How Whoop’s Will Ahmed Built a $3.6B Business Tracking Fitness

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0:42Welcome back to The Deal. I'm your host, Jason Kelly, alongside my partner, Alex Rodriguez. All right, Alex, I'm in London for the moment. You're in Miami for the moment, but we're off in all different directions. Tell me about what you're up to over the coming week or so. Well, I'm off to Vegas for Summer League. We're also on July 11th. We're going to have our press conference, Mark, Laurie, and myself in front of the national media. Some of our players, coaches, GMs will be there. When you say our players and coaches, you're talking about the NBA and WNBA teams you just purchased, right? Correct.

1:15The Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx. And then I'm off to Atlanta to cover for Fox with my compadres, Kevin Burkhardt, 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. I feel very bummed about it. 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 of very interesting people. Actually, a former resident of Atlanta, Jane Fonda, is one of the people I'm interviewing.

1:45But also Samantha Holloway, who you know as the owner of the Seattle Kraken, the hockey team. I also know her, in addition to that, as the daughter of the late David Bonderman, who obviously was a legend in 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 that's going to come out later this year about the business of Formula One. So I'm actually spending the next couple of days with Pierre Gasly, who's one of the preeminent drivers, incredible businessman. We're going to have to have him on this show at some point.

2:18So 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 unbelievably great tournament. Ben Shelton obviously has been very successful. Taylor Fritz, a couple of Americans on the men's side have done very well. So watching that closely. All right. So I have to ask you, first of all, what are you thinking going to Vegas for this press conference? I know we talked last episode about how you're feeling, but it gets really real at this point, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's like anything else. It's like graduating from high school.

2:57It 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 franchises, the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Lynx. And I think we're in really a great position to have a good run here for the next five or seven years. 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 moment for you and for me.

3:31But 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 in a more casual atmosphere. I mean, it's hot as all get out in Vegas this time of year, 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? I feel very good. I actually sent Rob Manfred a note and Dan Halem a note yesterday just congratulating them on what a great first half has been.

4:07The numbers have been really, really good. Ratings are up north of 10 percent. just finished watching the Mets subway series against the Yankees. The Mets did really well. They won two out of three. Soto's warming up. Otani never stops. Now he's starting to pitch. And you have the 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.

4:38I know. Celebration for the game of baseball. and I'm up for it. Well, and it's interesting too, and you and I have talked about the fact that the battery, which sits outside of Truist 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 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.

5:13They played at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium downtown. Then they moved to Turner Field after the Olympics. When they moved to the suburbs, people were going crazy. This is a 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. 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 built a battery, which has become an incredible mixed-use attraction.

5:50And the economics have 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 ruckus, 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. And boy, I'll tell you, in this new building is there and is there loud. Yeah, 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 90s, 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 there were for the Braves, which was very sad to me, especially because the Braves were getting really good in the 90s.

6:41And 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, oh, are they really going to take care of this franchise? You know, they really have. So I'm excited to hear your report from there. Give 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.

7:15This is a really, really interesting story of entrepreneurship, of investment. This is a multibillion-dollar business at this point. Yeah, Will is one of the most impressive young men I've ever met. He came out of Harvard, was an athlete there. In his early 20s, 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. Yeah, it's a great conversation. So excited for you guys to hear that. Coming up on The Deal, Will Ahmed from Whoop.

7:57The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics. Change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

8:36Hi, 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 Whoop. 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. Will, this was your idea, and we're so excited to have you with us. Thank you. Awesome. Great to be on with you, Jason and Alex. Real pleasure. All right. So give us the origin story. 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.

9:13This is a company that's valued at better than three and a half billion dollars now. Where does it all begin? 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 in which I would overtrain. Alex is probably super familiar with this concept. About 70 % of athletes overtrain at some point in their career. But, you know, you essentially kind of get fitter and fitter and fitter.

9:51and 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 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 does 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 be able to measure these things. And this was also, we're talking about 2010, 11, 12, when I was a student, the iPhone had started to really take off then.

10:34There 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 a lot of physiology research as a student. I read something like 500 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 started this business summer of 2012 as a 22-year-old who didn't know much about anything.

11:12But it's been a fascinating ride since then. And so at that moment, Will, at this moment, I should say, here in 2025, tracking, especially fitness trackers, feel ubiquitous, 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. Is that fair? I think in 2012, 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.

11:50I wasn't a doctor. And I was building this technology at the intersection of all 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. Whoop 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. 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 where they put all these nodes on your body and give you a really accurate readout of sleep.

