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Speaker 1: There's probably people listening to this who are really driven

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Speaker 1: in their life and they think that the more time

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Speaker 1: they put into something, the better it's going to end

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Speaker 1: up being. And it actually may be the more time

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Speaker 1: they put into themselves, the better it's going to end

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Speaker 1: up being.

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Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, Emily, a body here coming at you with

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Speaker 2: episode ninety two of Hurdle, a wellness focused podcast where

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Speaker 2: I sit down with inspiring individuals to talk about everything

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Speaker 2: from their big wins to how they've gotten through some

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Speaker 2: of life's toughest moments. On the show, you can expect vulnerability, motivation,

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Speaker 2: and candid discussions with everyone from top athletes to aspiring

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Speaker 2: entrepreneurs and what it really takes to follow your passions.

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Speaker 2: My mission is simple to inspire you to be your

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Speaker 2: best self, move with intention, and have some fun along

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Speaker 2: the way. For today's show, I am sitting down with

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Speaker 2: Will Ahmed. He is the co founder and CEO of Whoop.

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Speaker 2: Now you all have definitely heard me talk about Whoop before.

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Speaker 2: It's a wrist worn heart rate monitor that tracks things

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Speaker 2: like strain and sleep and recovery, and in today's episode,

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Speaker 2: Will talks to me about where that idea came from.

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Speaker 2: When he was in college at Harvard. Before we into

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Speaker 2: Will's story, a quick shout out to my sponsor, Athletic Greens.

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Speaker 2: It's funny the longer I have been drinking the greens powder,

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Speaker 2: which has the antioxidant equivalent to twelve servings of fruits

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Speaker 2: and vegetables, the more people I feel like are also

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Speaker 2: drinking Athletic Greens. Just the other day, one of the

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Speaker 2: run coaches that I chat with all the time. You

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Speaker 2: guys have heard her on the podcast. Her name is

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Speaker 2: Jess Woods. She showed up to our morning workout carrying

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Speaker 2: a bottle of the green stuff, and I asked, how

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Speaker 2: does it make you feel? She said, up to drinking

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Speaker 2: consistently for the past month or so since the holidays,

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Speaker 2: her body just feels better. And I can't identify with

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Speaker 2: that more. For me, when I start my day with Athleticgreens,

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Speaker 2: I feel like my digestion is better, I feel as

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Speaker 2: though I have more energy. I inevitably drink less coffee.

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Speaker 2: It makes me feel like I'm more capable to handle

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Speaker 2: that never ending to do list. They've got an awesome

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Speaker 2: deal for you. It is twenty free travel packs, a

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Speaker 2: seventy nine dollars value, absolutely free with your first purchase.

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Speaker 2: Just head on over to athleticgreens dot com slash hurdle. Again,

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Speaker 2: that's Athleticgreens dot com slash hurdle to get yours today,

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Speaker 2: No code necessary. All right, now, let's talk about Will.

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Speaker 2: Back in college, he was a D one athlete on

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Speaker 2: the men's varsity swashed team, and in today's episode, he

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Speaker 2: talks to me about how he was amazed by how

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Speaker 2: little he actually knew about his body. He tells me

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Speaker 2: that he was one of the, if not the fittest

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Speaker 2: on his college teams, and eventually would get so deep

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Speaker 2: in training that he was commonly overtrained. He talks about

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Speaker 2: the symptoms that went along with that, feeling like he

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Speaker 2: had mono at least once a season that got so

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Speaker 2: bad not only would his performance suffer, but arguably his

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Speaker 2: health would too. In today's episode, Will explains the goal

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Speaker 2: of Whoop from the beginning being so much about teaching

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Speaker 2: people when to take a break, when to take a

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Speaker 2: step back, versus some of the other options on the

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Speaker 2: market which might encourage you to keep going when your

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Speaker 2: body's really asking for just a little bit of TLC.

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Speaker 2: We talked about the numerous challenges he faced with the

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Speaker 2: different iterations of the Whoop strap, as well as how

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Speaker 2: it felt for him to continually be told that his

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Speaker 2: big idea was going to fail. A quick note to

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Speaker 2: be fully transparent. Woop has sponsored Hurdle in past seasons,

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Speaker 2: but I think it goes without saying that Whoop is

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Speaker 2: a huge player in the health and wellness space, and

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Speaker 2: I'm really personally intrigued again by the company's emphasis of

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Speaker 2: taking a break, of listening to your body, of interpreting

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Speaker 2: data so that we can make smart decisions based on

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Speaker 2: more than just a feeling. As always, you have any

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Speaker 2: questions you're really digging some of the takeaways, please make

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Speaker 2: sure to hit me up on Instagram. It's at Emily

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Speaker 2: a body at Hurdle podcast. And of course if you

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Speaker 2: have a hurdle moment of your own to share, or

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Speaker 2: you just want to say hi, reach out to me

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Speaker 2: over email as well. It's Emily at Hurdle dot us.

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Speaker 2: And with that, let's get to hurdling. Today. I'm sitting

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Speaker 2: down with Will Ahmed. He's the co founder and CEO

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Speaker 2: of Whoop.

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Speaker 1: Hi, Hi, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 2: How are you good? You and I share this thing

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Speaker 2: that we both podcast. Now you're fifty two episodes in.

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Speaker 2: I am yeah, how is that for you?

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Speaker 1: You know, it's a fascinating experience. I like the format

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Speaker 1: in that it does feel like an opportunity to delve

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Speaker 1: deeper with someone who maybe you actually know pretty well

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Speaker 1: but haven't kind of gone through the exercise of just

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Speaker 1: asking them a lot of questions. Yeah, for me, it's

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Speaker 1: been amazing to get to meet so many fascinating executives, athletes,

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Speaker 1: high performing individuals.

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Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite so far? It's kind of

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Speaker 2: hard to ask a podcaster to pick their podcast favorite.

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Speaker 1: I don't have a favorite necessarily. I think the people

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Speaker 1: who talk in great detail about their careers or their

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Speaker 1: lifestyles tend to be the most interesting guests. You know,

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Speaker 1: the Whoop podcast is focused on high performance lifestyle and

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Speaker 1: how you can better understand your body. So for us,

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Speaker 1: those tend to be the best guests.

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Speaker 2: So talk to me a little bit about what a

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Speaker 2: Whoop is. You and I are both sitting here wearing them.

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Speaker 2: You have two on to tell the people at home,

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Speaker 2: So talk to me about a loop. Obviously, we know

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Speaker 2: it's a risk Warren Heart monitor, but it's a lot

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Speaker 2: bigger than.

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Speaker 1: That yeah, you know. Look, our mission at Whoop is

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Speaker 1: really to unlock human performance. So we believe every individual

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Speaker 1: has an inner potential that you can tap into if

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Speaker 1: you better understand their bodies and their behaviors. And we've

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Speaker 1: developed technology across hardware and software and analytics really designed

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Speaker 1: to understand you. And in particular, WOOP measures strain and

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Speaker 1: recovery and sleep. And you can think of strain as

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Speaker 1: the amount of stress that you're putting on your body,

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Speaker 1: the intensity of a workout, your daily activity. And you

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Speaker 1: can think of recovery as really how prepared your body

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Speaker 1: is for strain. So if your body is more recovered,

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Speaker 1: Loop will tell you to push yourself. And if your

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Speaker 1: body's less recovered, WEOP will recommend maybe that you don't

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Speaker 1: exercise at all, You don't do much of anything, you

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Speaker 1: try to rest. In many ways, WOOP is the first

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Speaker 1: fitness product to tell you not to.

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Speaker 2: Exercise right, which is hard for some.

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of high performing individuals, which which

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Speaker 1: Whoop seems to cater well to our go go go,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're pushing their themselves all the time. And

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Speaker 1: in many ways, Whoop is a tool that helps someone

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Speaker 1: like that dial it back and recognize, you know, the

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Speaker 1: biggest way to take a step forward might be more rest.

