person gets let
42:28
Speaker 1: go tomorrow, we've lost one percent of our workforce, not
42:31
Speaker 1: twenty percent. But it's also easier because you train yourself
42:35
Speaker 1: over time to learn how to manage these things, right.
42:40
Speaker 2: It's interesting. It's also like I've kind of taken that
42:42
Speaker 2: approach myself to dating. It's like you can't tell your
42:45
Speaker 2: friends about a guy too soon because you don't want
42:48
Speaker 2: to get really invested. I think that's to just keep
42:51
Speaker 2: it even keel. So these athletes are wearing this drap.
42:53
Speaker 2: There's a little bit of anxiety about it, but we're
42:55
Speaker 2: learning how to manage that out. And then it's seemingly
42:59
Speaker 2: a successful situation.
43:01
Speaker 1: Yes, we had super cool people wearing the product. We
43:03
Speaker 1: had super cool people validating that the technology we had
43:07
Speaker 1: developed was influential. At the same time, we were still
43:09
Speaker 1: figure out with what's the business model? You know, how
43:13
Speaker 1: do we make money? How do we sell a lot
43:15
Speaker 1: of these and things like that, And so there's so
43:17
Speaker 1: many layers to success to actually have a company that
43:21
Speaker 1: endures or a startup that grows out of its startup phase.
43:24
Speaker 1: And I would say the phase from two thousand and
43:28
Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty seventeen eighteen was really figuring out what
43:32
Speaker 1: is that business model that we can scale around?
43:36
Speaker 2: Right?
43:36
Speaker 1: So, yes, in a lot of ways what we had
43:38
Speaker 1: built was a success. There was just a lot more
43:41
Speaker 1: work to do.
43:41
Speaker 2: When do you move from like from even from one
43:45
Speaker 2: to two.
43:46
Speaker 1: One to two is probably two thousand. Well look, I
43:49
Speaker 1: mean there was a bunch of stuff before one. You know,
43:53
Speaker 1: one was kind of that was probably the first product
43:55
Speaker 1: that thousands of people were wearing, right, So you know
44:00
Speaker 1: guy like Lebron back in the.
44:01
Speaker 2: Day, I wonder if negative Yeah, yeah, it was.
44:05
Speaker 1: Like an eighteen hour battery life.
44:07
Speaker 2: And is this like one of those situations when you're
44:09
Speaker 2: like product goes to market and like there's a bunch
44:11
Speaker 2: of you sitting in a room and you're like watching
44:13
Speaker 2: orders come in on a screen.
44:14
Speaker 1: It's more like it's like everyone watching the server to
44:17
Speaker 1: make sure the thing doesn't collapse. You know, it's like
44:20
Speaker 1: our operations team sending battery packs and bands to make
44:24
Speaker 1: sure that that the unit can be charged. I think
44:27
Speaker 1: a lot of technology development and product releases you have.
44:34
Speaker 1: It's really painful, but you have to release something that
44:37
Speaker 1: you're a little bit embarrassed by. There were so many
44:40
Speaker 1: things in the back of my mind that I hated
44:42
Speaker 1: about Generation one, like what well, look, it had a
44:45
Speaker 1: really short battery life. It was bigger than I wanted
44:48
Speaker 1: it to be. There was lags and how fast they
44:51
Speaker 1: would send data from the whoop strap to the phone.
44:54
Speaker 1: There was certain things that the phone wasn't able to
44:58
Speaker 1: do in terms of analyzing the data. I knew that
45:01
Speaker 1: that wasn't a mass market product. At the same time,
45:05
Speaker 1: it was good enough to get these initial people to
45:08
Speaker 1: wear it all the time.
45:09
Speaker 2: So you have this like kind of start before your
45:12
Speaker 2: ready mentality.
45:14
Speaker 1: Look, it's a fine balance, but you typically as a startup,
45:18
Speaker 1: have to release things before you feel like they're perfect.
