My First Million: WHOOP Founder Will Ahmed: How I Built A $3.6 BILLION Company

If you're good at sleeping, it decreases every form

of potential disease that you can have.

Like it is the magic pill.

So I don't agree with your tweet,

but I respect that you probably have a lot of free tweets.

Tons of free tweets, right?

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

All right, do you know what you're getting into or what?

I've read the briefing and I'm a big fan of the podcast,

so ready for you.

All right, so we'll spend a little bit of time

kind of getting to know you

because you've done a lot of amazing things.

Yeah, absolutely. Will Ahmed,

I grew up on North Shore of Long Island.

As a kid, I was kind of into sports and exercise.

I ended up going to Harvard and playing squash in school

and I was a competitive college athlete.

And I felt like I didn't really know what I was doing

to my body while I was training as an athlete.

So that got me very interested in physiology.

Did a ton of physiology research as a student,

read something like 500 medical papers

and started to conceive of this idea

of how you could continuously measure the human body.

And the idea was initially around athletic performance,

but broadly I felt like there would be ways

to continuously measure the human body

for all sorts of health implications.

And what became as a sort of a curiosity

ultimately turned into a very long research paper

that I wrote and then ultimately founding a company.

This would have been when I was 21, 22 years old.

As a senior at Harvard and then for the last 10 plus years

or so, I've been building this business.

The business whoop builds wearable technology

really to improve people's health.

We started with the best athletes in the world

and over time have grown to work

with a large consumer population.

And it's a really exciting time

to be building that technology.

Okay, so yeah, you're the CEO and founder of whoop.

People have seen it.

It's a whoop band.

You have to have seen it on people's wrist.

But you said something like,

we started with high end athletes.

I think I read something like this that,

is this right that LeBron and Michael Phelps

were two of the first 100 customers or users of whoop?

Is that real and how did that happen?

That is real.

And this would have been around 2014, 2015.

So, we spent about two to three years really

on the initial V1 of whoop.

And I wanted to start with the best athletes in the world.

And really for two reasons.

The first was that we were bringing sleep

and recovery technology to market for the first time.

And I felt like professional athletes

who have to perform on a daily basis

should really understand how they're recovering.

That was one of the insights to starting the business.

And then second of all,

if we could get the world's best athletes to wear whoop

and organically like it,

then we could build a whole brand around performance

that ultimately could scale to consumers.

And I grew up very inspired by brands like Nike

and the Jordan brand and just how like a swash on something

could make the whole product feel completely different

independent from anything else about the product

just because of the storytelling behind it

or the brand behind it.

So, I was interested in how health monitoring

could have a brand to it.

And so, that was really the thesis

for targeting professional athletes.

And so, in the case of getting to LeBron and Phelps,

the, I think the key insight was finding people

in their lives who had a big influence on them

who a bunch of people didn't already know.

You know, if you go to their agent or their manager

or their wife, like they get inundated with this stuff.

So, you have to find someone in their life

who other people don't know.

And it also turned out back then

that the personal trainer was a somewhat underrated

or unknown person in a professional athlete's life.

And that also happened to be the right person to go to

for technology like whoop.

So, in the case of LeBron, I got to know Mike Mencius.

In the case of Phelps, we got to know Kenan Robinson,

both of which were personal trainers to those athletes

and got them on whoop.

And then they got their athletes on whoop.

And yeah, the rest is history.

How big is the business now?

You guys have raised what, like $400 million?

Yeah, we've raised $400 million.

We've last raised capital at $3.6 billion valuation.

I think there's still, you know,

a lot of potential for health monitoring.

I think if you fast forward 10 years,

I think a large percentage of the world's population

will be wearing continuous health monitor

and it'll hook into everything that you do

as it relates to the healthcare system and doctors.

And so, yeah, I'm very bullish on the opportunity in the space.

All right, everyone.

Today's episode is brought to you

by Marketing Against the Grain.

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The hosts are Kit Bodner, who's HubSpotCMO.

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One of my favorite recent episodes

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Kit and Kieran talked to Steph Smith,

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wherever you get your podcast.

Do you like being the CEO of a big company?

Or do you like still wish that you were in the early days

of like getting in the nitty gritty?

Cause I imagine you're like,

kind of just making decisions now

and managing people as opposed to maybe getting your hands

dirty on the product.

Well, I've still tried to stay close to the product

because I think it's something I've had

a relevant perspective on even as a company has scaled

and I've been able to see around corners

in a few areas for the whole product.

I think that the role of being CEO

as you guys know, changes a lot with stage and scale, right?

Like a 10 person versus a 100 person versus 500 person,

like at each of these inflections,

your role is definitely changing.

I think because Woop as a technology

gets increasingly interesting with scale,

it's made my role increasingly interesting as well.

So what do I mean by that?

You know, the overall data set that you have

on a larger population makes the data much more predictive

and much more powerful.

The coaching as a result can get much more comprehensive.

I think for other founders,

I've met who have been building a business

for five years or even 10 years.

They get to a point where they're kind of like,

okay, this can run itself

or I'm gonna bring in someone new

or I've kind of reached the relative peak of the mountain.

And I don't feel that way.

I feel like there's still a bunch more levels to go.

I feel that the insights that the technologies

they were able to get,

the number of people that it can potentially use by,

all of that feels like it's amplifying, not shrinking.

And so for those reasons,

I'm very excited about being CEO.

It's also a look at the daily challenge growing into it.

I feel like at every stage of the business,

I've had to learn how to be a CEO.

And it's not like this is just the first company

I started, it's my first full-time job.

So, I'm figuring a lot of this out as I go.

Sam always asks that question

and I'm just waiting for the one person who's like,

I hate being CEO, I hate my job,

I hate all these people that are in this office.

