July 10, 2025 • 34 mins
In this episode of The Deal, Alex Rodriguez tells Jason Kelly how he’s feeling leading up to his first press conference as the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx at the NBA’s Summer League, and what he’s looking forward to at the MLB All-Star Game next week. Then, they speak with Will Ahmed about how he came to found the fitness tracker Whoop. Ahmed tells the hosts the unique way he got early adapters Michael Phelps and LeBron James to try his product, which investor he was most excited to bring on board, and what it’s like competing with giants like Nike and Apple.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome back to the Deal.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm your host, Jason Kelly alongside my partner Alex Rodriguez.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
All right, Alex, I'm in London for the moment.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You're in Miami for the moment, but we're off in
all different directions.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Tell me about what you're up to over the coming
week or so. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm off to Vegas for Summer League. We're also on
July eleventh, we're going to have our press conference, Mark
Lori and myself in front of the national media. Some
o our players, coaches, GMS will be there.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
When you say our players and coaches, you're talking about
the NBA and WNBA teams you just purchased.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Right correct, the Minnesota Timbowles and the Minnesota Lynx. And
then I'm off to Atlanta to cover for Fox with
my compadres Kevin Burkhard, Derek Jeter, Big Poppy, and I'm
thrilled I'm going to your hometown and I'm very disappointed
that you won't even be there.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I feel very I'm going to be in Seattle. I'll
tell you what I'm doing in Europe in a second.
But when you're in Atlanta. I'm actually going to be
in Seattle for the Bloomberg Green event. I'm going to
be interviewing a couple very interesting people. Actually a former
resident of Atlanta, Jane Fonda is one of the people
I'm interviewing, but also Samantha Holloway, who you know as
the owner of the Seattle Kraken the hockey team. I
(01:22):
also know her in addition to that as the daughter
of the late David Bonderman, who obviously was a legend
of the private equity business. Featured in my book, which
I know you've read, so I'm looking forward to that.
In the meantime, I'm here in Europe and I'm working
on a limited series it's going to come out later
this year about the business of Formula One. So I'm
actually spending the next couple days with Pierre Gasley, who's
(01:43):
one of the preeminent drivers, incredible businessman. We're going to
have to have him on this show at some point,
so I'm actually going to Paris tomorrow to spend some
time with him. I will tell you The big sports story,
of course here in London is Wimbledon. It has been
an unblo believably great tournament. You know, Ben Shelton obviously
(02:04):
has been very successful, Taylor Fritz, you know, a couple
of Americans on the men's side have done very well.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So watching that closely, all right.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So I have to ask you, first of all, what
do you think of going to Vegas for this press conference? Like,
I know, we talked last episode about how you're feeling,
but you know, it gets really real at this point,
doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, I mean it's like anything else. It's like graduating
from high school. It doesn't until you get the diploma.
It really feels like it's not real. But I think
that'll be the end of a great chapter and the
start of a new one for Mark and I that
we're in this incredible position to be stewards of two
wonderful franchise, the Minnesota Timbols and the Lynx, And I
(02:43):
think we're in really a great position to have a
good runner here for the next five or seven years.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It's interesting, too to think about how important Summer League
has become. I mean, this was an afterthought for so
many years, and now you know, obviously this year is
a very busy year at the.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Moment for you and for me.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
But next year we got to take our show to
Summer League because everybody's there, and you know, it's become
sort of a showcase for talent, but also you know,
kind of where everybody is meeting and greeting and a
more casual atmosphere. I mean, it's hot, is all get
out in Vegas this time.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Of the year.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
But the basketball is good and a lot of deals
to get done, and so we definitely should should think
about that. All right, talk to me about Atlanta. How
are you feeling about the baseball season.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I feel very good. I actually sent Rob Manford a
note and Dan Halem a note yesterday, just congratulating them
on what a great first half has been. The numbers
have been really really good. Ratings are up, you know,
north of ten percent. Just finished watching the Mets Subway
series against the Yankees. The Mets did really well. They
wont two out of three. SODA's warming up. Otani never
stops now he's starting to pitch, and you have the
(03:51):
big markets that are doing well, and baseball's never been
more interesting. So I'm really excited. And the fact that
it's in Atlanta, one of the big hubs of Major
League Baseball and a team that I grew up watching
with Dale Murphy and Chipper Jones and the great history
of the Braves, which you know so well. I'm excited
I have celebration for the game of baseball and I'm
up for.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
It well, and it's interesting too with you and I
have talked about the fact that the Battery, which sits
outside of Truest Park there in Atlanta, has become really
a model I think for a lot of what baseball
stadiums are trying to do. I would imagine even as
an owner of an NBA and a WNBA team, you're
taking note around the real estate that can be built
(04:32):
and developed around a stadium as successfully as it has there.
You know, that was, as I'm sure you remember, it
was a very controversial move, including for me and a
lot of people who grew up rooting for the Braves.
You know, they played at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, you know, downtown,
then they moved to Turner Field after the Olympics. When
they moved to the suburbs, people were going crazy. This
(04:54):
is a you know, terrible move. But the Braves have
never been better, and they've never drawn more people, and
they've really built a winning franchise, not just on the field,
but a team that routinely attracts big crowds and very
enthusiastic crowds.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And they never made more money. And that's because they
didn't think the fans would travel to the suburbs they have.
Then they build a battery which has become an incredible
mixed use attraction, and the economics that followed. And what
was interesting, Jason, when I was there covering with Fox
the World Series, it felt like it was LSU against
Alabama or Alabama against Georgia. It was the most ruckous,
(05:33):
great atmosphere. It felt like a football crowd, but not
just football, a college football crowd, very festive. And that
was something that I thought the Braves of the Old
Braves was missing, that great passion. Yeah, and boy, I'll
tell you. And this new building is there and is
there loud?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's funny you say that, because I mean I do remember,
you know when I moved back to Atlanta after college
in the late nineties, and I would go to Turner Field.
If the Yankees would come to town, if the Mets
would come to town, if the Red Sox would come to town.
There would be more fans visiting for the rooting team
than they were for the Braves, which was very sad
to me, especially because the Braves were getting really good
(06:10):
in the nineties and obviously they turned it up in
those Chipper Jones and you know Tom Glavin, Greg Maddox,
you know Steve Avery days as you remember so well.
But you know, this move really has ignited that fan
base and it has been you know, you talk about
a deal, what a great deal for the owners. You know,
Liberty Media is a corporate owner, which you know sometimes
like are they really going to take care of this franchise?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You know, they really have. So I'm excited to.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Hear your report from there. Get my regards to my hometown.
Coming up on this show, Hard Pivot, we have a
really interesting interview with Will Ahmed, who is the CEO
and founder of Whoop. This is a really really interesting
story of entrepreneurship, of investment.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
This is a multi billion dollar business at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Well is one of the most impressive young man I've
ever met. He came out of Harvard, was an athlete
there in his early twenties, had this very bold idea
and I got to tell you, Jason, I was so
impressed with his story, his composure, his long term thinking,
and then his world class blue chip type investors that
he has in his cap table is incredibly impressive.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, it's a great conversation. So excited for you guys.
Hear that coming up on the deal. Will Ahmed from WOOP.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the deal. I'm Jason Kelly
alongside Alex Rodriguez. So excited to have with us Will Ahmed.