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Speaker 2: Right, all right, So then tell me. A lot of

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Speaker 2: the big athletes are using this, and it's in their

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Speaker 2: wellness toolkit. What is in your toolkit aside from your

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Speaker 2: whoop strap?

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Speaker 1: I find that sometimes the best you know holistic approach

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Speaker 1: is a fairly simple one. I don't have a lot

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Speaker 1: of crazy stuff going on. From a lifestyle standpoint. One

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Speaker 1: of the most important things that I do is I

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Speaker 1: try to go to bed and wake up at a

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Speaker 1: similar time. Obviously that's hard when you travel a lot,

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Speaker 1: but we've been able to find that sleep consistency, which

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Speaker 1: is this concept of going to bed and waking up

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Speaker 1: at a similar timeframe, actually can boost all kinds of

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Speaker 1: statistics about your body without necessarily getting more sleep. It

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Speaker 1: makes your sleep actually more efficient, it makes the quality

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Speaker 1: of your sleep higher. So that's one sort of simple hack.

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Speaker 1: I eat three meals every day, I don't snack at all.

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Speaker 1: I try not to drink caffeine after two PM. I

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Speaker 1: meditate every morning, which I think is a is a

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Speaker 1: really powerful practice for anyone who's looking to, you know,

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Speaker 1: balance their mind a little bit and balance their lifestyle

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Speaker 1: a little bit. You know, I probably don't drink alcohol

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Speaker 1: as much as I did when I was, you know, younger.

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Speaker 2: Do you use any apps or anything for meditation?

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Speaker 1: I don't. I'm a little biased in that. I think

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Speaker 1: meditation is a single player game and you want to

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Speaker 1: develop a practice on your own if you can. That said,

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Speaker 1: I mean, we know the guys at Headspace, well, we

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Speaker 1: know the guys at Calm well, like I think those

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Speaker 1: are both good apps for people who are trying to

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Speaker 1: get into meditation. For me personally, I just haven't used

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Speaker 1: I haven't found as much value in using them myself.

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Speaker 2: Okay, So it sounds like you're doing all of the

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Speaker 2: things to be a high performer yourself. Were you always

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Speaker 2: this interested in your all well being and level of fitness?

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Speaker 1: Well, I was always into sports and exercise. So growing up,

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Speaker 1: I played a.

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Speaker 2: Ton of different sports in New Hampshire.

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Speaker 1: Well, I went I went to Saint Paul's was a

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Speaker 1: boarding school in New Hampshire, and I played about four

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Speaker 1: or five different sports while I was there, And I

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Speaker 1: ended up getting recruited to Harvard to play squash. And

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Speaker 1: so I was a college athlete in Harvard and I

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Speaker 1: was someone who used to overtrain. So overtraining is kind

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Speaker 1: of the ultimate betrayal as an athlete because you're able

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Speaker 1: to push yourself further and further, but all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: you push yourself off a cliff. So, in a lot

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Speaker 1: of ways, starting Whoop was really the result of wanting

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Speaker 1: to better understand my own body as a college athlete.

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Speaker 1: And so I did a lot of physiology research while

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Speaker 1: I was in school. I read something like five hundred

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Speaker 1: medical papers while I was there. Yeah, and I got

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Speaker 1: fascinated in this concept of how could you better understand

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Speaker 1: the human body? You know, how could you train optimally?

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Speaker 1: How could you prevent overtraining, how could you prevent undertraining?

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Speaker 1: What does it mean to be optimal? How could you

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Speaker 1: measure recovery? How could you measure sleep? And so all

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Speaker 1: that research ultimately became became the business plan for Whoop.

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Speaker 1: And if I think about my lifestyle as a twenty

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Speaker 1: year old college student versus so today I'm thirty years old,

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Speaker 1: I think it was just much more one sided. You know,

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Speaker 1: I was just burning it on both ends as a

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Speaker 1: college athlete. You know, I would work out for three

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Speaker 1: or four hours a day. I would be studying late,

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Speaker 1: I would party, like, you know, just go, go go,

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Speaker 1: And so if I look at my life now, it's

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Speaker 1: just a lot more balanced.

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Speaker 2: Let's talk about getting recruited to play squash in college. So,

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Speaker 2: first of all, like not a sport. You hear a

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Speaker 2: lot of totally yeah, were you playing squash in high

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Speaker 2: school as well? Yeah, how did you even get interested

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Speaker 2: in that in the first place, because it's again not

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Speaker 2: a popular sport.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's an obscure sport in pockets of America for sure. However,

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Speaker 1: it's a fairly big international sport. And my dad Egyptian, okay,

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Speaker 1: and he was a professional squash player, and so I

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Speaker 1: learned how to play squash in part from him, and

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Speaker 1: then I got quite good at it while I was

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Speaker 1: at Saint Paul's, and so there was an opportunity to

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Speaker 1: play it in college.

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Speaker 2: You go to college and you're playing squash, and you're saying,

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Speaker 2: you're like kind of burning the candle at both ends, right,

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Speaker 2: It's like being a college athlete. You want to thrive

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Speaker 2: in your sport, but you're also trying to like get

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Speaker 2: something out of your college experience beyond being a college athlete.

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Speaker 2: So how did you find balance in between, like all

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Speaker 2: of that training you're saying was a lot pretty difficult,

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Speaker 2: and you know, having a sense of time for your

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Speaker 2: education and then also time for your social life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't think I found that balance

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Speaker 1: at all as a college student. Frankly, I think I

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Speaker 1: just was go, go go. I thought more was more,

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Speaker 1: you know, the more the more you did, the better

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Speaker 1: it would be. And look, I had a phenomenal I

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Speaker 1: had a phenomenal college experience. I have no regrets, but

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Speaker 1: I think as a college athlete, I was pretty misguided

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Speaker 1: because I didn't really understand how to eat my body.

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Speaker 1: I didn't understand the value of rest and recovery, and

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Speaker 1: so you know, I probably didn't ever meet my potential

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Speaker 1: as a as a college athlete as a result. But

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Speaker 1: the positive of it is is it all led to whoop.

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Speaker 1: So I've got no I've got no complaints.

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Speaker 2: So pre whoop, though, were there certain instances where you

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Speaker 2: just were like, Wow, I've really pushed it too far here? Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there were periods where I would

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Speaker 1: get fitter and fitter and fitter, and I would be,

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Speaker 1: you know, one of the fittest guys on the team,

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Speaker 1: if not the fittest, But then like two or three

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Speaker 1: days later, all of a sudden, I could barely practice

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Speaker 1: because my body was so tired. And that's the feeling

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Speaker 1: of overtraining for anyone who's truly overtrained, it's like, uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it feels like you have mono. You know, have

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Speaker 1: you're head mono.

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Speaker 2: No, thankfully, And I've also never had the flu, so

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Speaker 2: I feel like I could not on everything right now. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: but wait when you say I'm the fitted like, was

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Speaker 2: one of the fittest, if not the fittest guy team, Like,

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Speaker 2: what are the benchmarks for that?

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Speaker 1: Well? Squash is a very cardiovascular sport, and so it's

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Speaker 1: your ability to run in and out of corners for

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Speaker 1: a long period of time. And if you're able to

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Speaker 1: do that for an hour, hour and a half and

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Speaker 1: be able to sustain your heart rate at eighty to

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Speaker 1: ninety five percent of its max for a lot of

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Speaker 1: that period, you have a real advantage in college squash.

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Speaker 1: College squash also, the ball gets really hot, so it's

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Speaker 1: harder to end the point. For those of who have

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Speaker 1: no idea what squashes like, picture a racquetball court with

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Speaker 1: a softer ball with more running and that squash and

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Speaker 1: so yeah, at various points, I think I was able

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Speaker 1: to push myself to be one of the fitter guys

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Speaker 1: on the team, but I was walking a tightrope because

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Speaker 1: I would overdo it.

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Speaker 2: So you'd literally feel like you had mono.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would feel totally run down, like exhausted.

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Speaker 2: And what would the recovery time on that?

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Speaker 1: Typically it takes somewhere from somewhere between a week and

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Speaker 1: a month to fully balance back from overtraining.