This is terrible.

There's certain things that change a lot, right?

The percent of time in which you think of yourself

as an individual contributor versus a manager

has to shift very dramatically.

I think probably around the size of 50 people,

it has to shift like that, like whoops, about 500 people.

But that's probably one of the most painful things

that if a founder doesn't fully appreciate or recognize,

they can screw the business up a lot.

Like you have to recognize that you need to be shifting

almost entirely towards manager

and not being an individual contributor.

Well, you know what it is,

is we talked to a lot of interesting people here

and the CEO of like a 500 person plus company

usually looks like shit.

Not always, but usually.

Like they look tired and there's rings under their eyes

and they're usually a little chubby.

As he takes a huge swig of coffee.

Well, no, they look like crap,

but you're like the CEO of a fitness brand.

You were a highly competitive athlete

and so you look great.

And so it's like, you're kind of like skewing the average here.

But like, I mean, you look pretty fit.

Are you like, how are you balancing like being healthy

and putting your, but also putting your company first?

Because I like, when I was really in the thick of it,

I was like, dude, I don't have time to work out.

Like screw it, I'm just going to eat this crap.

But you don't know this,

but one of your competitors was my neighbor

and we used to work out together in my garage every day.

And then he got promoted to CEO.

He was like a different exec, got promoted to CEO

and then stopped having time to work out.

Like he just kept coming by while I was working out.

And he was like, I gotta get back in here.

And we're like, dude, you're the boss.

You know, you could just like rearrange your schedule, right?

He's like, I got crazy.

It's crazy right now.

Oh, it's crazy right now.

And for like nine months straight, it was crazy right now.

And he just stopped working out.

And I was like, bro, you run a health company.

Like you gotta, if you don't sleep or work out

or make time for this stuff,

like, you know, what's going on here?

And I just thought that was so funny.

Like the fact that he was like, you know,

we have to make this successful in order to do that.

I'm gonna make these health sacrifices as I go.

What?

Super nice guy.

Dude, Will's got like a chiseled jaw.

You got a nice head of hair.

You're wearing a, it looks like a vest.

You look all, you look all spiffy

and you look nice and shit.

What are you, what are you doing to exercise right now?

And how are you balancing that with the work?

I think it look, I think it's part of the job for me

that I'm gonna be in good shape and healthy.

And I spend a lot of time around people

that are super into their health and fitness,

whether it's professional athletes or scientists

or even thinking about product features

that are designed to improve your health.

So as a business, like just thinking about

the product and technology that we build every day,

that kind of orients me at least to be healthy

and not to mention I'm using a product

that is all about health improvement.

So, you know, for a variety of reasons,

it feels like it'd be super off brand

if I was really at a shape or-

What's your like sleep score when you sleep?

You give us your stats.

And also what are some things that, you know,

a lot of this audience who listens to this,

I would say probably, I would guess the majority

don't regularly wear a continuous health monitor,

but also the majority care about performing well,

peak performance and as an entrepreneur typically

who's listening to this.

So what are some things that they,

that you've learned that they maybe should be doing

or some of the biggest levers that you've seen

when it comes to, you know, kind of health and performance?

Well, I want to be clear that I do believe

building a successful company requires overcoming

some level of stress that would break most people.

So I do think you have to really push above and beyond

what is comfortable.

I think the technical term is man up, Will.

Yeah, okay, man up.

But like within that, I think there's a lot of techniques

that you can develop for yourself

that allow you to run at a breakneck pace

for a long, long time.

You know, people always talk about this analogy of,

okay, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

But if you actually look at like world-class marathoners,

they're running like four minute at mile,

four, 30 mile.

That's kind of a sprint.

Yeah, so, you know, and how do you run a mile that fast?

So I think for the entrepreneur

or the business leader listening to this,

you want to figure out a way

that you can be sprinting a marathon for a long time.

And one of the ways I view that is taking care of myself

and being in good shape.

I think we can start with sleep,

which is, I think a topic that's not talked about

in the right framework.

Most people, when you talk to them about their sleep,

they're like, oh, I don't have enough time,

I'm working hard, blah, blah, blah.

The thing to understand about sleep is,

it's all about the percentage of time

that you spend in bed getting high-quality sleep.

So if you ask your audience or you ask a friend

who's never worn a health monitor,

and you say, how much sleep did you get last night?

They'll be like, oh, well, I went to bed at 11,

I woke up at six, I got seven hours of sleep, pretty good.

Okay, the reality has been seven hours in bed.

So over those seven hours, you were in a period of awake,

a period of light sleep, a period of REM,

and a period of slow-wave sleep.

Awake and light are pretty much irrelevant.

You're not getting any physiological benefit

from being in awake or light stage sleep.

REM and slow-wave, that's where all the magic happens.

So REM sleep, your mind is repairing.

So like real cognitive repair,

it's when you have deep dreams.

So if you're someone who can't remember dreams

or you don't seem to have dreams,

you're definitely not getting enough REM sleep.

Any high-performing exec entrepreneur,

you need REM sleep.

Slow-wave sleep is when your body produces 95%

of its human growth hormone.

So just think about that for a second.

95% of your human growth hormone gets produced

during this stage of sleep.

You're not getting stronger in the gym, right?

Or working out, you're breaking muscles down.

You get stronger during slow-wave sleep.

So the more you get to that, the better, okay?

And let's take the person who spent seven hours in bed.

That person could have gotten a total of 30 minutes

of REM and slow-wave sleep,

or they could have gotten a total

of five and a half hours of REM and slow-wave sleep.

Like that's a massive, massive difference.

That's a huge spectrum.

The person with 30 minutes,

I guarantee you has all kinds of problems in their lives.