He is the founder and the CEO of WOOP. You
have seen these devices on many many successful people's wrists,
people who want to track their sleep, their activity, their health,
all of it. Well, this was your idea, and we're
(07:56):
so excited to have you with us.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Awesome, great to be on with you, Jason, Alex. Real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
All right, so give us the origin story.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I mean, let's just start with this origin story of
how you come up with this idea. Let's start with
this product that we're hearing so much about. This is
a company that's valued it better than three and a
half billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Now where does it all begin.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, it began for me just as a college athlete.
I mean I grew up kind of always into sports
and exercise and playing a dozen different sports as a kid.
I ended up being pretty good at squash, and so
I played that at Harvard and we were one of
the top ranked teams, and my experience of being a
college athlete was an amazing one, but it was one
(08:38):
in which I would overtrain. Alex is probably super familiar
with this concept. About seventy percent of athletes overtrained at
some point in their career. But you know, you essentially
kind of get fitter and fitter and fitter, and then
somewhat surprisingly fall off a cliff and you don't know why,
and your body's fatigued, it's run down, you're not performing well,
you don't necessarily know why. It's a real betrayal for
(09:00):
for athletes. And that sort of simple concept just got
me very interested in what you could measure about the
human body. And I just started to ask simple questions
like how to sleep affect performance? What is recovery? How
can I measure my output of exercise? And I was
surprised how little technology there was in the world to
(09:23):
be able to measure these things. And this was also
we're talking about twenty ten, eleven twelve, when I was
a student the iPhone it started to really take off.
Then there was a feeling, at least from my standpoint,
that computers were going from being on your desk to
being on your lap, to being in your pocket, to
potentially eventually on your body. And so I started doing
(09:45):
a lot of physiology research as a student. I read
something like five hundred medical papers and ended up writing
a paper around how to continuously measure the human body.
And so that paper essentially became the business plan for Whoop,
and I recruited some great people out of Harvard and
worked with some great professors at Harvard and MIT and
(10:05):
started this business summer of twenty twelve as a twenty
two year old who didn't know much about anything. But
it's been a fascinating ride since then.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And so at that moment, will at this moment, I
should say here in twenty twenty five, tracking, especially fitness trackers,
feel you bike what it's largely owing to you. It
obviously felt like a big opportunity for you, but it
probably didn't feel obvious to a lot of the people
you were talking to back then.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Is that fair?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
I think in twenty twelve it was. It was certainly
less obvious that there was going to be wearable devices
that people were wearing all the time. So I think
I was early to that idea. I think, however, I
was at a disadvantage of you know, I wasn't an engineer,
I wasn't a computer scientist, I wasn't a doctor, and
I was building this technology at the intersection of all
(10:53):
of those things, and so I think that, you know,
for me as an entrepreneur, there was a lot I
needed to overcome. There was a lot I needed to prove.
WOOP wasn't just the first company I started. It was
my first full time job, so there was just, frankly,
a lot to learn. And then from a market standpoint,
we were really focused on trying to replace great medical technology.
(11:16):
So the PSG machine was really the gold standard for
sleep monitoring. If you've ever had an issue with sleep,
apnea or sleep in general, maybe you've been sent to
a sleep lab. Well, they're put all these nodes on
your body and give you a really accurate readout of sleep.
I wondered, hey, can we take some of that technology
and put it in a small form factor. I asked
(11:36):
the same question about the electro cardiogram, because the electro cardiogram,
you know, which is this like twenty thousand dollars hospital equipment.
You know, if you're watching a movie, it's a thing
that's going beep, beep beep, right, you know, I asked myself, hey,
can we take some of that technology and put it
in a small form factor because it can measure heart revariability,
which is this fascinating lens into recovery. And you know,
(12:00):
I asked, can we take a chest strap, which is like,
you know, the gold standard at least it was for
measuring heart rate during exercise and put that in a
small form factor. And so there was a big, like
technology risk to what we were trying to do because
these were technologies that had existed for a while, were
made by big players and were obviously cumbersome, and can
(12:24):
you make them a non invasive So that was the
big technology risk to overcome. And as we started doing that,
all of a sudden, most of the biggest companies in
the world entered the market.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So well, that's a great one because I love the
idea and the entrepreneurs spirit. You talked about some technology risk.
Let's go back to when you're twenty two years old.
It's a great idea. It's an awesome idea, but like
you said, you're not an engineer, you're not a scientist,
so you have some headwinds. Well, you have this great idea,
(12:56):
when did you determine, Hey, what's the tam is on
this business? And secondly, when did you feel like, in
your heart, I can actually make some money out of this?
Out of my passion.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
It really never was about the money. I mean, I
think I was just a kid who was so obsessed
with an idea that I didn't have any other choice.
You know, people were like, well, how did you decide
to start a company versus go into finance or go
into the corporate world. For me, it was just all
my free time. I was thinking about this idea in
the back of my head. And I think that's a
very good sign for anyone who's deciding what they want
(13:28):
to do. If there's something you keep wandering back to,
I think that says a lot about how you feel.
And for me, for the longest time, that's been this
idea of whoop. I think the market opportunity piece got
progressively more exciting as the technology got more exciting. You know,
Initially it was a very athlete's focused business. So we
(13:51):
wanted to start with the world's best athletes and then
go from there to sports teams, college teams, and eventually
a bunch of consumers we thought would wear it. And
that was a reasonably successful strategy. It happened to take
longer and cost more, but you know, two of our
first one hundred users were people like Lebron James and
(14:12):
Michael Phelps in twenty fifteen, and so that was like,
you know, getting to work with some real, really superstar
athletes for a product that was completely unknown, and it
started to validate to me, Wow, we really must be
onto something with this technology if these athletes who care
so much about their bodies want to use this product
over anything else. And this was a time by the
(14:34):
way Apple was entering the market, Nike, under Armor, Adidas, Puma,
We're all entering the market. Microsoft, Google were about a
year from entering the market. Soon Amazon would be in
the space. Like we really had a lot of competition,
and so when I saw all these big players now
coming in, I did realize at that point, Wow, winning
(14:57):
this market is going to be a big deal.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Go back if you will to getting those huge names
will because that obviously is it is a game changer, Like,
how does that happen that you get those caliber people
like Lebron wearing this to be such an early adopter.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Yeah, I found that the key to getting to sort
of anyone in life is figuring out someone who's got
a big influence on them that also a bunch of
other people don't already know. You know, so in the
case of a professional athlete, if you're an unknown entrepreneur
going to their agent or their spouse or you know,
their coach, it's sort of a non starter because these
(15:37):
people get inundated on behalf of an athlete. But who's
someone that a professional athlete actually spends a lot of
time with that other people don't know. It's their personal trainer.
And so that became the insight. We realized if we
could get to the personal trainer of a professional athlete,
we had an inn. And by the way, this is
(15:58):
twenty fifteen. It's sort of like pre Instagram fitness influence,
if you will. And these guys were pretty unknown, and
so you know, I got to know Mike Mincis, who
is Lebron James's trainer. I got to go Keenan Robinson,
who is Michael Phobbs's trainer at the time, and we
started by sending them the product, and we also talked
(16:19):
about how the product could be a tool for them
to work with their athlete. You know, Alex, I'd be
curious your experience with this, but I think when your
trainer comes to you and says, hey, I think this
is something that can help, let's try to put it
into the mix, you listen to that, right.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I think it's brilliant and I've never thought about that,
And I love the competitive advantage. When you're a young entrepreneur,
you have limited resources, but when you go to the
trainer and he's talking about something like this, that's the
only person you really listen to. That's why you're hiring them.
