Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of health wearable maker WHOOP, discusses the high-profile athlete investors on the company's cap table.
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ahmed: Amazon copied WHOOP with Halo, tweeting 'whoop, there it is'
“They knocked the product off. There's no question. And by the way, it was so egregious that one of the lead product manager from Amazon, when it came out, posted on Twitter, whoop, there it is announcing the new Amazon Halo.”
Opinion
Ahmed: Nike made a fatal mistake designing FuelBand as a step counter
“The way in which they were wrong at assessing the story I was telling versus the strategy that Nike was pursuing was that Nike made, in my opinion, a fatal mistake with their product. They made a product that all of their best athletes would never use. It was …”
Opinion
Ahmed: Tracking step count does not measure actual physiological stress
“I didn't think that steps answered anything about the strain recovery equation that we talked about before, which is to say that How much, you know, stress you're actually putting on your body is a different question than how much you've moved your arm.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ahmed: LeBron James and Michael Phelps were initially paying WHOOP customers
“We had no relationship with him. We had no relationship at the time with Michael Phelps either, and many of these athletes, I mean, they were essentially just a buyer of the product.”
Insight
Ahmed: Selling 100,000 units of a first hardware product is a mistake
“I meet hardware founders, and they talk a lot about How their first product is going to sell a 100,000 units in the first year. And I tell them that's actually the wrong goal. You really want your first product or your second product that goes to the consumer …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ahmed: Amazon's Alexa Fund passed on investing after extensive product diligence
“Yeah, we spent a lot of time with them, and they included their product team in the diligence, and then they ultimately did not invest in Whoop, to our surprise.”