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Speaker 2: So for you when you go through these periods of

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Speaker 2: over training, because I'm guessing it didn't just happen once, No, I.

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Speaker 1: Mean I did it almost every season.

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Speaker 2: Right, So first of all, when would that happen in

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Speaker 2: the season, because then would that prevent you from doing

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Speaker 2: what you wanted to do throughout the rest of the time.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'd still play in matches, but you'd

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Speaker 1: have sort of subpar results because you'd realize on the

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Speaker 1: day of the match you weren't peaking.

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Speaker 2: Right, And so what did the people around you think?

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Speaker 1: You know, maybe you need some more rest. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: you know, all of it seemed to me in the

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Speaker 1: moment to be very it was all based on feelings

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Speaker 1: and eyesight. M hm, you know, will you look tired?

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Speaker 1: Will how do you feel? Oh? I don't know. I

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Speaker 1: feel okay, you know, and then fast forward next week,

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Speaker 1: I'm like crushed, right, but I didn't see it coming.

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Speaker 1: And what's amazing about what we do at WHOOP is

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Speaker 1: that we can actually see it in data. And the

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Speaker 1: real learning from founding WHOOP is that your feelings are

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Speaker 1: largely overrated and there's physiological indicators that are like these

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Speaker 1: secrets that your body is trying to tell you. And

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Speaker 1: if you can measure those things, you can actually understand

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Speaker 1: what is the status of my body. And that's one

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Speaker 1: of the most interesting things we hear from WOP members

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Speaker 1: today is they'll say, Oh, I didn't realize my body

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Speaker 1: was so run down, and yet I had three or

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Speaker 1: four red recoveries in a row, and so as a result,

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Speaker 1: I didn't do that exercise, or I went to bed

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Speaker 1: much earlier, or I thought twice about the international travel

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Speaker 1: and how I'm going to approach that right. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: that's what that's the tool that we've built.

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Speaker 2: Every season, you go through this thing where you feel

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Speaker 2: like absolute junk, then you recover and then you're like

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Speaker 2: fine again. You're back to being yourself. But when do

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Speaker 2: you kind of realize that it's problematic and not just

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Speaker 2: like kind of coming with the territory.

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Speaker 1: Well, I think I recognized it as early as my

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Speaker 1: freshman or sophomore year, just that like I was someone

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Speaker 1: whose mind could betray him, right, which is sort of

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Speaker 1: this the whole point of if you're a driven person,

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Speaker 1: you can convince yourself that you can keep going in

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Speaker 1: a lot of contexts. And I was convincing myself that

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Speaker 1: and really all contexts of life. I was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can I can train for three hours today. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can stay up till two in the morning working. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can go to the party on Saturday night and

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Speaker 1: drink you know whatever, six drinks or you know something,

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Speaker 1: you just just go, go go. And so I think,

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Speaker 1: you know, if I think about my life now, it's

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Speaker 1: just much more thoughtful. You know, it's recognizing how all

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Speaker 1: these different things in my life are actually affecting my body.

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Speaker 2: This idea of my mind betraying me though, is like

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Speaker 2: so poignant, right, You're like I was trusting myself to

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Speaker 2: like I was trusting my gut. I was going with

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Speaker 2: what I thought that I should do. Yeah, but I

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Speaker 2: mean in college, you're definitely not at the point where

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Speaker 2: you're like, oh, let's be realistic about this.

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Speaker 1: Not always anyway, and look by the way that mindset

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Speaker 1: can betray you in a lot of different walks of life.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we're just talking about this as being a

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Speaker 1: college athlete, but it happened to me as a young

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Speaker 1: entrepreneur too. I founded Whoop as a twenty two year

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Speaker 1: old and started the company in a dorm room, right,

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Speaker 1: And you know, today we've got one hundred employees, We've

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Speaker 1: raised over one hundred million dollars. Like, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of responsibilities. And if I think about what I looked

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Speaker 1: like as a twenty two year old CEO versus today,

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Speaker 1: it's very different. But a lot of the same problems

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Speaker 1: that I faced as a young athlete I faced as

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Speaker 1: a young entrepreneur, where yeah, I believed I could stay

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Speaker 1: up really late and still be fine the next day

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Speaker 1: in an important meeting, or be fine managing people, you know,

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Speaker 1: under not enough sleep or under too much stress. And

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Speaker 1: you know, I think, I think there's probably people listening

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Speaker 1: to this who are really driven in their life, and

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Speaker 1: they think that the more time they put into something

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Speaker 1: the better it's going to end up being. And it

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Speaker 1: actually may be the more time they put into themselves,

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Speaker 1: the better it's going to end up being.

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Speaker 2: Right, you have these hurdle moments of sorts where you're

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Speaker 2: overcoming feeling like absolute crap and you get to a

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Speaker 2: point when you're graduating. Are you having a little bit

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Speaker 2: of that? You graduate and you're like, what am I

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Speaker 2: going to do with my life? Or did you? Were

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Speaker 2: you on a path until you had this idea for

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Speaker 2: what Whoop would become.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I was as conscious about creating

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Speaker 1: Whoop as it may seem in hindsight, like I just

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Speaker 1: became totally obsessed with this idea of how to understand

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Speaker 1: the body. And I also, throughout my life I was

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Speaker 1: into technology. You know. I had one of the first

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Speaker 1: palm pilots in my sixth grade class that could connect

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Speaker 1: to the Internet. I was always buying the early Apple

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Speaker 1: products and I've only felt that there was going to

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Speaker 1: be this evolution of computers from you know, from your

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Speaker 1: desk to your lap to your pocket to being on

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Speaker 1: your body, and that was something that really excited me.

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Speaker 1: And I worked for a number of summers while I

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Speaker 1: was a student in finance. So I worked at like

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Speaker 1: a hedge fund and an investment bank and a private

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Speaker 1: equity firm, and they are all awesome places. But the

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Speaker 1: question I kept asking myself is like, did I want

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Speaker 1: to be my boss's boss's boss right that I would? Would?

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Speaker 1: Would that want to be what I wanted to be

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Speaker 1: when I grew up? And I didn't feel that strongly

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Speaker 1: about it. And at the flip side, I kept finding

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Speaker 1: myself thinking about this idea for a business and thinking

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Speaker 1: about this idea for for monitoring health and that I

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Speaker 1: was super passionate about and it didn't feel like work

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Speaker 1: thinking about it. So you know, in many ways it

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Speaker 1: seemed like a natural progression. Now, over the course of

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Speaker 1: my whole senior year, it took me a while to

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Speaker 1: really find people to help me build the business. I

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Speaker 1: met John Captain Lupo, our chief technology officer, fortunately, about

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Speaker 1: a month before I graduated, and he really became a

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Speaker 1: key partner in the whole business.

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Speaker 2: First of all, did someone tell you to think about

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Speaker 2: it like that? Like I was thinking about my boss's

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Speaker 2: boss's boss, and I thought about if I wanted to

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Speaker 2: be them? Or is that just kind of a train

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Speaker 2: of thought? That you started to have because that's such

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Speaker 2: an interesting perspective career growth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. No, no one told me that. It just seemed

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Speaker 1: like the right way to think about it. Yeah, which

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Speaker 1: is like, okay, so let's pretend that you can crush

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Speaker 1: your particular industry and you can like be the person

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Speaker 1: running this thing. If that's you know, do you want

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Speaker 1: to be that? Yeah? And in a lot of ways,

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Speaker 1: I think internships are important for young people because they

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Speaker 1: teach you more about what you don't want to do

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Speaker 1: than what you do want to do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You know, I have a number of friends I'm sure

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Speaker 1: you do too, who went down these career paths age

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Speaker 1: twenty two and are sort of like waking up to

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Speaker 1: the fact that they've spent six, eight, ten years in

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Speaker 1: an industry that they actually don't really want to be in.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's tough to hear that because

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Speaker 1: you realize, like it would have been great if you

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Speaker 1: figured that out.