So I think I just learned something here. This is awesome.
I love the idea. I want to follow up with Jason.
Jason kind of went the route of the le Bronze
(16:55):
of the World and how impactful that can be. I
want to flip to the capital race side, because obviously
twenty fifteen could have been a tough time for a
young entrepreneur with a great idea, but when you raised
four hundred million dollars and as Jason said, the company's
worth north of three point five billion today. Is there
a couple of names that you said, huh, I bagged
the elephant. This is going to make a big difference,
(17:18):
just like you did Lebron on that side.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
From a raising capital standpoint.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, from a blue chip investor, from an LP of yours.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Well, it's interesting, like the first eight years of the
company's history, I think we're actually quite challenging from a
capital standpoint. And everyone looks today at Whoop as this
really successful company that you know, went from zero to
multi billion dollar valuations and higher. But the truth is
along the way, like there were a lot of very
hard fundraises, and I think they were hard for a
(17:48):
few reasons. One was that we were building hardware, which
was capital intensive. Two is that I was still learning
how to be a great CEO, and so I was
developing in that role as a fund which is a
skill like anything else. And three was that the competition
was really intense. I mean, who are you going to
(18:08):
bet on Apple or an unknown entrepreneur? You know who
You're gonna bet on Nike or an unknown entrepreneur, And
so I'm sympathetic to that looking back on it, why
it was hard to raise capital. And then a few
things all clicked at once. We figured out the right
business model for the company. So just to play it out,
we had worked with athletes for quite some time. We
(18:30):
had built this brand around performance, which we can maybe
talk a little bit more about what it takes to
build a brand. And then we entered the consumer market,
and that initial transition was hard because we were selling
the product for five hundred bucks. Consumers were trying to
figure out what it was, why is it so expensive?
And we had this real business model innovation where we
(18:51):
turned the whole business into a subscription and what that
meant is you could sign up for thirty dollars or
one hundred and eighty dollars for six months, and then
if you fell in love with the product, you would
keep paying for it over time, and the hardware was
included as part of that, but you'd have to keep
paying a subscription. And that business model innovation, because the
(19:12):
cost got so much lower to sign up, it created
a ton of demand and then it became a question
of well, does your product live up to the hype?
Is your product any good? And fortunately We've had a
good product for a long time, and so all of
a sudden we then unlocked the growth side of it.
Answer your investment question, Alex, we unlocked annual recurring revenue,
(19:35):
which took us from being a hardware business to more
of a SaaS business, and so that was able to
catapult our valuation. And you know, in like a four
year period, we went from probably being a business value
at a couple one hundred million to being a business
valued at close to four billion.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I know you don't want to single out one single
Bluechib investor, but was there one that we went home
to your wife you said, you won't believe who's writ
in a check.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Well, I've got a few of those. The one I'll
call out is is Masa's son from soft Bank, because
I read about Masa long before I met him, and
you know, this is the guy who founded and created
soft Bank Capital, which is one of the very biggest
investors in the world, and Masa is extremely ambitious, and
(20:24):
he's also someone who had seen a bunch of incarnations
of wearable products over the years, and so kind of
independent from trying to raise capital from Masa, I was
genuinely interested in what he thought of the business. And
this was a guy who had, you know, met with
every entrepreneur there was out there. And so I found
the experience of getting to know Massa quite cool. And
I'm still an admirer of his and uh and we're
(20:46):
proud to, of course, have raised capital from soft Bank.
In that process.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
You mentioned, you know, sort of your undergraduate experience as
a college athlete at Harvard, you end up deciding to
build your business there in Boston. You know, for those
who are just listening and not watching this on YouTube,
I believe I can see Fenway Park behind it, right
over your shoulder.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
That's what was giving me a headache, Jason, That's what's
giving me a headache. I was ready for Alex to
say something I was trying to say. I've played there before.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
I know what that place is.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Talk to us about building a business in Boston because
obviously very well known as a tech center, obviously an
unbelievable amount of you know, medical and scientific research that's
embedded there. How have you found it as an entrepreneur
and now, as you know, more full fledged, fast growing business.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Yeah, I mean I became a Boston resident, you know,
a little bit by accident. Again, I started the company
in Cambridge at a Harvard and it so happened at
the time I was graduating, the Harvard Innovation Lab was
getting started, and this was sort of like your tech
hub or your y combinator of Harvard, and so it
gave us free office space, and it gave us the
(22:12):
ability to keep building for a few months. And those
few months became eighteen months. And in that process I
met some angel investors, and I hired a few full
time people, and I got to know the schools and
some advisors. I started working with a few sports teams,
and it just started to snowball from there. And you know,
now looking back on it, Boston is this city that
(22:34):
has an unbelievable medical community. It's got some of the
best hospitals in the world. It produces more medical research
than any other city in the world. It's got an
amazing sports culture. You know, there's real energy for sports here,
and there's always been great teams. It's got a strong
tech hub and a lot of engineering talent, and it's got,
(22:55):
you know, some of the very best universities in the
world and therefore research labs. So the combination of those things,
in many ways make up a lot of the DNA
of Whoop and so I didn't, you know, I didn't
fully appreciate it when I was founding the company. I
grew up on the North Shore along Island and so
is you know, in New Yorker at Hart and I
kind of always thought I was I'd build this business
in New York. But you know, here we are twelve
(23:16):
years later and seven hundred employees in Boston, and this
is home.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
One thing that strikes me, going back to something you
said earlier, was this notion of the competitive landscape, which
you know, interestingly looks very different today than it did
back then. I mean a lot of the companies that
you mentioned have either really shifted within the wearable space. Obviously,
Apple watches are still out there, but some of the
(23:42):
other folks that you mentioned have you know, either given
up or scaled back. What has happened in the business
to affect that sort of change, and what role have
you played in that and how does it affect your business?
Speaker 4 (23:56):
I think the first thing to understand is that the
wearable technology industry is actually an extremely hard category. You know, again,
something you don't know when you haven't built a business before,
but it just so happens that this category is quite hard.
You know, there's a lot of categories where I think
you can be like great at one or two things
and that can build the business. Wearable technology, you have
(24:19):
to be able to build hardware, software, analytics. You really
need some good design foundation because people are wearing it
on their bodies. And then as a consequence, you need
brand because when someone wears something on their body, it
starts to say a lot about who they are. And
when you look at sort of the array of companies
that have entered the space, we're talking about many of
(24:40):
the best companies of all time. I mean, I have
so much admiration for companies like Nike and Microsoft and
Google and so on and so forth. And I think
what you saw, at least initially with this wearable space
is the entrance were sports apparel brands and they were
tech companies. And if the the simple math to being
(25:01):
successful in the wearable space is you need to have
a cool product that people want to wear, and it
needs to perform from a tech standpoint, you kind of
saw the tech companies and the sportsball brands struggle with
the opposite thing. You know, a tech company would come
out with something that from a technology standpoint was pretty interesting,
(25:23):
but it kind of looked like a goofy, weird gadget
to wear on your wrist, and so people took it
off and didn't want to wear it for a long time,
and it certainly was bumping up against someone's maybe nicer
watch that they otherwise wanted to wear when they went out.