12:33I wondered, hey, can we take some of that technology and put it in a small form factor? I asked the same question about the electrocardiogram because the electrocardiogram, you know, which is this like$20 ,000 hospital equipment, you know, if you're watching a movie, it's the 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 rate variability, which is this fascinating lens into recovery. And, you know, 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.

13:12And 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 you make them 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. So, Will, that's a great one, because I love the idea and the entrepreneur spirit. it. You talked about some technology risk. Let's go back to when you're 22 years old. It's a great idea. It's an awesome idea. But like you said, you're not an engineer.

13:53You're not a scientist. So you have some headwinds where you have this great idea. When did you determine, A, 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? 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 are 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.

14:26And I think that's a very good sign for anyone who's deciding what they want 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 athletes-focused business. So we 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 hundred users were people like lebron james and michael phelps in 2015 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 on to something with this technology if these athletes who care so much about their bodies want to use this product over anything else.

15:35And this was a time, by the way, Apple was entering the market. Nike, Under Armor, Adidas, Puma were all entering the market. Microsoft, Google were about a year from entering the market. Soon, Amazon would be in the space. 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 this market is going to be a big deal. So go back, if you will, to getting those huge names, Will, because that obviously 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?

16:17Yeah, 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 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 No, 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 in.

16:59And by the way, this is 2015. 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 Mencias, who was LeBron James's trainer. I got to go Keenan Robinson, who was Michael Phelps' trainer at the time. And we started by sending them the product. And we also talked 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.

17:34You listen to that, right? 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 him. So I think I just learned something here. This is awesome. I love the idea. I want to follow up on what Jason. Jason kind of went the route of the LeBrons of the world and how impactful that can be. I want to flip to the capital raise side because obviously 2015 could have been a tough time for a young entrepreneur with a great idea.

18:07But when you raise$400 million, and as Jason said, the company's worth north of$3.5 billion today, is there a couple of names that you said, huh, I bagged the elephant. This is going to make a big difference, just like you did LeBron on that side? From a raising capital standpoint? Yeah, from a blue chip investor, from an LP of yours. Well, it's interesting. Like the first eight years of the company's history, I think were 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.

18:44But the truth is along the way, like there were a lot of very hard fundraisers and I think they were hard for a few reasons. One was that we were building hardware, which was capital intensive. Two was that I was still learning how to be a great CEO. And so I was developing in that role as a fundraiser, which is a skill like anything else. And three was that the competition was really intense. I mean, who are you going to bet on? Apple or an unknown entrepreneur? You know, who are you going to 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.

19:22And 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 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 500 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 turned the whole business into a subscription.

19:56and what that meant is you could sign up for$30 or$180 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 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, we then unlocked the growth side of it. And to your investment question, Alex, we unlocked annual recurring revenue, which took us from being a hardware business to more of a SaaS business.

20:41And so that was able to catapult our valuation. And, you know, in like a four year period, we went from probably being a business valued at a couple hundred million to being a business valued at close to$4 billion. Yeah, I know you don't want to single out one single blue chip investor, but was there one that you went home to your wife and you said you won't believe who's writing a check? Well, I've got a few of those. The one I'll call out is Masa's son from SoftBank, because I read about Masa long before I met him. And this is the guy who founded and created SoftBank Capital, which is one of the very biggest investors in the world.

21:22And Masa is extremely ambitious. And 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 met with every entrepreneur there was out there. And so I found the experience of getting to know Masa quite cool. And I'm still an admirer of his. And And we're proud to, of course, have raised capital from SoftBank in that process.

21:57The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics. Change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

22:35You 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, right over your shoulder. That's what was giving me a headache, Jason. That's what's giving me a headache. I was waiting for Alex to say something. I was trying to say, I've played there before. I know what that place is. 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.

23:17How have you found it as an entrepreneur and now as a, you know, more full fledged, fast growing business? Yeah, I mean, I became a Boston resident, you know, a little bit by accident. Again, I started the company in Cambridge out of Harvard, and it just 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 ability to keep building for a few months. And those few months became 18 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.

23:57I 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 the city that 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 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 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.

24:38And so I didn't fully appreciate it when I was founding the company. I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island and so I was a New Yorker at heart and I kind of always thought I'd build this business in New York. But here we are 12 years later and 700 employees in Boston and this is home. 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 other folks that you mentioned have, you know, either given up or scaled back.