45:23
Speaker 1: And that's in part because you, the entrepreneur, have an
45:26
Speaker 1: elevated sense of perfect right. You have a vision that
45:31
Speaker 1: you're striving towards. You view your current product as inadequate
45:35
Speaker 1: of And by the way, I don't know if you
45:37
Speaker 1: ever get over that concept.
45:39
Speaker 2: I don't think you do. I mean, even with the pod,
45:41
Speaker 2: I'm so obsessive about the quality of the content that
45:46
Speaker 2: I'm putting out. Sure, and I'll send audio clips to
45:49
Speaker 2: someone like my dad of my podcast versus other podcasts.
45:53
Speaker 2: I'm like, this podcast gets millions and millions of listens
45:55
Speaker 2: and it sounds like this. He's like, you're doing pretty okay,
45:58
Speaker 2: like you're doing and stop freaking out about like one
46:01
Speaker 2: blip or one thing. But I think about it all
46:04
Speaker 2: the time.
46:05
Speaker 1: And hey, look, it's important you want to hold you
46:07
Speaker 1: want to hold your technology, your product, your service, whatever
46:10
Speaker 1: it is, to a high standard. Yeah, you can't let
46:13
Speaker 1: that prevent you from taking, you know, shots on goal.
46:16
Speaker 2: I know. Okay, so we've accomplished version one and it's
46:20
Speaker 2: a little bigger than you'd hoped it to be. But
46:23
Speaker 2: you're probably learning a shit ton right now.
46:25
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing I learned at this point is
46:29
Speaker 1: how hard of a company I decided to start. You
46:33
Speaker 1: think it's going to be easier than it is, and
46:35
Speaker 1: it's definitely harder than you think it will be. The
46:38
Speaker 1: question is whether it's easier or harder than what other
46:40
Speaker 1: people tell you. Almost everyone I told I was starting
46:43
Speaker 1: Whoop told me I was going to fail. So it's
46:46
Speaker 1: definitely turned out to be easier than that it was.
46:48
Speaker 1: You know, it's been much harder than you ever really
46:50
Speaker 1: can imagine, m H. And one of the things that
46:53
Speaker 1: makes whoops so complicated is that we're building software and
46:56
Speaker 1: analytics and hardware all at the same time. And by
47:01
Speaker 1: the way, the hardware doesn't sit at your desk. It
47:03
Speaker 1: actually is worn on your body. And it's not just
47:06
Speaker 1: worn on your body for an hour. It needs to
47:08
Speaker 1: be worn on your body twenty four to seven. And
47:11
Speaker 1: there's so many there's so many challenges that come with that,
47:14
Speaker 1: Like I know so much more than I ever expected
47:16
Speaker 1: to know about wrist sizes and hairiness and skin color
47:24
Speaker 1: and the importance of having something be comfortable and you know,
47:30
Speaker 1: not produce certain odors and yeah, look, there were issues
47:34
Speaker 1: with Gen one. Generation two was where we got a
47:37
Speaker 1: lot of feedback from from the market. Again, there were
47:39
Speaker 1: still issues with it. Generation three I think is a
47:42
Speaker 1: very good product. I think that there's there's a bunch
47:47
Speaker 1: of really powerful software tools within the app that people
47:50
Speaker 1: can use to be understand their bodies and we're going
47:54
Speaker 1: to keep marching.
47:55
Speaker 2: You have a lot of really great advice and like
47:57
Speaker 2: kind of snippets to offer. But when you look back
48:00
Speaker 2: on especially maybe like the past four years of when
48:02
Speaker 2: this is just grown, and you think about the advice
48:06
Speaker 2: that you've been given, what would you say has been
48:08
Speaker 2: some of the best advice that someone's offered you?
