Tom Hale
CEO, ŌURA. On 3 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveoperatorinvestor@tomeghale ↗LinkedIn ↗ouraring.com ↗
Tom Hale leads ŌURA, the maker of the biometric smart ring, overseeing rapid subscription growth and expansion into broad consumer health. Prior to joining ŌURA in 2022, he served as President of SurveyMonkey, guided its 2018 IPO, and held leadership roles at HomeAway, Linden Lab, and Adobe.
3shows
3appearances
50statements
9resolved
6supported
0contradicted
67%fully supported
4said about them ↓ Everything Tom Hale said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Digital health will not consolidate into a single platform, predicts Tom Hale
“I think this idea that it's not going to be one system for everybody. And then maybe that's not scalable, but I think the thing is that it might be different solutions for each person. The person who is managing chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID, very dif…”
Oura's shift to a subscription model fundamentally changed its customer bargain
“We just introduced this subscription business model. And quite frankly, I think it was a change in the bargain. With our customers.”
Oura's $1,000 Gucci collaboration ring sold faster despite tripling the price
“It was more expensive than the one you were buying and they flew off the shelves and my jaw dropped to the floor. Cause I couldn't, I was like, wait, you triple the price and it goes faster.”
Hale: Choosing between relational and transactional NPS is a false dichotomy
“Some say relational NPS is better for B to B SaaS. Some people say transactional NPS is better for e-commerce sites. I say phooey. Both are good. So, I think it's a false dichotomy. I think you should ask both.”
Digesting food before bed reduces deep sleep and impairs bodily recovery
“Because if you go to bed and your body's still digesting, your deep sleep will be reduced and less effective. And deep, deep sleep is how your body repairs and grows.”
Biometric health data requires contextual interpretation and instruction to drive behavior change
“What's measured is managed, but you also need some context. And you need some instruction.”
Tom Hale predicts everyone will eventually wear a continuous health-tracking device
“Wearables are going to be a thing. Everyone's going to have one and a wearable that's tracking your health and, Continuously monitoring your health, which is what the Oura Ring kind of does is gonna, is going to be a thing that everyone's gonna have.”
Women retain better as Oura Ring users than other demographic segments
“One is women because women love the product. They retain better.”
Smart rings require physical retail because consumers treat them as intimate jewelry
“We learned that people wanted to touch the ring and they wanted to put it on. They wanted to see it against their skin. They want to see how it looked on their hand. And because it's a very physical and intimate product that people like value, you know, they c…”
Retail expansion, HSA/FSA eligibility, and women's health focus ignited Oura's growth
“Going into that, that second year, we ended up launching with Best Buy and later with Amazon. We introduced HSA FSA and we really focused on women and women's health. And those three things, like it was like we set a fuse on a bomb.”
Tom Hale states Oura has no commercial incentive to monetize user data
“We don't have advertising. We have no incentive to do anything other than protect your data.”
Transitioning away from fee-for-service healthcare incentives will take a decade or more
“The reality is, is that there are so many incentives aligned behind fee for service. It's gonna be very hard for that to change. And I think it's going to, it'll play out over a decade or more just because the inertia of the system is there.”
Women were historically excluded from clinical trials until roughly 20 years ago
“Women, you know, women have been historically underserved by medicine because people weren't studying women's physiology with, you know, in clinical trials up until the last 20 years or so.”
Hale: Only one in three businesses truly prioritize customer centricity
“We recently conducted a survey, this is like within the last four or five months, asking how many businesses really, really believe that customer centricity was really important, and it was about one in three.”
Hale: NPS leaders outgrow industry competitors by a factor of two
“In fact, in every industry, the NPS leader tends to outgrow the competitors by a factor of two.”
Hale: NPS promoters deliver three to eight times the LTV of detractors
“Promoters provide three to eight times the lifetime value of detractors, because why? Well, they cost less, they stay longer, they retain, and they refer friends.”
Hale: NPS promoters demand half the discount in sales negotiations
“Promoters demanded half the discount. When they talk to our sales accounts.”
Hale: NPS functions as a risk management metric during business transitions
“This is an example of using NPS, not just to drive growth, but to map, to minimize risk. And so what we did is we looked at the NPS of our customers and measured it as we were making this four-quarter transition between, you know, subscription and transaction,…”
Hale: Detractors predict churn, advocacy predicts growth, and purchasing questions predict ARPU
“NPS is really great because it helps you predict where churn is. It's, it, you know, if you have, ah, detractors, it's really, it helps you identify who's gonna churn. Advocacy really helps drive, you know, this is, would you recommend this product or service.…”
Hale: Brazilian NPS averages 25% higher and UK scores 10% lower
“Brazil. Uniformly, across hundreds of thousands of NPS questions that we have asked, Brazil is about 25% higher, and I hate to say it, if anybody's from the UK, apologies, about 10% lower.”
Hale: Calibrate survey length to the customer's financial and time investment
“It's pretty important to recognize what level of investment your customer's willing to give you, right? And to calibrate that. If you're Uber, it's about 30 seconds, and maybe 10% of the time. If you just spent a million dollars on our enterprise software prod…”
Hale: Retaining a customer is worth about $420 to SurveyMonkey
“In our business, the value of a retained customer is about 420 bucks.”
Hale: 80% of SurveyMonkey's customers arrive via unpaid organic channels
“About 20% of our customers come to us through paid channels. 80% through unpaid channels. Free channels. Organic channels. That is a result of us having, among other things, an NPS in the fifties.”
The other half of the tape: Tom Hale's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 3 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 4
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 4
2026 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Tom's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 SAASTRLEDGER | CEO, ŌURA | 1 | 21 | 50% 2/4 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | CEO, ŌURA | 1 | 15 | 100% 1/1 | full record on How I Built This → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | CEO, ŌURA | 1 | 14 | 75% 3/4 | full record on Masters of Scale → |