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Speaker 2: But it's also like, for so many people who are

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Speaker 2: wondering if they want to make a career pivot, this

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Speaker 2: idea of how do I start over without completely having

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Speaker 2: to start at square one with something like salary, And

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Speaker 2: that's a big deterrent. But when you think of overall happiness,

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Speaker 2: the last thing you want to do is stick with

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Speaker 2: this career just because you're going to have to take

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Speaker 2: a twenty thousand dollars pay cut, Because in the meantime,

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Speaker 2: you could be doing something that you love, getting back

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Speaker 2: to a place where you know you're making the kind

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Speaker 2: of money that you want to make.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, and plus you'll be better at it.

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Speaker 2: Okay, So you're a senior at Harvard and you have

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Speaker 2: this idea about like finding really interesting fitness data. But

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Speaker 2: the thing is is like at the time, there are

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Speaker 2: already like other wearables and companies kind of doing this.

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Speaker 2: So where was your head at with that?

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Speaker 1: Well, interestingly, there wasn't that much technology out there, So

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Speaker 1: we're talking like twenty eleven. I decided I was going

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Speaker 1: to do this. Well, Fipbit was about a forty million

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Speaker 1: dollar company, so it's pretty small relative you know, they

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Speaker 1: just sold for two million dollars, but they were pretty

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Speaker 1: small relative to what they became at that point. I

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Speaker 1: actually met the CEO of Fitbit at a Harvard recruiting event.

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Speaker 1: He was showing up to Harvard to do the recruiting event,

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Speaker 1: which shows you how early stage they were.

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00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:15,520
Speaker 2: And at the time they only had like the flex

436
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:17,080
Speaker 2: Like it was like you could just walk around me.

437
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:19,760
Speaker 1: They had one product, and it was completely useless from

438
00:22:19,760 --> 00:22:22,280
Speaker 1: my point of view, right, it was like a step monitor,

439
00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:25,600
Speaker 1: right step. Yeah, the steps wasn't going to tell me

440
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:28,959
Speaker 1: whether or not I was too driven or not driven enough. Like.

441
00:22:29,280 --> 00:22:31,240
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that there was like about

442
00:22:31,280 --> 00:22:33,760
Speaker 1: ten million chess straps being sold a year, so the

443
00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:37,639
Speaker 1: heart rate monitor, and so I just got very interested

444
00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:39,880
Speaker 1: in this idea. If you could build technology that could

445
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:42,000
Speaker 1: measure a lot more about the body, and you could

446
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,480
Speaker 1: put it in a seamless form factor. And to me

447
00:22:44,560 --> 00:22:47,280
Speaker 1: it was obvious that it was a technology problem initially,

448
00:22:47,400 --> 00:22:49,919
Speaker 1: like the technology did not exist, and we spent the

449
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:53,080
Speaker 1: next three years frankly, investing a lot of money and

450
00:22:53,119 --> 00:22:54,600
Speaker 1: trying to build that technology.

451
00:22:54,880 --> 00:22:57,480
Speaker 2: So how do you even like go about that. It's

452
00:22:57,520 --> 00:22:59,159
Speaker 2: like what came first a chicken or the eg? How

453
00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:01,719
Speaker 2: do you even concept I'm going to figure out how

454
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:02,800
Speaker 2: to make this technology?

455
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:06,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. First of all, you have

456
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:08,280
Speaker 1: to have great you have to have great partners and

457
00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: great people around you. And John, one of my co founders,

458
00:23:12,680 --> 00:23:15,639
Speaker 1: is a really brilliant technical mind, and we came up

459
00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:17,639
Speaker 1: with some strategies around how we thought we could do

460
00:23:17,680 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: some initial prototypes and health monitoring. And I think the

461
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: key for anyone who's actually trying to build a technology

462
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:27,919
Speaker 1: business is you try to figure out what's the first

463
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 1: milestone that can then get me to the next milestone.

464
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 1: So for us, we felt that if we could build

465
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,880
Speaker 1: a prototype that could really accurately measure something called heart

466
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 1: rate variability from the risk heart variability for the risk

467
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:43,760
Speaker 1: is this lends into your autonomic nervous system, which is

468
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: one of the most important things WOOP does in order

469
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,800
Speaker 1: to understand recovery. You know, if every business is built

470
00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:52,919
Speaker 1: on a contrarian point of view that other people disagree with.

471
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: The Whoop point of view was that actually rest in

472
00:23:55,600 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 1: recovery was more important to an athlete or to a

473
00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: high performing individual than stress and exercise. Right, if you

474
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:04,879
Speaker 1: talk to a coach in twenty twelve, all they wanted

475
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:08,359
Speaker 1: to better understand was the speed of a throw, the

476
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:12,119
Speaker 1: you know, the mechanics of this, the GPS of that.

477
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 1: And I believed, actually that was pretty much irrelevant beyond

478
00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:21,119
Speaker 1: what they already knew about these things. And what they

479
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: didn't know at all was the other twenty hours of

480
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 1: the day. How is someone's body responding to the other

481
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:27,440
Speaker 1: twenty hours of the day. So that was the contrarian

482
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: point of view, and as a result, we wanted to

483
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:31,600
Speaker 1: be able to prove that we'd be able to measure that.

484
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:35,680
Speaker 1: And so our very initial prototypes, which I can show

485
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:39,160
Speaker 1: you actually over there before you leave. Our initial prototypes

486
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: were really focused on can we do that? And so

487
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: we developed these enormous, ugly, clunky computer looking systems. I mean,

488
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 1: picture an enormous box of technology the size of a

489
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:54,239
Speaker 1: shoe box that's got a wire coming out of it,

490
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:57,919
Speaker 1: that's then got a you know, that's then got a

491
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 1: wrap that goes around your arm, has sensors in it,

492
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 1: and okay, lo and behold that whole contraption could measure

493
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:06,919
Speaker 1: heart rate variability from the wrisk and we were the

494
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 1: first company in the world build to do it.

495
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:10,760
Speaker 2: So you wouldn't wear that, but you never wear that.

496
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:14,360
Speaker 1: But we proved that we could build technology that could

497
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: measure this thing that no one else could measure on

498
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 1: the rest, and based on that we would be able

499
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 1: to raise capital that said, all right, we're gonna take

500
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: this big, ugly contraption and we're gonna make it cool. Yeah, right,

501
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:27,119
Speaker 1: and we're gonna make it small, we're gonna make it comfortab,

502
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:29,640
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it manufacturable. And then once you get

503
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 1: to that phase and you're able to build the thing,

504
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:33,439
Speaker 1: then you tell a story about why you're going to

505
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 1: sell it, and so on and so on and so on.

506
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:39,119
Speaker 1: So most of I think entrepreneurship is having this big

507
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:42,439
Speaker 1: picture vision of where you're gonna end up, but having

508
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: these very tiny steps to get.

509
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 2: There, either in sport or some other scenario. Growing up,

510
00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:51,639
Speaker 2: was there a time that you set a big goal

511
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:53,959
Speaker 2: and learn this lesson that it was kind of smarter

512
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 2: to set smaller ones to get there along the way,

513
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 2: or focus on the smaller wins to get to the

514
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:00,919
Speaker 2: bigger picture. Because I think for a lot of people

515
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:04,240
Speaker 2: they do that right, Like, they'll set this huge goal

516
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 2: and then it feels intimidating and impossible and then you're like,

517
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:08,200
Speaker 2: I'm never going to be able to do this thing.

518
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 2: And you almost have to go through that experience to

519
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 2: understand the value of setting smart, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic,

520
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 2: and time bound goals to get to the bigger picture.

521
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:23,439
Speaker 1: I think that I was probably always pretty good at

522
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 1: visualizing outcomes that I wanted throughout my life, whether or

523
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: not I fully realized that I was doing that, I've

524
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: now studied enough about visualization to understand that I was.