The person with five and a half hours,

I guarantee you is very happy, very high-functioning.

And what's really strong?

If an eight-hour block was, I mean, in bed for eight hours,

what would be like a good level of REM and slow-wave sleep?

If you can get over 50% of the time you're spending in bed

to be REM and slow-wave sleep,

like you're doing pretty well.

And so I'm in that camp,

and I'm also still optimizing my life more to be CEO

or an entrepreneur than a human, right?

If I was just fully focused on being a great human,

I would probably spend eight to nine hours in bed, right?

And I wouldn't look at my phone before bed

and things like this, right?

But because I'm still optimizing for being an entrepreneur,

I spend more like seven hours in bed or seven and a half,

maybe if I get a little extra sleep.

But I've managed to make that time,

like the three to four hours,

sometimes even four and a half hours

of REM and slow-wave sleep.

So I'm getting the REM and slow-wave sleep

that like a person who might be spending eight

or nine hours in bed is getting

because I've figured some stuff out

that makes me sleep better.

So that's sort of one whole category right there,

which is sleep and anyone listening to this

should try to figure that out for themselves

because it'll just dramatically change

the quality of your life.

I'll give you another hack.

I wear these blue light blocking glasses before bed

and they've got a red, like kind of a red tint to them.

And if you think about laptops, iPhones, whatever,

all of them are emitting this light

that is telling your eyes and your brain to stay awake.

And if you're like me and you're using your phone

or reading an email closely before bed

because you're doing work or you're staying

on top of things, it's gonna affect the way you sleep.

But if you wear these glasses,

it's like a get out of jail free card

and you can look at all that stuff

right up until the moment you go to bed

and it won't affect your sleep.

So that's like one example of how you can

hack both sides of it.

You said you've been around all these interesting athletes

and you also have access now

to like millions of pieces of data.

Who are some of the biggest freaks in nature

that you've been around?

Is there like Judy in Iowa

that's getting like nine and a half hours

of slow wave sleep and she's your hero?

You got like a picture of her on your wall?

Yeah, or like all these athletes that you've been around,

is there anyone who you've just like,

you've seen them in real life and you're like.

Dekemen Mutombo.

Incredible. Yeah, what you're like.

When we first started working with LeBron James,

to sort of been 2015, 2016,

I could probably point to the one that was LeBron's.

Just kind of amazing.

Like, and it makes a lot of sense that he was so good at

and has been so good at recovering in his career

because he's taking care of that third of his life

and sleeping great.

I think it's maybe the most rem in slow wave sleep

of anyone I've talked to named Alex Honnell.

Do you guys know that name?

Yeah. Alex Honnell is from Free Solo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the climber.

The climber, right?

So this is a guy who climbs mountains without a rope,

essentially, and does these insane feats

that are extremely dangerous.

So the interesting thing about REM sleep

is researchers were able to find,

the more REM sleep you get,

the less heightened your amygdala response.

So your amygdala response is fight or flight.

It's what signals to your body to be nervous

or to get animated.

So it makes a lot of sense that the guy who's capable

of climbing, rock climbing these environments

that no one's done before without a rope

has this insane ability to sleep

because that's probably in part what makes him so calm

as he's doing these activities.

So I thought that-

Dude, I just Googled Alex's name and then REM sleep.

I think we just gave you the promo of the century, man.

Like, this is the marketing.

This is like, it should be,

it comes up, the first thing that comes up is like a TED talk.

Now your company talking about how you sleep more,

you get more REM sleep,

then you're able to like take a little bit more risks

and be calm.

I mean, that's like a really,

that's like a really interesting play here.

What up?

One second, on those athletes,

do you think it's a sort of like intentional thing?

Like you think that they, you know,

like is LeBron or Alex,

are they doing something that's making their sleep

that much better?

Or do you think because they happen to be great sleepers

that is what allowed them to become such great athletes

or such great performers?

I mean, there's certainly genetic things

that make people better or worse at sleeping,

but there's also so many things

that you the individual can do to enhance your sleep.

Sleeping at a very consistent time.

So going to bed and waking up at a very similar time

will just unusually elevate the quality of your sleep.

Often sleeping in a very cold room, a very dark room,

a very quiet room, a room of high air quality.

Athletes who are serious about this stuff

will, you know, measure all of that and dial it in.

I still think athletes aren't sophisticated enough

about sleep and recovery,

given how important it is to their overall performance.

But those are a variety of things you can do.

We talked about blue light.

There's certain supplements that work better

or worse for people, magnesium, melatonin.

Interestingly, harder sleep drugs

like the ambience of the world,

they knock you out so your sleep latency is short,

but the quality of the sleep is never that high.

So again, back to that percentage of time

that you're in REM and slow life.

It is rarely, you know,

maybe if you're someone who normally be at 30%,

you're gonna be at 20%.

I was a 400 meter runner,

division one 400 meter runner in college.

So I used to be like fairly competitive

and I knew a bunch of basketball players.

Yeah, and I knew a bunch of basketball players

who ended up going in the NBA

because I was friends with them in college.

And dude, it's shocking how bad,

myself included, how bad most competitive athletes are

when it comes to like diet and recovery.

Like I didn't know anything.

I just like, I would eat like ranch and pizza every day.

And a couple of my friends who went on to play in the NBA,

like we're just eating McDonald's like on a regular basis.

It's pretty amazing how like some people are still freaks,

even though they don't do any of that nonsense, you know?

It's pretty wild.

Yeah, and we've worked with a lot of athletes

like who, yeah, they used to play video games

from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.

You know, you got a game the next day

in front of a million people, you know,

and it doesn't occur to them

that that actually is gonna affect their performance.

