The Exchanges

Q How much did, was that like a huge, I mean, did your economics drastically change?

A Totally. I mean, we used to sell the product for 500 dollars, one time fee, everything included. Then we went to, you can sign up for as little as 30 dollars. 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, uh, yeah, that was all, that was all quite, quite, uh, painful and concerning, but we, you know, we created a really cool business model that now has been amazing.

AI assessment note: “Totally. I mean, we used to sell the product for 500 dollars”

Q if people have seen it, it's a whoop band you've, uh, you have to have seen it on people's wrists, 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 hundred customers or users of whoop. Is that, is that real? And how did, how did that happen?

A That is real, and this would have been around 2014, 2015, so, you know, we spent about two to three years, really, on the initial V-one of Whoop, and, you know, 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 Uh, you know, 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, uh, and then second of all, if we could get the world's best athletes to wear, uh, whoop and organically like it, then we could build a whole brand around, uh, performance that ultimately could, could scale to, to consumers. And, and I grew up very inspired by, um, brands like Nike and, and the Jordan brand and, and just how, Like a swoosh on something could make, make the whole product feel completely different, independent from anything else about the product, uh, just because of the, the storytelling behind it or the brand behind it. So I was interested in how health monitoring could have a brand to it. And, uh, and so that, that was really the thesis for targeting professional athletes. And, uh, 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 …

AI assessment note: “That is real, and this would have been around 2014, 2015”

Q What, uh, we'll take 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 that is what allowed them to become such great athletes or such great performers?

A I mean, there's certainly, there's certainly genetic things that make people better or worse at sleeping, but, uh, there's also so many things that you, the individual can do to enhance your sleep, uh, sleeping at a very consistent time. So going to bed and waking up at a very similar time, we'll just, um, we'll just unusually elevate the quality of, 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, hard, harder, harder sleep drugs, like the ambience of the world, Uh, they, they knock you out, so your sleep latency is short, but the quality of the sleep, uh, is never that high. So again, back to that percentage of time that you're in REM and slow wave, it, it is rarely, you know, maybe if you're someone who would normally be at 30%, you're going to be at 20%.

AI assessment note: “there's certainly genetic things... but, uh, there's also so many things that you, the individual can do”

Q Do you like, uh, being the CEO of a, of a big company? Um, or do you wish, 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.

A Well, I've still tried to stay close to the product because I think it's something I've had a. A relevant perspective on even as a company as has scaled and I've been able to see around corners in a few areas for the product. I think that. The role of being CEO is, as you guys know, changes a lot with stage and scale, right? Like. Uh, 10 person versus a hundred person versus 500 person like at each of these inflections, your, your role is definitely changing. Um. I think because whoop 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, uh, that you have on, on a larger population makes the data much more predictive and much more powerful. The coaching as a result can get much more comprehensive. Uh, 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 going to 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, and so for those reasons, yeah, I'm ve…

AI assessment note: “and so for those reasons, yeah, I'm very excited about, about being CEO.”

Q had, 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 a Long Island and look, you're going down. That's a very typical path of just being some like banker type in, in the city. Uh, but you kind of like took a left somewhere. What, uh, what other companies were you thinking about starting?

A I wasn't thinking about starting companies at all, actually. And, and your observations, 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, uh, and I had some background in finance because my dad had worked in finance, but, you know, 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, you know, did I want to be my boss's boss or boss's boss's boss, or, uh, you know, if I could be one day and, uh, And I just didn't, I didn't feel that pull. I didn't feel this like gravitational pull towards it. And, uh, 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.

AI assessment note: “I wasn't thinking about starting companies at all, actually.”

Q are at like the sub 100 or sub 50 employee count and maybe sub 300 ish million, uh, market cap or, uh, valued, uh, like below that, do you see in the health, health and wellness and anything related to that category that you think is going to have a similar trajectory as you guys and has a bunch of, uh, meat on the bone for, for growth and upside?

A You know, it's funny because I, I think I've spent so long thinking about health and wellness. It's almost like the bar to invest in a health and wellness thing is, is, 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, and that's directly health and wellness, a related company that I think is quite, quite powerful is called whisper, which I am an investor in. And It is, uh, they've essentially built technology that allows you, uh, that can transcribe, uh, your thoughts, which is, is pretty powerful technology if you think about it. Uh, the ability to sort of think something and, and it gets written out. Uh, so I, I really like deep tech stuff like that, that feels Feels like magic. Feels like the future.

AI assessment note: “a related company that I think is quite, quite powerful is called whisper”