525
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 1: Where Essentially, you're picturing very clearly an outcome, and you're

526
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: doing that over and over in your mind. And sometimes

527
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:46,959
Speaker 1: people do this very intentionally, and you can read all

528
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: about that, and sometimes people do it naturally and it

529
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 1: helps guide their behavior. And I think as a young person,

530
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: I was doing it somewhat naturally. And what that forces

531
00:26:57,320 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 1: you to do is that it heightens your away fareness

532
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 1: for other things in your life, so that you take

533
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: you make decisions, and you take steps that ultimately push

534
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 1: you towards that that end goal or that outcome. So

535
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: all that's to say is I don't think it was

536
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,240
Speaker 1: quite as conscious as the way you described it, but

537
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:17,680
Speaker 1: it is the product of being pretty focused about where

538
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 1: you want to be and then once you get there,

539
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 1: move the goalpost. You know, people ask me today, did

540
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:26,440
Speaker 1: you picture that whoop would be worn by all these

541
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:29,879
Speaker 1: you know, crazy athletes, or that you would raise all

542
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: this money or you'd have all these employees or whatever,

543
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 1: and I guess what I tell them is actually, yeah,

544
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: like that's how we got here because we believed we

545
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: were going to get here. You know, you have to

546
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 1: you have to picture that. And then, by the way,

547
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:44,080
Speaker 1: I'm picturing the next thing in my mind right now too,

548
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: which is how we're going to grow further.

549
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:48,199
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So you get to a place where you

550
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 2: have this like shoebox size amount of stuff that can

551
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,959
Speaker 2: measure heart rate variability, and what happens to the shoebox

552
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 2: like from that step.

553
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 1: Well, right now it's sitting in the Woop Museum. That's

554
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: what happened to it. No, look, I mean you try

555
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:04,159
Speaker 1: to figure out how do you take a lot of

556
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: components that aren't efficiently put together, and how do you

557
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:09,480
Speaker 1: do it efficiently?

558
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 2: And what does your life look like at this point,

559
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 2: like where you're living in Boston.

560
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:17,679
Speaker 1: So I lived with John, co founder, and we lived

561
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:23,919
Speaker 1: in a small apartment together in Coolidge Corner, and we

562
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: commuted every day to the Harvard Innovation Lab, which gave

563
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: us free office space at the time, and you know,

564
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 1: we spent seven days a week working on Whoop and

565
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 1: you know, kind of being geeks.

566
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,240
Speaker 2: Together and you had already graduated at this point.

567
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:43,040
Speaker 1: I graduated and John ultimately dropped out of school.

568
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:46,520
Speaker 2: Wow, but he was also at Harvard. Yeah, okay, so

569
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 2: you and one college dropout are working on.

570
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 1: MOP and then we met a realion and it turned

571
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: out a realian. It was a mechanical engineer who was

572
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 1: great at prototyping, and he joined us, and so it's

573
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: really the three of us for a while. And then,

574
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: you know, probably about twelve months later from that first summer,

575
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 1: we had you know, a few full time employees and

576
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: we'd raise some money and and you know, we were

577
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 1: kind of marching to the beat of an early startups drum.

578
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 2: Would you say that at the beginning stages of Whoop

579
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 2: you were kind of going all in on it, just

580
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:22,600
Speaker 2: like you were kind of going all in on college squash.

581
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 2: Was there any recovery time from Whoop? Or was life

582
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 2: all Whoop all the time?

583
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 1: Well? It was an example again of where I wasn't

584
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,840
Speaker 1: really making that much time for you know, myself to

585
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: be sort of healthy necessarily.

586
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 2: What did health look like at that time?

587
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: Health looked like, you know, I still exercised a lot,

588
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: but I was you know, spending pretty much every free

589
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: minute working and and you know, I still think I

590
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 1: was probably blowing off steam by by going out and

591
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a party lifestyle. And and you know,

592
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 1: you you realize over time, especially if you're trying to

593
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 1: create something that involves a team, that you have to

594
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,520
Speaker 1: become less of an individual contributor, you have to become

595
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 1: more of a you know, a manager or a leader.

596
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: And in that process, how you how you appear, how

597
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: you seem, how you act all become actually even more

598
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: important than your individual contributions. And so that's that's something

599
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 1: that it takes a minute to learn. And you know,

600
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, getting to a moment of

601
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: crisis too can help.

602
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, so are there and I'm sure there are in

603
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 2: any early stage startup, Like can you reflect on any

604
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,640
Speaker 2: of the like major moments of crisis and did they

605
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 2: at any point make you think like what the hell

606
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 2: are we doing here?

607
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:44,520
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean absolutely well a lot of those moments.

608
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 1: I mean, the most memorable was probably around I think

609
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: it was in twenty fourteen and whoop was maybe fifteen

610
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 1: or twenty people. At that point, we had raised you know,

611
00:30:58,680 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: a few million dollars and we were running out of money,

612
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:03,760
Speaker 1: and I felt like I wasn't doing a good job

613
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,959
Speaker 1: keeping up with everything, and my lifestyle was totally strung

614
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 1: out and I was stressed, and uh, and I just I,

615
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 1: you know, I hit a wall. We're pretty hard, and

616
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:17,440
Speaker 1: I realized I need to completely reset the way that

617
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:20,960
Speaker 1: I treated my body and the way that I thought

618
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: about being an entrepreneur. And that's actually when I got

619
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: I got into meditation.

620
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 2: What does hitting the wall look like? Though?

621
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:30,959
Speaker 1: You know, I was going through these periods where it

622
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: almost felt like I don't know if I was actually

623
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: having panic attacks, but it just felt like I was

624
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: out of control. It didn't feel like I was in

625
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: control of the moment. And you know, just notice that

626
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of anxious, or you're nervous, or you're

627
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 1: not you're not in the moment, you're not present, You're

628
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 1: you're strung out, right, And for me, that was just

629
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:56,440
Speaker 1: it wasn't a place that I wanted to be in life.

630
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 1: And so but I recognize that you have to rise

631
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 1: to that challenge, right if you want to build a company,

632
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: if you want to employ people, if you want to

633
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: drive towards something that people haven't done before, guess what,

634
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 1: you have to rise to the occasion, right. I didn't

635
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 1: feel bad for myself. I just recognized that I wasn't

636
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 1: rising to the occasion, right. So that's where I kind

637
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: of looked myself in the mirror and I was like,

638
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:18,160
Speaker 1: we got to figure this out.

639
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:21,440
Speaker 2: And I can only imagine how overwhelming it must have been,

640
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 2: because you're saying, like, granted, whoop is much larger now,

641
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 2: but we have twenty people that are like counting on you,

642
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 2: and you're paying them, and they're going to like their

643
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 2: health benefits from you.

644
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally, totally, And you're like twenty five. Yeah,

645
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 1: I was twenty four. I remember when all this was

646
00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:40,560
Speaker 1: happening and I felt like I was sort of out

647
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 1: of whack. But the good news is that it got

648
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: to a point where I felt so out of whack

649
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: that I knew I had to really reset.

650
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:52,840
Speaker 2: And where are you living at this time? Have you

651
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 2: split up? Are you living on your own yet?

652
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: I had moved to the South end of Boston with

653
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,160
Speaker 1: a friend from college, and I think he was in

654
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 1: Harvard Square because you wanted to be closer to some

655
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: of his classmates were graduating at that time. John was

656
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: twenty one or twenty two. Oh my god, we're young,

657
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:12,920
Speaker 1: you know, And we were always the youngest people in

658
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: the room.

659
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 2: Right, I was gonna say, because when you're hiring.

660
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: We weren't hiring people who were eighteen, Right, We're hiring

661
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 1: people who were forty five. I recognize that I needed

662
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: to find a way to be able to take on

663
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of stress and manage it. And so

664
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: that's where I got really interested in transcendental meditation. And

665
00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: I took this four day course, which at the time

666
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:36,959
Speaker 1: seemed like a fortune. It was like nine hundred dollars

667
00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 1: or something for four hours of my life, and I

668
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: went into it thinking it was a total ripoff, but

669
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: honestly it was. It was really one of the best

670
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: things I've ever done in my life because it taught

671
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: me this method that I now do literally every day

672
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: that I find super centering.