And then you look at the data and it's like, okay,

you're, you've got a red recovery,

even though you didn't even drink alcohol

because you stayed up late staring at a screen.

Whereas if you, you know, had gone to bed

at the same time that you start playing video games,

here's the difference in what your performance is.

Sean, are you gonna make fun of me or something?

No, I don't know.

I was gonna ask, actually, this is a personal question.

Naps, what's the word on naps?

Because I am a prolific napper.

In fact, one of my life goals is to be able to take

a guilt-free nap every single day.

And I know athletes are pretty big on naps as well,

but I don't know if you could get to those deeper stages

in a quick, you know, in a one or one and a half hour nap.

What's the word on naps?

I heard Winston Churchill of you

to have a daily nap, that'd be pretty good.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel like he's the coolest person I can think of

who really pioneered the daily nap as a hardcore.

Yeah, it's a hardcore nap.

I like that.

I think that sounds better because my nap marketing

is pretty soft right now.

I need to, I need to up it.

I need to have a Churchill nap.

In fact, I'm gonna brand it as,

I'm gonna brand it as a Churchill nap.

Dude, I do it every day as well.

You do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

About two o'clock for about 30 or 40 minutes

every single day.

And do you get in bed

or you just lie on a couch kind of thing?

No, I only go, Sean, do you go to bed?

I only go to bed for nighttime sleeping

and then I refuse to lay in the bed.

I go to a different bedroom.

I have a nap bedroom and I have a master bedroom.

Really?

Yeah.

Interesting.

And do you wear a sleep mask or anything?

You just close your eyes.

I wear a sleep mask, but I get knocked out.

Like I wake up two hours later

and I'm like, I'm a whole different human being.

I feel like.

Wait, and you can sleep at night after two hours?

I can't do two hours.

Two hours is a real nap.

Yeah, Churchill.

Is that really what you do?

You do two hours in the middle.

But that's my goal.

My goal is to get that to be an everyday thing.

Right now it's an every third day.

Sean's like, here's my life advice, young man.

You gotta get a solid 16 every day

and life's cream cheese.

I'm not a big nap person personally.

I almost rarely ever take naps,

but I think that there's certainly plenty of research

that shows that for most people getting a nap versus not

is gonna make them feel better and perform better.

I certainly think a lot of athletes

take them in the afternoon or even some will take them

almost right up to the time before tip off

or when they have their event.

And because I think one of the reasons for them

is they also need to peak in their performance

much later in the day than most people write.

So like an NBA game might start at seven, 30 or eight

and they're playing until nine or 10 or whatever.

And so, but whereas most people are winding down

at that time, so they kind of need to shift

their peak performance later in the day.

Whereas most entrepreneurs are trying to be tip top

at nine a.m. or whatever.

Yeah, I think that's right.

The challenge with naps is that the percentage of time

that you spend in trying to sleep is often lower

as a quality standpoint.

So that's what I was kind of interested in

that you guys get in bed or whether it's more casual

because you might up the intensity of the setup

of your nap to really maximize the quality of the sleep.

So try things like a sleep mask or try a couple

of little things and you might all of a sudden

feel even better after your nap.

Are you a solo founder?

Well, I was fortunate in that I met two really talented

engineers when I was graduating from Harvard.

So one is John Capilupo, who for 10 years

was our chief technology officer.

And the other is a really a Nikolai who's still with me

and he's our chief mechanical engineer.

And the combination of the three of us

really built the company.

Now, a lot of it was algorithms development,

computer science, data science,

having the right prototypes.

And yeah, so it was very technical out of the gates.

But you're the, you consider them co-founders

or just meaningful contributors?

I consider them co-founders.

I mean, I came up with the idea for the company

years before I met them, but they've been an amazing,

I mean, amazing piece of the loop story and critical.

So you're the CEO, you're a founder

of a multi-billion dollar startup.

What, I don't know if you're liquid or not,

or if you have a lot of your equity so tied up.

What are you gonna do with all your money

when you eventually do get liquid?

Do you have like any big aspirations

or are you just like a boring guy who just,

like what I am?

Have you taken secondary along the way, any secondary?

Yeah, I have.

Well, look, it doesn't actually change your motivation

all that much in building the business.

That was something that I remember someone saying to me

at various points when I had the option to sell some shares.

And I think it's really just made the quality of my life higher.

You should post your sleep before and after the secondary.

Be like, do I sleep easier at night?

Now that I got 50 million in the bank.

Yeah, it turns out I do actually.

I do sleep a little easier at night.

Taking secondary, I remember when I was first getting

going in my career and I heard about these secondaries

and I was like, that's bullshit.

I think it was rooted a little bit in envy,

but I also was like, you gotta be all in.

And now that I've like done a little bit of stuff,

I realized having a safety net,

and this is like a very obvious thing to say.

So I sound like an idiot here, but having a safety net,

particularly like a meaningful safety net of liquid net worth,

I think 100% makes you better at building your company.

And I think taking secondaries, it changes on a scale.

Sometimes it's too much, but taking secondary,

I think will make you a better company builder.

Do you agree with that?

I do, especially if you're like a growth stage of company.

I don't think I ever sold shares until Woop was worth

at least a billion dollars.

And they were for rounds that were super over subscribed.

So, but I do think that's a fair,

I think that's a fair lens to look at it from.

I've read about people taking secondaries at the,

you know, series A stage or something, and I don't know.

Everyone's, I could look,

everyone's circumstances are different,

so you don't wanna judge,

but I do think for a company that's at a later stage

where you're trying to, you're making this calculus,

is this a company that's gonna be acquired

in a short period of time,

or is this a company that we're trying to build

to be a standalone business?