48:11
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that someone said to me along
48:15
Speaker 1: the way. You don't have to listen to what people say,
48:18
Speaker 1: but you should hear what everyone says. And if you're
48:22
Speaker 1: starting something and a lot of people are telling you
48:25
Speaker 1: to fail or telling you you're going to fail, you
48:28
Speaker 1: build up this resiliency to survive, which actually takes a
48:33
Speaker 1: form of stubbornness. I really didn't listen to virtually anyone
48:37
Speaker 1: for the first few years of Whoop around you know
48:42
Speaker 1: a lot of things, because just so often the feedback
48:46
Speaker 1: was you're going to fail or this is why this
48:48
Speaker 1: isn't going to work. And then over time, as it
48:50
Speaker 1: became more obvious that we were onto something, more people
48:54
Speaker 1: started agreeing with me, or more people sort of reframed
48:58
Speaker 1: the way they were providing feed back, and it actually
49:02
Speaker 1: took some time for me to recognize that you want
49:06
Speaker 1: to surround yourself with people and really understand all their feedback. Now,
49:11
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it tends to be
49:13
Speaker 1: your responsibility if you're the CEO, to make decisions, but
49:17
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you understand all the different angles.
49:20
Speaker 1: And so I think that this concept of making sure
49:24
Speaker 1: you hear what everyone's saying, you don't necessarily have to
49:26
Speaker 1: follow it. Make sure you hear what people are saying
49:29
Speaker 1: is pretty helpful advice.
49:31
Speaker 2: And obviously, I mean, you certainly know what it's like
49:35
Speaker 2: to fail and how valuable failure can be. When you
49:38
Speaker 2: look at your time building this company, can you reflect
49:42
Speaker 2: on failure specifically that maybe was your biggest lesson or
49:47
Speaker 2: your biggest win, so to speak.
49:49
Speaker 1: Well, I'll push back on that slightly. I think failure
49:52
Speaker 1: is largely overrated and the way it's been romanticized in
49:57
Speaker 1: sort of technology or in life. But what because the
50:00
Speaker 1: goal is ultimately to find ways to succeed, right, So
50:03
Speaker 1: let's not forget that. But what what the whole message
50:07
Speaker 1: of this, you know, sort of raw raw failure I
50:11
Speaker 1: think is getting at is you want to avoid a
50:14
Speaker 1: fear of failure, A fear of failure is paralyzing, right,
50:18
Speaker 1: And that the reason that people can look back on
50:22
Speaker 1: failures so positively in many context is they realize they've
50:26
Speaker 1: failed and they're still there. And I think that in
50:28
Speaker 1: turn gives you more confidence to do the next thing.
50:31
Speaker 1: I think a fear of failure is paralyzing, and you
50:34
Speaker 1: want to you want to try to overcome that at
50:35
Speaker 1: all costs. And by the way, I think it's being
50:37
Speaker 1: taught really poorly to young people. I remember being quite
50:43
Speaker 1: afraid to start whoop and you know, really trying to
50:47
Speaker 1: block out what a lot of people were saying to
50:49
Speaker 1: me when I founded the company, and I, in hindsight,
50:52
Speaker 1: I look back and I was like, wow, I actually
50:54
Speaker 1: had a lot of you know, I had a lot
50:58
Speaker 1: of drive to still do it. And I can only
51:01
Speaker 1: imagine how discouraging it would be for most people who
51:05
Speaker 1: have something pretty interesting that they want to try to start,
51:08
Speaker 1: to get all that sort of negative feedback and to
51:11
Speaker 1: sort of feel like, oh, you're going to fail, and
51:13
Speaker 1: God forbid you fail. So I think the way that
51:15
Speaker 1: school's package risk needs to be rethought. It's something I
51:21
Speaker 1: think about a lot anyway. But anyway, back to your question,
51:24
Speaker 1: I think fear of failures are paralyzing. I think you
51:27
Speaker 1: can learn a lot from mistakes. I think you can
51:28
Speaker 1: learn a ton from rejection, right. You know, you definitely
51:33
Speaker 1: don't want to be afraid of rejection, whether it's it's
51:36
Speaker 1: going out and trying to find great people and them
51:38
Speaker 1: telling you they don't want to work with you or
51:40
Speaker 1: they don't want to invest in you. You got to
51:42
Speaker 1: keep taking shots on goal. Right, Failure is great, But
51:46
Speaker 1: I think it's more like, don't have a fear of rejection,
51:49
Speaker 1: don't have a fear of mistakes, learn from those things,
51:51
Speaker 1: and then you know, really try to avoid failure, right,
51:54
Speaker 1: like try.