673
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,480
Speaker 2: And did someone talk to you about this type of meditation,

674
00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:58,160
Speaker 2: which is why you found this course? Or do you

675
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 2: literally go on Google and you were like meditation, I

676
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 2: googled it? Yeah, who doesn't google it?

677
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: Yeah? I google it?

678
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 2: And what's wrong with my right arm? Like you google everything?

679
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:11,360
Speaker 1: Yeah? I googled it. And look, anyone listening to this,

680
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: I highly recommend meditation of any kind. What's interesting about

681
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: transcendental meditation is that you're repeating a mantra over and

682
00:34:17,680 --> 00:34:21,000
Speaker 1: over again, and what that does is it effectively allows

683
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 1: you to scroll through your thoughts because you're repeating this mantra,

684
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:27,399
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you recognize a thought

685
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 1: has now interrupted you saying your mantra, and you have

686
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 1: this moment almost like you're in the third person, where

687
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: you can recognize that you're thinking about a thought versus

688
00:34:37,600 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: saying your mantra. And so you get to decide do

689
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:42,400
Speaker 1: I want to keep thinking about this thought or do

690
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: I want to return to the mantra. And sometimes the

691
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:49,319
Speaker 1: thought will be a really creative idea. Sometimes it'll be

692
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,800
Speaker 1: something that you realize that you're wrestling with. Sometimes it

693
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: will be the stress of the moment or the day,

694
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:59,279
Speaker 1: or the week, what have you. And that process of

695
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: getting the psycho through these thoughts then has this separate benefit,

696
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:09,359
Speaker 1: which is that in your day to day life, you're

697
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:11,719
Speaker 1: able to zoom out of a moment that you're in

698
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,839
Speaker 1: and actually look at yourself in the third person. So

699
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:18,040
Speaker 1: I will find myself, you know, in any given moment

700
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:21,240
Speaker 1: saying oh, Will's about to get angry, or oh Will's

701
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,520
Speaker 1: about to be upset, or oh you shouldn't say that,

702
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: And it's almost like I have a third person that's

703
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: talking to me now that's a step ahead of me,

704
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,920
Speaker 1: rather than the opposite, which is probably life before this

705
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: where I feel I felt like I was I was

706
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: just reacting to things, And as an entrepreneur, you want

707
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 1: to try to avoid being in constant reaction mode. You

708
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: want to feel like you're anticipating things, you're a step ahead.

709
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 2: Of things, right, So you start to meditate based off

710
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 2: of your Google search. And obviously, like many things, it's

711
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:01,319
Speaker 2: not like all of a sudden, meditate one time and

712
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 2: you're like, wow, my life is instantly better. It's a process,

713
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:06,320
Speaker 2: like it takes some time to get used to it

714
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 2: and to feel the effects of that and get to

715
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 2: a point where you do feel more removed from the

716
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 2: situation to be able to better handle it. How do

717
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 2: you see this start to reflect in how you're feeling

718
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:18,800
Speaker 2: and like then in turn with your business.

719
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 1: Well, it was interesting, actually, I mean I still remember

720
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 1: some of the first times I did the practice, and

721
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 1: by the way it takes about twenty two minutes, and

722
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do it twice a day. Now, probably

723
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: today most of the time I do it once a day,

724
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:37,279
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning. But the interesting thing I

725
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:41,960
Speaker 1: remember about twenty two minutes is how fucking hard. It

726
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: seemed like it felt really long, sitting still and just

727
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: thinking for twenty two minutes. And in some ways, I

728
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: guess it being hard actually tapped into my ego a

729
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:54,799
Speaker 1: little because it was like, oh, can you do this?

730
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 1: Are you capable of doing this? Will? And so that

731
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:01,759
Speaker 1: made me actually more interested to see if I could

732
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 1: push myself through learning this practice. And so some people

733
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,800
Speaker 1: will say, oh, you know, I'm trying to get into meditation,

734
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: I'm just going to try to do it for two

735
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 1: minutes a day or five minutes a day, and I

736
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: actually think you may lose the benefits of starting that way.

737
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:16,800
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the benefit is to force

738
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: yourself to do this thing that's hard, and to do

739
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:24,320
Speaker 1: it for twenty minutes. And for me, I actually almost

740
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:26,879
Speaker 1: immediately found benefits in it. So it was a little

741
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 1: bit of a wonder drug in that regard, because it

742
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:33,759
Speaker 1: immediately made me realize how crazy what was going on

743
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,399
Speaker 1: in my mind was. It made me realize how much

744
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 1: calmer I felt immediately afterwards, and then again I started

745
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: to feel it trickle in to my life. You know,

746
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 1: that third person concept. I started to feel that almost immediately.

747
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:52,359
Speaker 1: And they say that's something like after I think it's

748
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: like four days, four weeks, four months, and four years.

749
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:58,759
Speaker 1: Your brain is changing as you meditate, which is a

750
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,600
Speaker 1: pretty interesting time which are pretty interesting time frames, and

751
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: now I'm north of four years, and I have to

752
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:07,360
Speaker 1: say it's it's really a superpower.

753
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:10,840
Speaker 2: Aside from the meditation, what does your morning routine usually

754
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 2: look like?

755
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 1: Like?

756
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 2: What time are you up? What time are you getting going?

757
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: You know, depending on the day, I probably wake up

758
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:20,879
Speaker 1: between six thirty and seven thirty, and then I get

759
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:23,120
Speaker 1: out of bed, I go take a shower. I take

760
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 1: a really cold shower, always end cold, and in Boston

761
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 1: a cold shower is quite cold. And I've found that's

762
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: also a great life back. It just wakes you the

763
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: hell up, and it's hard to have. It's hard to

764
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: be in a bad mood after a super cold shower.

765
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that is it really though?

766
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: Yes? Absolutely, I mean, look, anything that can naturally make

767
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: you happy, you should try to do.

768
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 2: Okay, right, what else is on the happy list? Then?

769
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:50,880
Speaker 1: Well, we've talked a lot about meditation that's done to

770
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:54,440
Speaker 1: make you happy. Exercise makes you happy. Different forms of

771
00:38:54,560 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: hot cold contrast therapy make you happy. So sauna, steam room,

772
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 1: sex makes you happy. I mean, you know, there's a

773
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 1: whole laundry list of things that just naturally make your

774
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 1: body happy, right, and in general, you want to do

775
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:09,319
Speaker 1: those things right?

776
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:12,720
Speaker 2: Okay, So we cold shower, be out, we're smiling.

777
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 1: Cold shower, smiling, get dressed, I go meditate on my

778
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 1: couch for twenty two minutes, go back, kiss my wife

779
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: who's probably still sleeping, and I march off to the office.

780
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 2: March off, just like that. When does the exercise.

781
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 1: Happen either during lunch or at night?

782
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 2: Gotcha? What does that look like for you? These days?

783
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: I still play squash pretty competitively. I'm also in two

784
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,400
Speaker 1: different leagues, so I'm in a soccer league and a

785
00:39:37,480 --> 00:39:40,719
Speaker 1: basketball league, neither of which I'm particularly good at. But

786
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:43,319
Speaker 1: I actually feel like I'm getting better at both of

787
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 1: those sports. So I encourage anyone listening to this to do,

788
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 1: you know, do sports and activities that you can keep

789
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 1: getting better at. Even if you're pretty bad at them

790
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 1: in the moment, which I seem to be. And then

791
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 1: I do you know, I work out with a trainer

792
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:00,160
Speaker 1: once or twice a week, or do weightlifting and and

793
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:01,120
Speaker 1: simple things like that.

794
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:05,320
Speaker 2: You using the meditation start to see pretty immediate benefits

795
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:07,479
Speaker 2: in like how you're feeling and maybe how you're able

796
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 2: to interact and like better handle situations at the office.

797
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 2: Where is whoop at that time? Like am I looking

798
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:16,080
Speaker 2: at a risks worn heart remoitor? Or am I looking

799
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 2: at a box of stuff?