And I think if it's more the latter,

you want your founders or your CEO,

you want folks like that to be

not sort of looking at their bank account,

wondering when they're gonna cash out on this thing.

You want them in a mode of,

I can keep going for a while

and really optimize the business.

So, yeah, I agree, I agree with you.

What do you do with your money?

Do you just do like boring Vanguard or like index funds

or do you do something a little more risky

and what do you like to spend your money on?

I wouldn't say I'm the biggest spender of money,

but I mean, I've enjoyed investing in stuff

and investing in startups, meeting founders.

I've enjoyed backing stuff that my friends do or start.

If you go out to dinner with your friends,

do they just, Bill comes,

do they just sort of look at you and wait now or?

Yeah, they got T-Rex arms, they can't reach them.

Yeah, all of a sudden that wingspan shortened up.

Big time, couldn't even get to the pocket anymore.

No, I mean, look, I think it's great, of course,

to be able to be generous too

and take care of people or cover bills or whatever.

I think it just sort of creates a peace of mind for you

and in an important way,

if you're gonna be trying to do something

for the next 10 years.

What companies did you want to start before that

because I'm looking at your background.

So you said you're from Long Island,

you live in Boston and went to Harvard,

so that's amazing, but you studied economics.

Like it doesn't look like you,

and then you worked at a bank, right?

Or you were just like an intern at a bank.

You were, I know my wife's from Long Island,

and look, you're going down this very typical path

of just being some like banker type in the city,

but you kind of like took a left somewhere.

What other companies were you thinking about starting?

I wasn't thinking about starting companies at all, actually,

and your observation's right.

I sort of, I thought in the back of my mind,

I would go work in finance after I graduated

because that's what a lot of people seem to do,

and I had some background in finance

because my dad had worked in finance,

but internships are a great thing

to figure out what you don't want to do.

So I worked at a hedge fund after my freshman year,

I worked at an investment bank after my sophomore year,

and I worked at a private equity firm after my junior year.

And the question I asked myself at each of those places is,

did I want to be my boss's boss or boss's boss's boss,

or if I could be one day?

And I just didn't, I didn't feel that pull.

I didn't feel this like gravitational pull towards it.

And at the same time, I was becoming sort of obsessed

with this idea.

And I think I ultimately became an entrepreneur

before I really knew what an entrepreneur was.

It wasn't like I was choosing

between three or four different ideas.

It was just this one idea that I became obsessed with.

Well, in the last decade that you've been doing this,

you know, any entrepreneur, I think,

sees other opportunities.

You see things that are pain points for your business

that you're like, man, somebody should make this easier.

Or you meet a bunch of other entrepreneurs

and you realize, oh, wow, there's like a whole universe

of potential businesses that can be started

and be successful.

A lot of people listen to this podcast

to try to get ideas to think about,

oh, what's, what's possible?

What could I be doing right now?

So do you have any business ideas that have come to you,

you know, as you've been running whoop

that you're not going to go do it

because you're running whoop,

but like, you know, maybe somebody else could go.

I have a lot of sort of funny tangent like business ideas

that are sort of silly business ideas

that you, you know, think up in the shower or whatnot.

And so we can, we can riff on some of those.

And then I have, you know, I have some that are more.

Don't, don't tell us which ones are the serious or the silly.

Well, we probably will get them all mixed up ourselves anyway.

So take one off your list and let's, let's hear it.

Okay. This is a very funny one.

So the, the idea for the company is, is car pipes

and it's vocalist lessons while you're commuting

in the morning.

So you're in your car and you've got someone

who's teaching you how to sing and car pipe.

Yeah. You're in a safe space.

So you can, you can, you can belt it out.

Exactly.

Those are the types, those are the types of ideas

I feel like that I think of a lot.

I'll give that one a, I'll give that one a B, Sam.

F.

I think I, I always wanted to sing.

Well, look, dude, you, you, you have so much,

listen, you have so much data.

So I, both Sean and I haven't car pipes.

No, it's stupid.

You're, you're, you're a brilliant man.

And you just had one dumb idea.

I'm allowed to say that you,

both Sean and I have both invested in continuous

glucose monitor companies.

I don't know.

I don't know if you ever, I, I think I had an opportunity

to pass on your company will or somehow a deck made

it my way and I, and I was at a fool and I didn't do it.

Or maybe I just didn't have any money.

I think that's what it was.

I think, I think I just didn't have any money.

I think I was just, I just didn't have enough cash.

I mean, I want to know, like, which of these wearables

do you think are going to be awesome?

And which wearables in the future are going to be a thing?

You know, on the pod, what we've talked about,

I don't have a background like you.

So I'm just kind of riffing here,

but I've always thought it was ridiculous

how you can have like a cancer or something bad

inside of your body growing.

And, you know, I've had family members who have passed away

and it was like, you know, had we just gotten this MRI

or CAT scan like six months ago, you would have been fine.

And I've always thought it's very strange

that something can be in your body

and it's just a matter of you just didn't get it measured.

Otherwise you would have been, you could have been fine.

I've always thought that to be quite strange.

And whoop actually told me one time when I had COVID

and I thought that was sick.

And I'm like, well, sick.

You should tell me if I have like cancer as well.

You know what I mean?

That's something that's always fascinated me.

Yeah, and I would put all that sort of in the category

of like obvious innovation that's coming.

The combination of body scans, blood work

and continuous monitoring through a noninvasive wearable

will ultimately be able to predict a lot of things

that, you know, are disease states

or leading indicators for death.

And so I'm very optimistic about how profoundly

the healthcare space, the relationship with your doctor,

I mean, all of that will change.

It's so obvious.