And then on the flip side, sports appeal brands a
company like Nike, which again I have enormous admiration for,
(25:44):
they launched a product like the fuel Bland. It was
a pretty cool looking product and I think they had
obviously the weight of Nike behind it, but the tech
was just totally lame and it didn't really measure anything
significant about the human body. So that was the challenge
with the space, and I think if there's success that
(26:05):
Whoop has had, we've been able to straddle both of
those worlds where we created that origin story in sports
that was very authentic. It's a performance brand and I
think that's also very authentic, and then we've got technology
that you know, makes the product really hum and it's
very accurate.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You talked about the success of Whoop so far and
you've been around for a minute. Now what inning of
you in in your progression? And second part of that
is when you think about an exit, whether it's in
a year or ten years from now or twenty years
from now, how do you see your role, how long
do you want to do it? And if you do exit,
is this an exit to a public company or is
(26:45):
it to a Nike, Apple, Microsoft? How do you see
that in the future.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
You know, we've built the business for a long time
to be a standalone company, you know, which is to
say that we own all of our own hardware, we
own all of our own software, we have our own
data science and research team, We've got AI capabilities. Now,
we've got our own accessories and a parel line. You know,
We've got obviously all the bells and whistles of marketing
(27:09):
and ambassadors and so forth. And so I bring that
up because I think it ties a little bit to
what we're building here. We want to build a business
that's an enduring business, and so Whoop has a lot
of those characteristics, and it's worth saying that. I think
for every entrepreneur on the journey, you know, somewhere along
the way, you either say, Okay, I'm close to the
(27:30):
top of the mountain, or I feel like I've got
much more to climb, And at least for me, I
feel like I've got a lot more to climb with
this business. At every stage, it kind of gets more exciting.
As we have more data and more people and a
deeper revenue base and more investment in R and D.
It kind of feels like the ambition level keeps getting
(27:51):
to rise, and so that's exciting. And I'm thirty five
years old, like I feel like I'm just getting started
in my career, and so I've got a lot of
energy for this business and business in general. I do
think the near term or mid to near term will
likely be a public business. We're already at that stage today,
but we're taking our time with it and there's no rush.
(28:12):
We've got great investors and we're going to continue to
grow well.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
I'm going to ask you a question that Alex often asked,
but I'm going to turn it on its head. Not
about sort of your mentors, which you're more than welcome
to discuss, but as someone who has had, you know,
a lot of success and has really focused on this
company as you're really your life, your whole career since undergrad.
(28:37):
How do you think about sort of passing it on
to the next generation. I know the next generation is
much closer to you than it is to us, but like,
how do you think about you know, especially within the
community of harvardalum within Boston, you know, how do you
think of it about sort of paying it forward as
it were? Because you know, you do have this really
interesting model of building a company.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Well, I have a lot of sympathy for that sort
of young audience, like twenty two years old, trying to
figure out what you want to do with your life,
and so I do like a meeting with young people.
We've also got an internship program at WHOOP, We've got
co op programs where we're hiring kids who are in college.
And you know, it's something I try to offer to
that audience, is to try to figure out what you
(29:22):
really want to do with your life, and figuring out
what you don't want to do counts too. But I
find that a lot of young people, and I was
in this camp, get a ton of advice at that age,
and it, frankly, it tends to come from a place
for other people of this is what you should do.
This is what you should do. And so it's easy
(29:42):
to sort of take the mean of what a bunch
of people tell you to do and do that and
completely lose sight of your heart and what you're driven
to and your passion. And I try to encourage young
people to really look within and actually take less advice.
And I think there's also a feeling when you're twenty
two or twenty five or thirty, like there's a feeling
(30:03):
like the weights on your back and you have to
figure it out immediately. And if I go out on
a limb, I'm going to take on all this risk.
And I think a lot of that is actually not true.
I think a lot of it comes down to how
quickly you the individual, you the entrepreneur, can get on
that right path for yourself, and so anything that you
do that's kind of positioning yourself towards that is good.
(30:25):
I thought that if Whoop failed, you know, it'd probably
be like the end of me. But looking back on it,
I think if the company had failed, I would have,
you know, apologized to my investors and dusted myself off
and started the next thing. You know, The amount that
I learned in the process of starting a business would
set me up pretty great for the next thing too.
(30:47):
And so I think that it's really a race for
young people to figure out who they are, what they
want to do, and sort of look within rather than
seek validation outwards.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's one of the most interesting answers.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I feel like I've ever gotten to that question of, like,
you know, advice for young people, because I do think
you know, we're all looking for answers, but you're right.
I mean, sometimes you know, the best answer is whatever
the one is that you give yourself.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
That's super interesting, all right.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
We like to end every episode with a bit of
a lightning round five questions. We'll bounce it back and forth.
I'll start and then Alex will pick up and just
you know, say whatever jumps to your mind. It's been
really fun, all right. So, what's the best piece of
advice you've ever received on deal making your business?
Speaker 4 (31:40):
A mentor once told me you don't necessarily have to
listen to what everyone says, but you should try to
hear it. His point was, look, you're gonna be getting
negativity from all angles for the rest of your life,
and you need to be able to build a system
to just hear what it is and react to it
and develop. And so taking that advice really helped me
(32:01):
grow as a manager and a leader, because you can't
run a company or run anything, frankly, if you're gonna
just be closed off to any form of feedback. Now
you can hear it, in absorb it, and disagree with it,
which is again that nuance and earring versus listening.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Who's your dream deal making partner?
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Someone I have green admiration for is Phil Knight and
the business that he built with Nike.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
What team do you want to see win a championship
more than any other?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Well, I just.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
Got to see the Celtics win not that long ago,
so that was a big deal. We've Boston residents tend
to do pretty well in that category.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
All right, there's a tough one here, here we go.
What's your hype song before a big meeting or a
big negotiation?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
I love listening to sort of hip hop to pick
me up when I'm a little low. There's a great
song called Otis by Kanye West and jay Z.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Good one.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
All right, So if you were giving advice to someone
who wants a career like yours, what would it be
and you wanted them to listen to it.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
I think get started, keep going. There's a lot that's
going to go wrong in the process of building a business.
I think it's easy to look at someone who's made
it and try to compare yourself to them, And the
reality is when that entrepreneur that you're looking up to
was in your shoes, I can promise you I didn't
know what the hell I was doing, but I was
willing to pick myself up every morning and get rejected
(33:30):
and punched in the face and then do it over again.
And I did have conviction in what I was building.
You know, I really believe that there was a problem
to solve with measuring people's health and that there was
a technology that we could build that could fill that void.
And so that I think passion and perseverance helped me
get to where I am today.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Well, I'm ed.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
This has been a ton of fun and we really
appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Thank you so much, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Will all right, guys, I appreciate Jason, Alex, thank you
guys so much. Congrats on everything.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.
This episode was made by Anamazarakus, Stacy Wong and Lizzie Phillip.
Amy Keen is our editor and Will Connelly is our
video editor. Our theme music is made by Blake Maples.