800
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 1: We were just about to launch to professional teams. At

801
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 1: that point, we had been working with like individual professional athletes.

802
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:29,600
Speaker 1: Two of our first hundred users were people like Lebron

803
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:30,840
Speaker 1: James and Michael Phelps.

804
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 2: Was it just the promise of what you were building

805
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 2: and what it could potentially do and the insight that

806
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 2: it could give them that made them interested enough to

807
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 2: want to get on board or was it the conversation

808
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 2: deeper than that?

809
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: Well, look, the secret to getting to anyone's super high

810
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: profile is to get to someone super influential in their

811
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: life who other people don't know. Presumably you know who

812
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:58,360
Speaker 1: Lebron James's coaches, you know who his wife is you

813
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:01,719
Speaker 1: know who his agent is, But it turned out in

814
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen you didn't know who his personal trainer was.

815
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 1: And it also turned out that his personal trainer Mike Vincias,

816
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 1: who's a friend of mine, he spent like most of

817
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:14,239
Speaker 1: his day with Lebron. So the key to getting to

818
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 1: these high profile athletes was to see if their personal

819
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:21,279
Speaker 1: trainers liked our product. And so you know, we were

820
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,600
Speaker 1: able to get introduced to personal trainers of high performing

821
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:29,319
Speaker 1: athletes and then look, the technology has to perform, right,

822
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 1: Your product has to perform. If they don't like it,

823
00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 1: it's not going to get to the superstar. What was

824
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: validating for us, even at that really early stage was

825
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 1: that the trainer said, hey, this is really interesting, and

826
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 1: the players wore it and they said, hey, this is

827
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 1: really interesting. Look with most things that are early stage,

828
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 1: there's these huge swings of emotion. Right if you're a

829
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:55,760
Speaker 1: five person company and you just signed this new great person,

830
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, our company just grew twenty percent. We've

831
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 1: got this awesome person, and this investors excited, and then

832
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: the next day it's like, oh no, someone quick, we

833
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 1: just lost twenty percent of our company. This investor is

834
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 1: not going to invest they pass, the customer isn't going

835
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 1: to buy it. You can't be riding that sin sort

836
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: of wave of like ups and downs. You have to

837
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:17,840
Speaker 1: learn how to kind of roll with it. And so

838
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:20,080
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things that I try to do

839
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: today is just be as even keel as possible. And look,

840
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: that's in part easier because if one person gets let

841
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 1: go tomorrow, we've lost one percent of our workforce, not

842
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:35,920
Speaker 1: twenty percent. But it's also easier because you train yourself

843
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:39,719
Speaker 1: over time to learn how to manage these things, right.

844
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 2: It's interesting. It's also like I've kind of taken that

845
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 2: approach myself to dating. It's like you can't tell your

846
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 2: friends about a guy too soon because you don't want

847
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 2: to get really invested. I think that's to just keep

848
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:53,640
Speaker 2: it even keel. So these athletes are wearing this drap.

849
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:55,319
Speaker 2: There's a little bit of anxiety about it, but we're

850
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 2: learning how to manage that out. And then it's seemingly

851
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 2: a successful situation.

852
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:03,880
Speaker 1: Yes, we had super cool people wearing the product. We

853
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:07,359
Speaker 1: had super cool people validating that the technology we had

854
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 1: developed was influential. At the same time, we were still

855
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: figure out with what's the business model? You know, how

856
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:15,359
Speaker 1: do we make money? How do we sell a lot

857
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: of these and things like that, And so there's so

858
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 1: many layers to success to actually have a company that

859
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 1: endures or a startup that grows out of its startup phase.

860
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 1: And I would say the phase from two thousand and

861
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty seventeen eighteen was really figuring out what

862
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:35,720
Speaker 1: is that business model that we can scale around?

863
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 2: Right?

864
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 1: So, yes, in a lot of ways what we had

865
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 1: built was a success. There was just a lot more

866
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 1: work to do.

867
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:45,160
Speaker 2: When do you move from like from even from one

868
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 2: to two.

869
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: One to two is probably two thousand. Well look, I

870
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,839
Speaker 1: mean there was a bunch of stuff before one. You know,

871
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: one was kind of that was probably the first product

872
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: that thousands of people were wearing, right, So you know

873
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 1: guy like Lebron back in the.

874
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 2: Day, I wonder if negative Yeah, yeah, it was.

875
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:07,080
Speaker 1: Like an eighteen hour battery life.

876
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:09,160
Speaker 2: And is this like one of those situations when you're

877
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 2: like product goes to market and like there's a bunch

878
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 2: of you sitting in a room and you're like watching

879
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:14,320
Speaker 2: orders come in on a screen.

880
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:17,239
Speaker 1: It's more like it's like everyone watching the server to

881
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 1: make sure the thing doesn't collapse. You know, it's like

882
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: our operations team sending battery packs and bands to make

883
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:27,799
Speaker 1: sure that that the unit can be charged. I think

884
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 1: a lot of technology development and product releases you have.

885
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,360
Speaker 1: It's really painful, but you have to release something that

886
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:40,319
Speaker 1: you're a little bit embarrassed by. There were so many

887
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:42,240
Speaker 1: things in the back of my mind that I hated

888
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:45,279
Speaker 1: about Generation one, like what well, look, it had a

889
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:48,800
Speaker 1: really short battery life. It was bigger than I wanted

890
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: it to be. There was lags and how fast they

891
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:54,240
Speaker 1: would send data from the whoop strap to the phone.

892
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: There was certain things that the phone wasn't able to

893
00:44:58,239 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 1: do in terms of analyzing the data. I knew that

894
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,400
Speaker 1: that wasn't a mass market product. At the same time,

895
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:08,440
Speaker 1: it was good enough to get these initial people to

896
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: wear it all the time.

897
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 2: So you have this like kind of start before your

898
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 2: ready mentality.

899
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 1: Look, it's a fine balance, but you typically as a startup,

900
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:23,280
Speaker 1: have to release things before you feel like they're perfect.

901
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,799
Speaker 1: And that's in part because you, the entrepreneur, have an

902
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: elevated sense of perfect right. You have a vision that

903
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:35,040
Speaker 1: you're striving towards. You view your current product as inadequate

904
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:37,719
Speaker 1: of And by the way, I don't know if you

905
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:39,320
Speaker 1: ever get over that concept.

906
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 2: I don't think you do. I mean, even with the pod,

907
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:46,239
Speaker 2: I'm so obsessive about the quality of the content that

908
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 2: I'm putting out. Sure, and I'll send audio clips to

909
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 2: someone like my dad of my podcast versus other podcasts.

910
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:55,720
Speaker 2: I'm like, this podcast gets millions and millions of listens

911
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 2: and it sounds like this. He's like, you're doing pretty okay,

912
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:01,919
Speaker 2: like you're doing and stop freaking out about like one

913
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 2: blip or one thing. But I think about it all

914
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:05,080
Speaker 2: the time.

915
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:07,279
Speaker 1: And hey, look, it's important you want to hold you

916
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,240
Speaker 1: want to hold your technology, your product, your service, whatever

917
00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: it is, to a high standard. Yeah, you can't let

918
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 1: that prevent you from taking, you know, shots on goal.

919
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 2: I know. Okay, so we've accomplished version one and it's

920
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 2: a little bigger than you'd hoped it to be. But

921
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:25,839
Speaker 2: you're probably learning a shit ton right now.

922
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing I learned at this point is

923
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 1: how hard of a company I decided to start. You

924
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,640
Speaker 1: think it's going to be easier than it is, and

925
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: it's definitely harder than you think it will be. The

926
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:40,279
Speaker 1: question is whether it's easier or harder than what other

927
00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:43,760
Speaker 1: people tell you. Almost everyone I told I was starting

928
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: Whoop told me I was going to fail. So it's

929
00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:48,359
Speaker 1: definitely turned out to be easier than that it was.