And then the other thing is,

and artificial intelligence is a very popular expression

these days, but AI will be enormously valuable

for analyzing a lot of these somewhat complicated scans

to look for things inside your body that might be off,

which otherwise required, you know,

an expensive radiologist to look at or something.

Which startups do you think that are at like the sub 100

or sub 50 employee count

and maybe sub 300 ish million market cap

or valued like below that?

Do you see in the health and wellness

and anything related to that category

that you think is gonna have a similar trajectory

as you guys and has a bunch of meat on the bone

for growth and upside?

You know, it's funny because I think I've spent so long

thinking about health and wellness.

It's almost like the bar to invest in

and health and wellness thing is too high.

So I actually find that I don't invest

in all that much related to health and wellness.

Like I'm racking my brain right now, I think something

that I'm involved in that's directly health and wellness.

A related company that I think is quite powerful

is called Whisper, which I am an investor in.

And it is they've essentially built technology

that can transcribe your thoughts,

which is pretty powerful technology if you think about it.

The ability to sort of think something

and it gets written out.

So I really like deep tech stuff like that,

that feels like magic, feels like the future.

And how does it do that?

You're wearing like a brain scanner device type thing

and then you literally think something

and it writes it, what happens?

I don't wanna butcher this, but the short of it is

it looks like an old jawbone might have

one of those Bluetooth sets.

And that's what the technology's form factor looks like.

You literally just think something and it writes it

or you have to like sort of whisper it?

I believe it's using your brain waves.

What's the URL of this?

It's whisper.ai.

Oh, yeah, I just saw it.

It looks like a hearing aid.

Yep.

Oh, that's cool.

How much money have they raised, you know?

I wanna say something in like the 15, 20 million range.

Wow, that's pretty fascinating.

So here's a category of work that's a little more serious.

Obviously you guys have seen everything that's come out

in terms of deep fakes and this ability

to create videos of people

that are almost indistinguishable from a real video, right?

I think that there's gonna be like a talent agency of sorts

that's for non-living people.

So, imagine if you're Tom Cruise towards the end

of your career, the same way Justin Bieber just sold

like the rights to his songs,

maybe Tom Cruise sells the rights to Tom Cruise

and you can keep making movies with Tom Cruise

for the next 100 years.

Or another version of that is you can have an actor

like Tom Cruise who's completely artificial.

Have you seen the Tom Cruise deep fake on TikTok?

Totally.

It's incredible.

Sam, have you seen this thing?

Yeah, it's amazing.

You know who did that, Sean?

We talked about it, the salt park guys.

Is that Deep Voodoo or that's somebody else?

I thought it was Deep.

I thought Deep Voodoo did the Tom Cruise one.

Am I wrong?

Who's Miles?

Who's Miles?

Just blank, yes.

He's like in your wedding?

No.

Have you guys heard of?

Miles Fisher, Miles Fisher.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's the one who does them.

I think it's him and this other guy.

Because he kind of looks like Tom Cruise,

but there's a whole technology I think

that doesn't even need a human involved,

which would just essentially take the fact

that Tom Cruise has made 50 movies and be able to.

Yeah, but that's interesting.

You're like, instead of selling your back catalog,

sell your future catalog basically.

So you could sell your likeness too.

You could create a AI likeness and just license it out

to whoever wants to kind of use it,

which obviously has some potential

like ways it can be misused,

but seems valuable enough where people would figure that out.

Have you guys heard of, I think her name is,

it's the name of Kayla, the Instagram influencer

who doesn't exist.

You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, it's like a model that is completely made up, right?

Yeah, but now she's got like a boyfriend.

I don't actually know if they're together or not anymore,

but she's got like a whole cast of characters now

and I've been getting into it.

And they raised a bunch of money

and like she's getting ad deals.

It's super fascinating, dude.

It's super fascinating.

And what's more fascinating is I think that

if I had to guess the way that they're making the way

that she looks, they're using AI to come up with like

the ideal, like the ideal person

that both men and women are attracted to

or like want to like follow and be into.

And I follow her boyfriend and he's super skinny

and he's little like androgynous and I'm like,

fuck, they don't like yolk boys anymore.

Like, you know, these,

and so it's kind of funny to see like what they're like

making is like the ideal person.

It's very fascinating,

but the business is making a lot of money, I believe.

Well, on this pod a while back, I had said,

somebody needs to create a deep fake only fans model.

So I was like, oh,

you could just have a virtual only fans model

that even kind of looks a little virtual, that's okay.

And now this is just a moneymaker for you, right?

You're like basically like some sort of virtual pimp

if you created these, these AI only fans characters

and a guy did it.

So, so a guy reached out and so he created it.

He's like, he basically used his girlfriend

who's like a model or whatever as the model for it.

And then created a AI clone of her.

And now we're like setting it up

and we're gonna see how it goes.

So I'm really curious to see

if this thing like takes off or not.

So are you actually interested in this business?

Are you, are you gonna be-

How am I not interested in this business?

So interesting to see if this works or not.

Yeah, but like, how do you work with like

soft core porn all day?

I'm not doing anything.

I'm just like getting the update.

He just DMs me and says, check this out.

And he'll be like, you know, we got the account made

or we're gonna, you know, and he'll start sending me updates

of how much money they're making, right?

I was, I just wanna see how the experiment turns out.

I don't have to sit there and like train her.

Think about the investor updates that Will sends.

He's like, you know, here's like screenshots

of our new prototype.

You know, like we've effectively,

we've gotten people's REM sleep to improve by 5%

by just adding this little feature.

Here's a mockup.

And they're like, what's it gonna look like to you?

It's gonna look great.

I don't know.

I don't see what the problem is.

Well, that's actually a theme that I think about is like,

okay, 50 years from now,

what are things that the future generation

will look back at our generation and say,

oh, that was so crazy that that was happening then.