Our executive producers are Kelly Leferrier, Ashley Hoenig, and Brenda Neonham.
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Additional support
(34:30):
from Rachel Carnivale and Elena sos Angeles. Thanks so much
for listening to the deal. If you have a minute, subscribe,
rate and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us.
I'm Jason Kelly. See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome back to the Deal.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm your host, Jason Kelly alongside my partner Alex Rodriguez.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
All right, Alex, I'm in London for the moment.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You're in Miami for the moment, but we're off in
all different directions.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Tell me about what you're up to over the coming
week or so. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm off to Vegas for Summer League. We're also on
July eleventh, we're going to have our press conference, Mark
Lori and myself in front of the national media. Some
o our players, coaches, GMS will be there.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
When you say our players and coaches, you're talking about
the NBA and WNBA teams you just purchased.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Right correct, the Minnesota Timbowles and the Minnesota Lynx. And
then I'm off to Atlanta to cover for Fox with
my compadres Kevin Burkhard, Derek Jeter, Big Poppy, and I'm
thrilled I'm going to your hometown and I'm very disappointed
that you won't even be there.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I feel very I'm going to be in Seattle. I'll
tell you what I'm doing in Europe in a second.
But when you're in Atlanta. I'm actually going to be
in Seattle for the Bloomberg Green event. I'm going to
be interviewing a couple very interesting people. Actually a former
resident of Atlanta, Jane Fonda is one of the people
I'm interviewing, but also Samantha Holloway, who you know as
the owner of the Seattle Kraken the hockey team. I
(01:22):
also know her in addition to that as the daughter
of the late David Bonderman, who obviously was a legend
of the private equity business. Featured in my book, which
I know you've read, so I'm looking forward to that.
In the meantime, I'm here in Europe and I'm working
on a limited series it's going to come out later
this year about the business of Formula One. So I'm
actually spending the next couple days with Pierre Gasley, who's
(01:43):
one of the preeminent drivers, incredible businessman. We're going to
have to have him on this show at some point,
so I'm actually going to Paris tomorrow to spend some
time with him. I will tell you The big sports story,
of course here in London is Wimbledon. It has been
an unblo believably great tournament. You know, Ben Shelton obviously
(02:04):
has been very successful, Taylor Fritz, you know, a couple
of Americans on the men's side have done very well.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So watching that closely, all right.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So I have to ask you, first of all, what
do you think of going to Vegas for this press conference? Like,
I know, we talked last episode about how you're feeling,
but you know, it gets really real at this point,
doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, I mean it's like anything else. It's like graduating
from high school. It doesn't until you get the diploma.
It really feels like it's not real. But I think
that'll be the end of a great chapter and the
start of a new one for Mark and I that
we're in this incredible position to be stewards of two
wonderful franchise, the Minnesota Timbols and the Lynx, And I
(02:43):
think we're in really a great position to have a
good runner here for the next five or seven years.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It's interesting, too to think about how important Summer League
has become. I mean, this was an afterthought for so
many years, and now you know, obviously this year is
a very busy year at the.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Moment for you and for me.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
But next year we got to take our show to
Summer League because everybody's there, and you know, it's become
sort of a showcase for talent, but also you know,
kind of where everybody is meeting and greeting and a
more casual atmosphere. I mean, it's hot, is all get
out in Vegas this time.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Of the year.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
But the basketball is good and a lot of deals
to get done, and so we definitely should should think
about that. All right, talk to me about Atlanta. How
are you feeling about the baseball season.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I feel very good. I actually sent Rob Manford a
note and Dan Halem a note yesterday, just congratulating them
on what a great first half has been. The numbers
have been really really good. Ratings are up, you know,
north of ten percent. Just finished watching the Mets Subway
series against the Yankees. The Mets did really well. They
wont two out of three. SODA's warming up. Otani never
stops now he's starting to pitch, and you have the
(03:51):
big markets that are doing well, and baseball's never been
more interesting. So I'm really excited. And the fact that
it's in Atlanta, one of the big hubs of Major
League Baseball and a team that I grew up watching
with Dale Murphy and Chipper Jones and the great history
of the Braves, which you know so well. I'm excited
I have celebration for the game of baseball and I'm
up for.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
It well, and it's interesting too with you and I
have talked about the fact that the Battery, which sits
outside of Truest Park there in Atlanta, has become really
a model I think for a lot of what baseball
stadiums are trying to do. I would imagine even as
an owner of an NBA and a WNBA team, you're
taking note around the real estate that can be built
(04:32):
and developed around a stadium as successfully as it has there.
You know, that was, as I'm sure you remember, it
was a very controversial move, including for me and a
lot of people who grew up rooting for the Braves.
You know, they played at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, you know, downtown,
then they moved to Turner Field after the Olympics. When
they moved to the suburbs, people were going crazy. This
(04:54):
is a you know, terrible move. But the Braves have
never been better, and they've never drawn more people, and
they've really built a winning franchise, not just on the field,
but a team that routinely attracts big crowds and very
enthusiastic crowds.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And they never made more money. And that's because they
didn't think the fans would travel to the suburbs they have.
Then they build a battery which has become an incredible
mixed use attraction, and the economics that followed. And what
was interesting, Jason, when I was there covering with Fox
the World Series, it felt like it was LSU against
Alabama or Alabama against Georgia. It was the most ruckous,
(05:33):
great atmosphere. It felt like a football crowd, but not
just football, a college football crowd, very festive. And that
was something that I thought the Braves of the Old
Braves was missing, that great passion. Yeah, and boy, I'll
tell you. And this new building is there and is
there loud?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's funny you say that, because I mean I do remember,
you know when I moved back to Atlanta after college
in the late nineties, and I would go to Turner Field.
If the Yankees would come to town, if the Mets
would come to town, if the Red Sox would come to town.
There would be more fans visiting for the rooting team
than they were for the Braves, which was very sad
to me, especially because the Braves were getting really good
(06:10):
in the nineties and obviously they turned it up in
those Chipper Jones and you know Tom Glavin, Greg Maddox,
you know Steve Avery days as you remember so well.
But you know, this move really has ignited that fan
base and it has been you know, you talk about
a deal, what a great deal for the owners. You know,
Liberty Media is a corporate owner, which you know sometimes
like are they really going to take care of this franchise?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You know, they really have. So I'm excited to.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Hear your report from there. Get my regards to my hometown.
Coming up on this show, Hard Pivot, we have a
really interesting interview with Will Ahmed, who is the CEO
and founder of Whoop. This is a really really interesting
story of entrepreneurship, of investment.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
This is a multi billion dollar business at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Well is one of the most impressive young man I've
ever met. He came out of Harvard, was an athlete
there in his early twenties, had this very bold idea
and I got to tell you, Jason, I was so
impressed with his story, his composure, his long term thinking,
and then his world class blue chip type investors that
he has in his cap table is incredibly impressive.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, it's a great conversation. So excited for you guys.
Hear that coming up on the deal. Will Ahmed from WOOP.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the deal. I'm Jason Kelly
alongside Alex Rodriguez. So excited to have with us Will Ahmed.