51:54
Speaker 2: To win any landmark rejections.
51:56
Speaker 1: Then Ah, I mean, look, I've you know, again the headlines,
52:01
Speaker 1: We've raised all this money, but like there's hundreds of
52:04
Speaker 1: investors out there have passed on whoop, right, Like those
52:07
Speaker 1: tend to be the most memorable. I vividly remember certain
52:10
Speaker 1: people who told me it was so much confidence, how
52:14
Speaker 1: Nike was going to kill us, or Apple was going
52:16
Speaker 1: to kill us, or you know, fill in the blank
52:18
Speaker 1: was going to kill us. But here we are, Yeah,
52:21
Speaker 1: we're still going you know, a lot of it's also survive, Yeah,
52:25
Speaker 1: survive in advance.
52:27
Speaker 2: What I gather from our conversation, and it is kind
52:29
Speaker 2: of like two large hurdle moments, both in college when
52:33
Speaker 2: you're kind of hitting these what feel like overtraining spells
52:37
Speaker 2: of mono like symptoms, and also when you're in the
52:42
Speaker 2: early phases of Whoop and you're like having what feel
52:44
Speaker 2: like anxiety attacks and you lean into meditation. So at
52:48
Speaker 2: either of those pinnacle points in your life, those hurdle moments,
52:51
Speaker 2: if you have an opportunity to really look back at
52:54
Speaker 2: the Will at that time and offer him a piece
52:57
Speaker 2: of advice right now, what do you think you would
52:59
Speaker 2: tell yourself? Then?
53:01
Speaker 1: I mean, keep going right, like, learn from these moments.
53:05
Speaker 1: It's a lot of the theme that we've been talking about.
53:07
Speaker 1: But I feel pretty grateful for both of those things.
53:11
Speaker 1: You know, God forbid, I was a super successful college athlete,
53:14
Speaker 1: maybe I wouldn't have started Whoop, and God that would
53:16
Speaker 1: have been such a bummer. I really love Whoop. Or yeah,
53:21
Speaker 1: like I think I only I think I only learned
53:25
Speaker 1: to meditate because I hit sort of a moment of
53:28
Speaker 1: rock bottom where I had to force myself out of it.
53:31
Speaker 1: Back to your theme on failure for a second, those
53:33
Speaker 1: are the ways I think to look at a moment
53:36
Speaker 1: of down right and sort of look at okay, well,
53:40
Speaker 1: because you got to this point in time, you were
53:44
Speaker 1: able to build something really positive out of it. I
53:47
Speaker 1: also think it's butterfly effect. You can't go back and
53:49
Speaker 1: change one thing and still end up where you are today.
53:52
Speaker 1: I don't have many regrets in that regard.
53:54
Speaker 2: I love it. Thanks so much for taking the time
53:56
Speaker 2: to sit down with me.
53:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, It's been fun.
53:59
Speaker 2: Please take moment and we have a quick review of
54:01
Speaker 2: the podcast by clicking the link with the description to
54:03
Speaker 2: this episode. We all face multiple hurdles in life. I
54:06
Speaker 2: want to hear about yours. Reach out to me at
54:08
Speaker 2: Emily at Hurdle dot us. Connect with the podcast on
54:11
Speaker 2: Instagram and Twitter at Hurdle podcast. Will How do they
54:14
Speaker 2: find you? How do they keep up with you? Where
54:16
Speaker 2: do they find Whoop? Give me the details?
54:18
Speaker 1: Find us online woop dot com. You can find us
54:22
Speaker 1: on social media at Woop w h O O P.
54:25
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media at will am
54:28
Speaker 1: at w I L L A H M E.
54:30
Speaker 2: D I am at Emily Abody Another hurdle conquered. Catch
54:35
Speaker 2: you guys next time.