Like there's a lot of easy versions of that for us today,

right?

Where it's, you know, you can say smoking on,

smoking on airplanes or, you know,

the number of people that died giving birth

or, you know, people dying from just traveling across the

country, right?

Like, so there's all these examples of that.

And then if you try to pull it forwards,

what would they say about things that feel sort of

a little too normalized today?

And what are things that your grandkids will say?

Like really grandpa?

Like, you know, slavery?

And you're like, I don't know.

It was just the norm back then, right?

Like what are those, what are those things today

that 50 years from now will seem either like crude or rude

or whatever in some way, right?

Like, I think the health monitoring is an obvious one.

It's like, you just didn't know how you were doing.

And it's like, yeah, we just didn't know.

You go to the doctor once a year, maybe.

And like,

Yeah, they just randomly measured my blood pressure

once a year, right?

That was, that was my checkup.

That's, that's to me the most obvious one that will seem like,

wow, you guys really cave.

You just rolled the dice with that one, huh?

Your whole, your whole health thing.

And that, that's just going to be so different in the future.

The number of people that die from car accidents

seems like it would be on that list.

Dude, I was driving last night on a late night,

like to one lane road and a huge truck went by me

and it shook my car and we were both going 80 miles an hour,

like, you know, passing each other.

And it does seem, in about 20 years,

it's going to be so archaic.

We're like, can you believe that we were basically

one sneeze away from like an 80 miles an hour like car crash

all the time?

Like you just, just literally 10 feet away,

five feet away sometimes.

It, it, that's going to be,

that's going to be our generations smoking section

in restaurants.

That, that, that cars, two cars going,

that's really, it's going to be like smoking or not smoking.

Like you used to drive these cars going in opposite directions

and you were 10 feet away from each other.

That's what it's going to be like, I think.

And like my wife is vegan and she's like, yeah,

like that, the thing that's going to be, you know,

the 50 years from now is like,

you just killed animals and ate them?

Like what, what, why?

Like you just thought that was okay.

I bet, I bet,

Dude, I bet Will's got a total opposite take on you.

Yes, that's what I wanted to hear.

What's your take on vegan, carnivore, plant-based,

you know, all these different, you know,

more extreme versions of diets.

Have you seen anything or where's your head at?

What's the data say around that?

The data says it's highly personal.

So you could put two people on identical diets

and they could have literally the exact opposite effects

on those, on those people.

I remember, I'm going to take professional athletes,

for example, that you guys remember

when LeBron got really skinny,

it was like around the Olympics.

Yeah.

And he had been playing with Ray Allen.

So Ray Allen got him to go on the Paleo diet

and because Ray Allen was obsessed with the Paleo diet.

And again, as an example,

it was amazing for Ray, terrible for LeBron, like terrible.

And so there's every version of that for the rest of us.

For me personally, I eat three meals a day.

I try not to eat crap.

I eat carbs.

I, you know, I would say I have like a Mediterranean type diet,

a lot of meats and fishes and vegetables.

I don't really drink that many calories.

Mostly drink water and coffee.

So that's my diet.

I also think diet is easier if you like the right things

and then you can kind of eat as much as you'd like

or as much as fills you up

versus having to count calories and park

because a lot of the calories you consume

are really bad calories.

So those are my quick perspectives on diet.

Dude, have you seen, well, have you seen Brian Johnson?

Do you know who that is?

Yeah.

He created a really cool,

or is creating a very cool company

that measures brainwaves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But have you seen Blueprint?

Well, that's his whole age reversal.

He's like a human, he's like a human whoop band.

Yeah.

Well, he wears whoop.

And so that's how I know him.

And he's come on the whoop podcast before.

I think he's coming on actually soon.

Is he like in the top,

is he in the top like 1% of data?

Cause if not, he's doing a hell of a lot of shit

with his lifestyle.

If that doesn't work,

if that doesn't give him some off the charts,

readings on his sleep and his strain, then I don't know.

Well, I want to be clear that

I don't have access to every single person on whoop's data,

but I think some of the stuff we went over,

cause he was on a whoop podcast maybe a year or two years ago,

and he was telling me some pretty good stats then.

And it sounds like he's dialed it in even more sense.

So I'll definitely listen to the podcast you guys did with him.

Well, so listen to this, Sean.

This just happened, I think this morning, it was released.

So basically he was on our pod and he looks like a freak,

you know, like he's like chiseled.

He looks awesome.

And I don't know how old he is actually.

I think he's in his 40s.

46 something, yeah.

But he's like, he's, he's looks great.

And, but you know, he does all this insane stuff

that you'd expect a billionaire to be able to do.

He's got like a 30 doctors like helping him do all this.

He, he, you know, whatever.

Well, it just released that, or it was just released that

you can spend, I think like a lot,

like 1.5 or $2 million a year.

And you basically can, he's gonna like,

anyone can use his doctors and go through his system

in order to, what he's trying to do for the listeners is

he's basically, it's kind of like this thought exercise,

but he's taking it seriously,

which is he's trying to reverse his age,

which you can do through like improving your blood

and losing weight, things like that.

So reverse his biological age faster than his chronological

age goes up because in theory,

if you do that, you live forever.

Obviously that won't happen, but it's like an interesting

like thought exercise, but now anyone can sign up

and apply to use like all the crazy shit that he's doing.

You gonna do it, Sam?

It's like $2 million a year.

No, also like, I have a, here,

I have a thing with all the fitness people.

And Brian, I called Brian out for this

and he actually answered it well,

but I'm like, do you ever experience joy?

Like, so I don't drink alcohol.

And a lot of people will say like,

oh, I've been wanting to do that.