He is the founder and the CEO of WOOP. You
have seen these devices on many many successful people's wrists,
people who want to track their sleep, their activity, their health,
all of it. Well, this was your idea, and we're
(07:56):
so excited to have you with us.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Awesome, great to be on with you, Jason, Alex. Real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
All right, so give us the origin story.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I mean, let's just start with this origin story of
how you come up with this idea. Let's start with
this product that we're hearing so much about. This is
a company that's valued it better than three and a
half billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Now where does it all begin.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, it began for me just as a college athlete.
I mean I grew up kind of always into sports
and exercise and playing a dozen different sports as a kid.
I ended up being pretty good at squash, and so
I played that at Harvard and we were one of
the top ranked teams, and my experience of being a
college athlete was an amazing one, but it was one
(08:38):
in which I would overtrain. Alex is probably super familiar
with this concept. About seventy percent of athletes overtrained at
some point in their career. But you know, you essentially
kind of get fitter and fitter and fitter, and then
somewhat surprisingly fall off a cliff and you don't know why,
and your body's fatigued, it's run down, you're not performing well,
you don't necessarily know why. It's a real betrayal for
(09:00):
for athletes. And that sort of simple concept just got
me very interested in what you could measure about the
human body. And I just started to ask simple questions
like how to sleep affect performance? What is recovery? How
can I measure my output of exercise? And I was
surprised how little technology there was in the world to
(09:23):
be able to measure these things. And this was also
we're talking about twenty ten, eleven twelve, when I was
a student the iPhone it started to really take off.
Then there was a feeling, at least from my standpoint,
that computers were going from being on your desk to
being on your lap, to being in your pocket, to
potentially eventually on your body. And so I started doing
(09:45):
a lot of physiology research as a student. I read
something like five hundred medical papers and ended up writing
a paper around how to continuously measure the human body.
And so that paper essentially became the business plan for Whoop,
and I recruited some great people out of Harvard and
worked with some great professors at Harvard and MIT and
(10:05):
started this business summer of twenty twelve as a twenty
two year old who didn't know much about anything. But
it's been a fascinating ride since then.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And so at that moment, will at this moment, I
should say here in twenty twenty five, tracking, especially fitness trackers,
feel you bike what it's largely owing to you. It
obviously felt like a big opportunity for you, but it
probably didn't feel obvious to a lot of the people
you were talking to back then.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Is that fair?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
I think in twenty twelve it was. It was certainly
less obvious that there was going to be wearable devices
that people were wearing all the time. So I think
I was early to that idea. I think, however, I
was at a disadvantage of you know, I wasn't an engineer,
I wasn't a computer scientist, I wasn't a doctor, and
I was building this technology at the intersection of all
(10:53):
of those things, and so I think that, you know,
for me as an entrepreneur, there was a lot I
needed to overcome. There was a lot I needed to prove.
WOOP wasn't just the first company I started. It was
my first full time job, so there was just, frankly,
a lot to learn. And then from a market standpoint,
we were really focused on trying to replace great medical technology.
(11:16):
So the PSG machine was really the gold standard for
sleep monitoring. If you've ever had an issue with sleep,
apnea or sleep in general, maybe you've been sent to
a sleep lab. Well, they're put all these nodes on
your body and give you a really accurate readout of sleep.
I wondered, hey, can we take some of that technology
and put it in a small form factor. I asked
(11:36):
the same question about the electro cardiogram, because the electro cardiogram,
you know, which is this like twenty thousand dollars hospital equipment.
You know, if you're watching a movie, it's a thing
that's going beep, beep beep, right, you know, I asked myself, hey,
can we take some of that technology and put it
in a small form factor because it can measure heart revariability,
which is this fascinating lens into recovery. And you know,
(12:00):
I asked, can we take a chest strap, which is like,
you know, the gold standard at least it was for
measuring heart rate during exercise and put that in a
small form factor. And so there was a big, like
technology risk to what we were trying to do because
these were technologies that had existed for a while, were
made by big players and were obviously cumbersome, and can
(12:24):
you make them a non invasive So that was the
big technology risk to overcome. And as we started doing that,
all of a sudden, most of the biggest companies in
the world entered the market.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So well, that's a great one because I love the
idea and the entrepreneurs spirit. You talked about some technology risk.
Let's go back to when you're twenty two years old.
It's a great idea. It's an awesome idea, but like
you said, you're not an engineer, you're not a scientist,
so you have some headwinds. Well, you have this great idea,
(12:56):
when did you determine, Hey, what's the tam is on
this business? And secondly, when did you feel like, in
your heart, I can actually make some money out of this?
Out of my passion.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
It really never was about the money. I mean, I
think I was just a kid who was so obsessed
with an idea that I didn't have any other choice.
You know, people were like, well, how did you decide
to start a company versus go into finance or go
into the corporate world. For me, it was just all
my free time. I was thinking about this idea in
the back of my head. And I think that's a
very good sign for anyone who's deciding what they want
(13:28):
to do. If there's something you keep wandering back to,
I think that says a lot about how you feel.
And for me, for the longest time, that's been this
idea of whoop. I think the market opportunity piece got
progressively more exciting as the technology got more exciting. You know,
Initially it was a very athlete's focused business. So we
(13:51):
wanted to start with the world's best athletes and then
go from there to sports teams, college teams, and eventually
a bunch of consumers we thought would wear it. And
that was a reasonably successful strategy. It happened to take
longer and cost more, but you know, two of our
first one hundred users were people like Lebron James and
(14:12):
Michael Phelps in twenty fifteen, and so that was like,
you know, getting to work with some real, really superstar
athletes for a product that was completely unknown, and it
started to validate to me, Wow, we really must be
onto something with this technology if these athletes who care
so much about their bodies want to use this product
over anything else. And this was a time by the
(14:34):
way Apple was entering the market, Nike, under Armor, Adidas, Puma,
We're all entering the market. Microsoft, Google were about a
year from entering the market. Soon Amazon would be in
the space. Like we really had a lot of competition,
and so when I saw all these big players now
coming in, I did realize at that point, Wow, winning
(14:57):
this market is going to be a big deal.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Go back if you will to getting those huge names
will because that obviously is it is a game changer, Like,
how does that happen that you get those caliber people
like Lebron wearing this to be such an early adopter.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Yeah, I found that the key to getting to sort
of anyone in life is figuring out someone who's got
a big influence on them that also a bunch of
other people don't already know. You know, so in the
case of a professional athlete, if you're an unknown entrepreneur
going to their agent or their spouse or you know,
their coach, it's sort of a non starter because these
(15:37):
people get inundated on behalf of an athlete. But who's
someone that a professional athlete actually spends a lot of
time with that other people don't know. It's their personal trainer.
And so that became the insight. We realized if we
could get to the personal trainer of a professional athlete,
we had an inn. And by the way, this is
(15:58):
twenty fifteen. It's sort of like pre Instagram fitness influence,
if you will. And these guys were pretty unknown, and
so you know, I got to know Mike Mincis, who
is Lebron James's trainer. I got to go Keenan Robinson,
who is Michael Phobbs's trainer at the time, and we
started by sending them the product, and we also talked
(16:19):
about how the product could be a tool for them
to work with their athlete. You know, Alex, I'd be
curious your experience with this, but I think when your
trainer comes to you and says, hey, I think this
is something that can help, let's try to put it
into the mix, you listen to that, right.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I think it's brilliant and I've never thought about that,
And I love the competitive advantage. When you're a young entrepreneur,
you have limited resources, but when you go to the
trainer and he's talking about something like this, that's the
only person you really listen to. That's why you're hiring them.
