Insight
Light sleep and time spent awake provide no physiological benefit
“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.”
Opinion
Ahmed: Athletes are still not sophisticated enough about sleep and recovery
“I still think athletes aren't sophisticated enough about sleep and recovery, given how important it is to their overall performance”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2033
Will Ahmed predicts Whoop will IPO before 2033
“I think we'll ultimately go public. I think that it'll probably be sooner than that timeframe that you gave.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ahmed: A large percentage of the world will wear health monitors in 10 years
“I think if you fast forward 10 years, I think a large percentage of the world's population will be wearing a continuous health monitor and it'll hook into everything that you do as it relates to the healthcare system and doctors.”
Insight
Founders must shift to managers by 50 employees or risk business damage
“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 it was about 500 people, but. That's probably one o…”
Assertion Contradicted
Slow-wave sleep produces 95% of the body's human growth hormone
“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.”
Insight
Ahmed: Sleeping pills reduce sleep quality despite faster sleep onset
“Interestingly, hard, harder, 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.”
Disclosure
Will Ahmed refused to sell Whoop secondary shares until a $1B valuation
“I don't think I ever sold shares until whoop was worth at least a billion dollars. And they were for rounds that were super oversubscribed.”
Insight
Ahmed: Late-stage founder secondaries enable long-term independent business building
“I do think for a company that's at a later stage where you're trying to, you're making this calculus of, is this a company that's going to 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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ahmed: Combining scans, blood work, and wearables will predict mortality indicators
“The combination of body scans, blood work, and continuous monitoring through a non-invasive wearable will ultimately be able to predict a lot of things that, that you know, are disease states or leading indicators for death.”
Prediction Held up
Ahmed: Talent agencies for deceased people will emerge with AI
“I think that there there's going to be like a talent agency of sorts that's for non-living people.”
Insight
Ahmed: Biometric Data Shows Diet Response Is Highly Personalized
“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 people.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ahmed: LeBron James and Michael Phelps were among Whoop's first 100 users
“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”
Assertion Supported
Ahmed: Whoop raised $400M and reached a $3.6B valuation
“Yeah, we've raised four hundred million. We last raised capital at 3.6 billion dollar valuation.”
Assertion Supported
Ahmed: More REM sleep dampens amygdala fight-or-flight response
“The interesting thing about REM sleep is researchers were able to find the more REM sleep you get, the less heightened your amygdala response.”
Insight
Ahmed: Naps often yield lower sleep efficiency and quality
“The challenge with naps is that the percentage of time that you spend in, in trying to sleep is often lower as a quality standpoint.”
Disclosure
Ahmed: Whoop shifted from a $500 upfront price to a $30 subscription model
“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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Will Ahmed read roughly 500 medical papers while founding Whoop
“I read something like 500 medical papers, and I started to conceive of this idea of how you could continuously measure the human body”
Disclosure
Ahmed: Whoop is my first company and first full-time job
“And it's not like this is the first, just the first company I started. It's my first full-time job.”
Will Ahmed