And I'm like, well, do you have a problem?

And they go, no, but like, then what?

Like it sounds dope then,

just get drunk every once in a while.

That like, you know, that's like a life worth living

is like when you have things to celebrate

and like you can build camaraderie with your friends.

Like, yeah, just do it.

You might live a little shorter,

you might be sick for a few days,

but like, you know, like experience joy, that's good.

And so with Brian, I was like,

do you ever like have birthday cake for your kid's birthday?

Like, he's like, no, I've only cheated like once,

one meal over like two years or something like that.

And I was like, well, are you happy?

And he said, I'm happy.

So my opinion of that is, okay, great, you're winning.

But for most people, I don't know,

experience joy a little bit, like be healthy

and also like get after up every once in a while.

I think that's good advice.

Will, I have a similar thing that you'll just,

you'll hate slash disagree with,

which is on my Twitter, I have this tweet that's pinned

that just says, here's some semi-controversial things

that I believe.

And one of them is, you don't need a sleep tracker,

great sleep is obvious.

And I think you would probably disagree,

this is kind of the premise of your life right now,

but you gotta admit pretty catchy.

And there's some nugget of wisdom in there.

There's some nugget of truth in that, in that belief.

Just because it sounds good, doesn't mean it's true.

Yeah, I mean, I think that might be true

in like extremely binary terms.

You know, I had to wake up for a 4 a.m. flight

or the alarm kept going off last night.

Like, yeah, okay, those are bad nights of sleep.

But I think it's a profound lie in the sense of

if you're actually trying to understand

your nightly sleep and routine.

Like I think there's just a lot.

Think about this way, it's a third of your life

that is a complete black box.

You have no idea what's happening

during that third of your life.

And science has proven that that's a third of your life

that dramatically affects the other two thirds.

And if you're good at sleeping,

it decreases every form of potential disease

that you can have.

Like it is the magic pill.

So I don't agree with your tweet,

but I respect that, I probably have a lot of free tweets.

Tons of free tweets, right?

We're doing it for the free tweets around here.

I do think that Sam's points a good one though,

as it applies to tweet, which is

if you make all these things seem, you know,

like discipline in spite of joy or sort of soulless,

then of course there's some kind of a rebellion

against it, right?

And so I've heard people talk about sleep tracking in a way

that makes sleep tracking seem profoundly not cool.

And so I understand it through that lens.

But I think the reality is you can measure things

about your body passively,

that give you a great insight into your life

and can make your life better.

Right, yeah, okay.

What do you think's gonna happen, Will?

10 years, what's the vision here?

Are you gonna go public?

Are you gonna sell this for $10 billion?

What do you think's gonna happen?

I think who will ultimately go public.

I think that it'll probably be sooner

than that timeframe that you gave.

And I think we're gonna build technology

that's able to predict a lot of massive life events

as they pertain to your health.

And along the way provide a 24 seven coach

that helps people meet their goals well beyond hell,

you know, psychological goals, professional goals,

just because of the value that understanding

your body can provide.

Dude, you've stuck it in the face of all the finance bros.

You're saying, I didn't have to go that route

and I still crushed it.

I think that's awesome.

I've got so many New York friends

and they just in Long Island friends

and they do the same thing over and over and over again.

I'm like, you're selling your soul, man.

This is the worst.

And it's so cool that you kind of saw that route

is not maybe for you and you're gonna just crush it.

We're big fans of whoop.

I've never tested the aura ring.

So I've been loyal to my whoop.

I've been calling it, I call it whoop and whoop.

So my apologies.

I actually didn't know the right way to pronounce it.

Yeah, what is the right way?

Whoop, whoop.

I kinda like whoop too.

Like I would never say I'm whooping ass,

but I would say I'm in a whoop ass today.

So, you know, like I kind of, I don't know.

Yeah, that's gonna be your next announcement.

I don't know who I agree with, the founder of it or Sam.

Yeah, what do you know?

If you wear it inside out, it's whoop.

Yeah.

I never knew how you pronounced it,

but my wife and I are paid subscribers.

How much do we, I think we pay you $300 a year.

I don't even remember what we paid.

Dude, I paid you for two years

and I just didn't have my band.

I lost my band and then I just kept the subscription going.

So, you know, you're welcome on that one,

but now I got my band back and now I'm getting the value.

Yeah, yeah.

If you reach out to membership services,

they'll send you a band, no problem.

If you're a subscriber, the harbor's included.

I mean, that was one of the more.

That was like more recent.

It's obvious now in hindsight, but in 2018,

we changed the whole business model

to being a subscription where the hardware was included.

Was that like a huge, I mean,

did your economics drastically change?

Totally.

I mean, we used to sell the product for $500,

one time fee, everything included.

Then we went to, you can sign up for as little as $30.

Like picture the, just all the cash implications,

gross margin implications,

everything that happens almost overnight when you do that.

And it was also about the business moment because,

okay, companies founded in 2012,

if you're changing your business model

that profoundly six or seven years later,

you're also admitting you haven't figured out

the right business model six or seven years

into building a company.

So yeah, that was all quite painful and concerning,

but we created a really cool business model

that now has been amazing.

Yeah, now you're gonna get,

maybe you can make, you're gonna make an argument.

I don't know if you're gonna get it,

but you're gonna make an argument

that you get those SaaS multiples.

So I mean, yeah, that sounds good to me.

Yeah, and I think there's a fair case for that.

Yeah, I don't know what your churn is,

but that'd be badass because, I mean,

that's a, you know, five times more valuable company.

Well dude, this is awesome.

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

We took you a little over time.

Sorry about that, but this is fun.

And yeah, everybody go get some sleep.

Thanks guys, thank you.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel, never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.