So I think I just learned something here. This is awesome.
I love the idea. I want to follow up with Jason.
Jason kind of went the route of the le Bronze
(16:55):
of the World and how impactful that can be. I
want to flip to the capital race side, because obviously
twenty fifteen could have been a tough time for a
young entrepreneur with a great idea, but when you raised
four hundred million dollars and as Jason said, the company's
worth north of three point five billion today. Is there
a couple of names that you said, huh, I bagged
the elephant. This is going to make a big difference,
(17:18):
just like you did Lebron on that side.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
From a raising capital standpoint.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, from a blue chip investor, from an LP of yours.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Well, it's interesting, like the first eight years of the
company's history, I think we're actually quite challenging from a
capital standpoint. And everyone looks today at Whoop as this
really successful company that you know, went from zero to
multi billion dollar valuations and higher. But the truth is
along the way, like there were a lot of very
hard fundraises, and I think they were hard for a
(17:48):
few reasons. One was that we were building hardware, which
was capital intensive. Two is that I was still learning
how to be a great CEO, and so I was
developing in that role as a fund which is a
skill like anything else. And three was that the competition
was really intense. I mean, who are you going to
(18:08):
bet on Apple or an unknown entrepreneur? You know who
You're gonna bet on Nike or an unknown entrepreneur, And
so I'm sympathetic to that looking back on it, why
it was hard to raise capital. And then a few
things all clicked at once. We figured out the right
business model for the company. So just to play it out,
we had worked with athletes for quite some time. We
(18:30):
had built this brand around performance, which we can maybe
talk a little bit more about what it takes to
build a brand. And then we entered the consumer market,
and that initial transition was hard because we were selling
the product for five hundred bucks. Consumers were trying to
figure out what it was, why is it so expensive?
And we had this real business model innovation where we
(18:51):
turned the whole business into a subscription and what that
meant is you could sign up for thirty dollars or
one hundred and eighty dollars for six months, and then
if you fell in love with the product, you would
keep paying for it over time, and the hardware was
included as part of that, but you'd have to keep
paying a subscription. And that business model innovation, because the
(19:12):
cost got so much lower to sign up, it created
a ton of demand and then it became a question
of well, does your product live up to the hype?
Is your product any good? And fortunately We've had a
good product for a long time, and so all of
a sudden we then unlocked the growth side of it.
Answer your investment question, Alex, we unlocked annual recurring revenue,
(19:35):
which took us from being a hardware business to more
of a SaaS business, and so that was able to
catapult our valuation. And you know, in like a four
year period, we went from probably being a business value
at a couple one hundred million to being a business
valued at close to four billion.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I know you don't want to single out one single
Bluechib investor, but was there one that we went home
to your wife you said, you won't believe who's writ
in a check.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Well, I've got a few of those. The one I'll
call out is is Masa's son from soft Bank, because
I read about Masa long before I met him, and
you know, this is the guy who founded and created
soft Bank Capital, which is one of the very biggest
investors in the world, and Masa is extremely ambitious, and
(20:24):
he's also someone who had seen a bunch of incarnations
of wearable products over the years, and so kind of
independent from trying to raise capital from Masa, I was
genuinely interested in what he thought of the business. And
this was a guy who had, you know, met with
every entrepreneur there was out there. And so I found
the experience of getting to know Massa quite cool. And
I'm still an admirer of his and uh and we're
(20:46):
proud to, of course, have raised capital from soft Bank.
In that process.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
You mentioned, you know, sort of your undergraduate experience as
a college athlete at Harvard, you end up deciding to
build your business there in Boston. You know, for those
who are just listening and not watching this on YouTube,
I believe I can see Fenway Park behind it, right
over your shoulder.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
That's what was giving me a headache, Jason, That's what's
giving me a headache. I was ready for Alex to
say something I was trying to say. I've played there before.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
I know what that place is.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Talk to us about building a business in Boston because
obviously very well known as a tech center, obviously an
unbelievable amount of you know, medical and scientific research that's
embedded there. How have you found it as an entrepreneur
and now, as you know, more full fledged, fast growing business.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Yeah, I mean I became a Boston resident, you know,
a little bit by accident. Again, I started the company
in Cambridge at a Harvard and it so happened at
the time I was graduating, the Harvard Innovation Lab was
getting started, and this was sort of like your tech
hub or your y combinator of Harvard, and so it
gave us free office space, and it gave us the
(22:12):
ability to keep building for a few months. And those
few months became eighteen months. And in that process I
met some angel investors, and I hired a few full
time people, and I got to know the schools and
some advisors. I started working with a few sports teams,
and it just started to snowball from there. And you know,
now looking back on it, Boston is this city that
(22:34):
has an unbelievable medical community. It's got some of the
best hospitals in the world. It produces more medical research
than any other city in the world. It's got an
amazing sports culture. You know, there's real energy for sports here,
and there's always been great teams. It's got a strong
tech hub and a lot of engineering talent, and it's got,
(22:55):
you know, some of the very best universities in the
world and therefore research labs. So the combination of those things,
in many ways make up a lot of the DNA
of Whoop and so I didn't, you know, I didn't
fully appreciate it when I was founding the company. I
grew up on the North Shore along Island and so
is you know, in New Yorker at Hart and I
kind of always thought I was I'd build this business
in New York. But you know, here we are twelve
(23:16):
years later and seven hundred employees in Boston, and this
is home.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
One thing that strikes me, going back to something you
said earlier, was this notion of the competitive landscape, which
you know, interestingly looks very different today than it did
back then. I mean a lot of the companies that
you mentioned have either really shifted within the wearable space. Obviously,
Apple watches are still out there, but some of the
(23:42):
other folks that you mentioned have you know, either given
up or scaled back. What has happened in the business
to affect that sort of change, and what role have
you played in that and how does it affect your business?
Speaker 4 (23:56):
I think the first thing to understand is that the
wearable technology industry is actually an extremely hard category. You know, again,
something you don't know when you haven't built a business before,
but it just so happens that this category is quite hard.
You know, there's a lot of categories where I think
you can be like great at one or two things
and that can build the business. Wearable technology, you have
(24:19):
to be able to build hardware, software, analytics. You really
need some good design foundation because people are wearing it
on their bodies. And then as a consequence, you need
brand because when someone wears something on their body, it
starts to say a lot about who they are. And
when you look at sort of the array of companies
that have entered the space, we're talking about many of
(24:40):
the best companies of all time. I mean, I have
so much admiration for companies like Nike and Microsoft and
Google and so on and so forth. And I think
what you saw, at least initially with this wearable space
is the entrance were sports apparel brands and they were
tech companies. And if the the simple math to being
(25:01):
successful in the wearable space is you need to have
a cool product that people want to wear, and it
needs to perform from a tech standpoint, you kind of
saw the tech companies and the sportsball brands struggle with
the opposite thing. You know, a tech company would come
out with something that from a technology standpoint was pretty interesting,
(25:23):
but it kind of looked like a goofy, weird gadget
to wear on your wrist, and so people took it
off and didn't want to wear it for a long time,
and it certainly was bumping up against someone's maybe nicer
watch that they otherwise wanted to wear when they went out.
And then on the flip side, sports appeal brands a
company like Nike, which again I have enormous admiration for,
(25:44):
they launched a product like the fuel Bland. It was
a pretty cool looking product and I think they had
obviously the weight of Nike behind it, but the tech
was just totally lame and it didn't really measure anything
significant about the human body. So that was the challenge
with the space, and I think if there's success that
(26:05):
Whoop has had, we've been able to straddle both of
those worlds where we created that origin story in sports
that was very authentic. It's a performance brand and I
think that's also very authentic, and then we've got technology
that you know, makes the product really hum and it's
very accurate.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You talked about the success of Whoop so far and
you've been around for a minute. Now what inning of
you in in your progression? And second part of that
is when you think about an exit, whether it's in
a year or ten years from now or twenty years
from now, how do you see your role, how long
do you want to do it? And if you do exit,
is this an exit to a public company or is
(26:45):
it to a Nike, Apple, Microsoft? How do you see
that in the future.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
You know, we've built the business for a long time
to be a standalone company, you know, which is to
say that we own all of our own hardware, we
own all of our own software, we have our own
data science and research team, We've got AI capabilities. Now,
we've got our own accessories and a parel line. You know,
We've got obviously all the bells and whistles of marketing
(27:09):
and ambassadors and so forth. And so I bring that
up because I think it ties a little bit to
what we're building here. We want to build a business
that's an enduring business, and so Whoop has a lot
of those characteristics, and it's worth saying that. I think
for every entrepreneur on the journey, you know, somewhere along
the way, you either say, Okay, I'm close to the
(27:30):
top of the mountain, or I feel like I've got
much more to climb, And at least for me, I
feel like I've got a lot more to climb with
this business. At every stage, it kind of gets more exciting.
As we have more data and more people and a
deeper revenue base and more investment in R and D.
It kind of feels like the ambition level keeps getting
(27:51):
to rise, and so that's exciting. And I'm thirty five
years old, like I feel like I'm just getting started
in my career, and so I've got a lot of
energy for this business and business in general. I do
think the near term or mid to near term will
likely be a public business. We're already at that stage today,
but we're taking our time with it and there's no rush.
(28:12):
We've got great investors and we're going to continue to
grow well.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
I'm going to ask you a question that Alex often asked,
but I'm going to turn it on its head. Not
about sort of your mentors, which you're more than welcome
to discuss, but as someone who has had, you know,
a lot of success and has really focused on this
company as you're really your life, your whole career since undergrad.
(28:37):
How do you think about sort of passing it on
to the next generation. I know the next generation is
much closer to you than it is to us, but like,
how do you think about you know, especially within the
community of harvardalum within Boston, you know, how do you
think of it about sort of paying it forward as
it were? Because you know, you do have this really
interesting model of building a company.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Well, I have a lot of sympathy for that sort
of young audience, like twenty two years old, trying to
figure out what you want to do with your life,
and so I do like a meeting with young people.
We've also got an internship program at WHOOP, We've got
co op programs where we're hiring kids who are in college.
And you know, it's something I try to offer to
that audience, is to try to figure out what you
(29:22):
really want to do with your life, and figuring out
what you don't want to do counts too. But I
find that a lot of young people, and I was
in this camp, get a ton of advice at that age,
and it, frankly, it tends to come from a place
for other people of this is what you should do.
This is what you should do. And so it's easy
(29:42):
to sort of take the mean of what a bunch
of people tell you to do and do that and
completely lose sight of your heart and what you're driven
to and your passion. And I try to encourage young
people to really look within and actually take less advice.
And I think there's also a feeling when you're twenty
two or twenty five or thirty, like there's a feeling
(30:03):
like the weights on your back and you have to
figure it out immediately. And if I go out on
a limb, I'm going to take on all this risk.
And I think a lot of that is actually not true.
I think a lot of it comes down to how
quickly you the individual, you the entrepreneur, can get on
that right path for yourself, and so anything that you
do that's kind of positioning yourself towards that is good.
(30:25):
I thought that if Whoop failed, you know, it'd probably
be like the end of me. But looking back on it,
I think if the company had failed, I would have,
you know, apologized to my investors and dusted myself off
and started the next thing. You know, The amount that
I learned in the process of starting a business would
set me up pretty great for the next thing too.
(30:47):
And so I think that it's really a race for
young people to figure out who they are, what they
want to do, and sort of look within rather than
seek validation outwards.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's one of the most interesting answers.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I feel like I've ever gotten to that question of, like,
you know, advice for young people, because I do think
you know, we're all looking for answers, but you're right.
I mean, sometimes you know, the best answer is whatever
the one is that you give yourself.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
That's super interesting, all right.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
We like to end every episode with a bit of
a lightning round five questions. We'll bounce it back and forth.
I'll start and then Alex will pick up and just
you know, say whatever jumps to your mind. It's been
really fun, all right. So, what's the best piece of
advice you've ever received on deal making your business?
Speaker 4 (31:40):
A mentor once told me you don't necessarily have to
listen to what everyone says, but you should try to
hear it. His point was, look, you're gonna be getting
negativity from all angles for the rest of your life,
and you need to be able to build a system
to just hear what it is and react to it
and develop. And so taking that advice really helped me
(32:01):
grow as a manager and a leader, because you can't
run a company or run anything, frankly, if you're gonna
just be closed off to any form of feedback. Now
you can hear it, in absorb it, and disagree with it,
which is again that nuance and earring versus listening.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Who's your dream deal making partner?
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Someone I have green admiration for is Phil Knight and
the business that he built with Nike.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
What team do you want to see win a championship
more than any other?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Well, I just.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
Got to see the Celtics win not that long ago,
so that was a big deal. We've Boston residents tend
to do pretty well in that category.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
All right, there's a tough one here, here we go.
What's your hype song before a big meeting or a
big negotiation?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
I love listening to sort of hip hop to pick
me up when I'm a little low. There's a great
song called Otis by Kanye West and jay Z.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Good one.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
All right, So if you were giving advice to someone
who wants a career like yours, what would it be
and you wanted them to listen to it.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
I think get started, keep going. There's a lot that's
going to go wrong in the process of building a business.
I think it's easy to look at someone who's made
it and try to compare yourself to them, And the
reality is when that entrepreneur that you're looking up to
was in your shoes, I can promise you I didn't
know what the hell I was doing, but I was
willing to pick myself up every morning and get rejected
(33:30):
and punched in the face and then do it over again.
And I did have conviction in what I was building.
You know, I really believe that there was a problem
to solve with measuring people's health and that there was
a technology that we could build that could fill that void.
And so that I think passion and perseverance helped me
get to where I am today.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Well, I'm ed.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
This has been a ton of fun and we really
appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Thank you so much, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Will all right, guys, I appreciate Jason, Alex, thank you
guys so much. Congrats on everything.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.
This episode was made by Anamazarakus, Stacy Wong and Lizzie Phillip.
Amy Keen is our editor and Will Connelly is our
video editor. Our theme music is made by Blake Maples.
Our executive producers are Kelly Leferrier, Ashley Hoenig, and Brenda Neonham.
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Additional support
(34:30):
from Rachel Carnivale and Elena sos Angeles. Thanks so much
for listening to the deal. If you have a minute, subscribe,
rate and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us.
I'm Jason Kelly. See you next week.
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