930
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: You know, it's been much harder than you ever really

931
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: can imagine, m H. And one of the things that

932
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:56,840
Speaker 1: makes whoops so complicated is that we're building software and

933
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: analytics and hardware all at the same time. And by

934
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:03,719
Speaker 1: the way, the hardware doesn't sit at your desk. It

935
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:06,440
Speaker 1: actually is worn on your body. And it's not just

936
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 1: worn on your body for an hour. It needs to

937
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:10,879
Speaker 1: be worn on your body twenty four to seven. And

938
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:14,359
Speaker 1: there's so many there's so many challenges that come with that,

939
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 1: Like I know so much more than I ever expected

940
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:23,800
Speaker 1: to know about wrist sizes and hairiness and skin color

941
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: and the importance of having something be comfortable and you know,

942
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 1: not produce certain odors and yeah, look, there were issues

943
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: with Gen one. Generation two was where we got a

944
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: lot of feedback from from the market. Again, there were

945
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 1: still issues with it. Generation three I think is a

946
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:47,160
Speaker 1: very good product. I think that there's there's a bunch

947
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: of really powerful software tools within the app that people

948
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:54,120
Speaker 1: can use to be understand their bodies and we're going

949
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:54,840
Speaker 1: to keep marching.

950
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:57,560
Speaker 2: You have a lot of really great advice and like

951
00:47:57,640 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 2: kind of snippets to offer. But when you look back

952
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:02,919
Speaker 2: on especially maybe like the past four years of when

953
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 2: this is just grown, and you think about the advice

954
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 2: that you've been given, what would you say has been

955
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:11,799
Speaker 2: some of the best advice that someone's offered you?

956
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:15,800
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that someone said to me along

957
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 1: the way. You don't have to listen to what people say,

958
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 1: but you should hear what everyone says. And if you're

959
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: starting something and a lot of people are telling you

960
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:27,880
Speaker 1: to fail or telling you you're going to fail, you

961
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 1: build up this resiliency to survive, which actually takes a

962
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:36,800
Speaker 1: form of stubbornness. I really didn't listen to virtually anyone

963
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 1: for the first few years of Whoop around you know

964
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:45,759
Speaker 1: a lot of things, because just so often the feedback

965
00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 1: was you're going to fail or this is why this

966
00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 1: isn't going to work. And then over time, as it

967
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 1: became more obvious that we were onto something, more people

968
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 1: started agreeing with me, or more people sort of reframed

969
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: the way they were providing feed back, and it actually

970
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:06,000
Speaker 1: took some time for me to recognize that you want

971
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:11,799
Speaker 1: to surround yourself with people and really understand all their feedback. Now,

972
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it tends to be

973
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 1: your responsibility if you're the CEO, to make decisions, but

974
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:20,080
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you understand all the different angles.

975
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: And so I think that this concept of making sure

976
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: you hear what everyone's saying, you don't necessarily have to

977
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:28,920
Speaker 1: follow it. Make sure you hear what people are saying

978
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: is pretty helpful advice.

979
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 2: And obviously, I mean, you certainly know what it's like

980
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 2: to fail and how valuable failure can be. When you

981
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 2: look at your time building this company, can you reflect

982
00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 2: on failure specifically that maybe was your biggest lesson or

983
00:49:47,360 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 2: your biggest win, so to speak.

984
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: Well, I'll push back on that slightly. I think failure

985
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 1: is largely overrated and the way it's been romanticized in

986
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 1: sort of technology or in life. But what because the

987
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: goal is ultimately to find ways to succeed, right, So

988
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,760
Speaker 1: let's not forget that. But what what the whole message

989
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:11,840
Speaker 1: of this, you know, sort of raw raw failure I

990
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 1: think is getting at is you want to avoid a

991
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:18,479
Speaker 1: fear of failure, A fear of failure is paralyzing, right,

992
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:22,880
Speaker 1: And that the reason that people can look back on

993
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 1: failures so positively in many context is they realize they've

994
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:28,839
Speaker 1: failed and they're still there. And I think that in

995
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:31,359
Speaker 1: turn gives you more confidence to do the next thing.

996
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: I think a fear of failure is paralyzing, and you

997
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: want to you want to try to overcome that at

998
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:37,879
Speaker 1: all costs. And by the way, I think it's being

999
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: taught really poorly to young people. I remember being quite

1000
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: afraid to start whoop and you know, really trying to

1001
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 1: block out what a lot of people were saying to

1002
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,800
Speaker 1: me when I founded the company, and I, in hindsight,

1003
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 1: I look back and I was like, wow, I actually

1004
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 1: had a lot of you know, I had a lot

1005
00:50:58,480 --> 00:51:01,399
Speaker 1: of drive to still do it. And I can only

1006
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:05,359
Speaker 1: imagine how discouraging it would be for most people who

1007
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:07,880
Speaker 1: have something pretty interesting that they want to try to start,

1008
00:51:08,280 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 1: to get all that sort of negative feedback and to

1009
00:51:11,160 --> 00:51:12,800
Speaker 1: sort of feel like, oh, you're going to fail, and

1010
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 1: God forbid you fail. So I think the way that

1011
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: school's package risk needs to be rethought. It's something I

1012
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:23,760
Speaker 1: think about a lot anyway. But anyway, back to your question,

1013
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 1: I think fear of failures are paralyzing. I think you

1014
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: can learn a lot from mistakes. I think you can

1015
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: learn a ton from rejection, right. You know, you definitely

1016
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: don't want to be afraid of rejection, whether it's it's

1017
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:38,839
Speaker 1: going out and trying to find great people and them

1018
00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:40,400
Speaker 1: telling you they don't want to work with you or

1019
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,800
Speaker 1: they don't want to invest in you. You got to

1020
00:51:42,880 --> 00:51:46,200
Speaker 1: keep taking shots on goal. Right, Failure is great, But

1021
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 1: I think it's more like, don't have a fear of rejection,

1022
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:51,560
Speaker 1: don't have a fear of mistakes, learn from those things,

1023
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 1: and then you know, really try to avoid failure, right,

1024
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: like try.

1025
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 2: To win any landmark rejections.

1026
00:51:56,920 --> 00:52:01,440
Speaker 1: Then Ah, I mean, look, I've you know, again the headlines,

1027
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 1: We've raised all this money, but like there's hundreds of

1028
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:07,279
Speaker 1: investors out there have passed on whoop, right, Like those

1029
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 1: tend to be the most memorable. I vividly remember certain

1030
00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:13,720
Speaker 1: people who told me it was so much confidence, how

1031
00:52:14,120 --> 00:52:16,440
Speaker 1: Nike was going to kill us, or Apple was going

1032
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:18,319
Speaker 1: to kill us, or you know, fill in the blank

1033
00:52:18,440 --> 00:52:21,399
Speaker 1: was going to kill us. But here we are, Yeah,

1034
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:24,960
Speaker 1: we're still going you know, a lot of it's also survive, Yeah,

1035
00:52:25,160 --> 00:52:26,360
Speaker 1: survive in advance.

1036
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:29,520
Speaker 2: What I gather from our conversation, and it is kind

1037
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:33,160
Speaker 2: of like two large hurdle moments, both in college when

1038
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:37,400
Speaker 2: you're kind of hitting these what feel like overtraining spells

1039
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 2: of mono like symptoms, and also when you're in the

1040
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:44,719
Speaker 2: early phases of Whoop and you're like having what feel

1041
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:48,000
Speaker 2: like anxiety attacks and you lean into meditation. So at

1042
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 2: either of those pinnacle points in your life, those hurdle moments,

1043
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 2: if you have an opportunity to really look back at

1044
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 2: the Will at that time and offer him a piece

1045
00:52:57,080 --> 00:52:59,799
Speaker 2: of advice right now, what do you think you would

1046
00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:00,919
Speaker 2: tell yourself? Then?

1047
00:53:01,239 --> 00:53:04,320
Speaker 1: I mean, keep going right, like, learn from these moments.

1048
00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:07,240
Speaker 1: It's a lot of the theme that we've been talking about.

1049
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 1: But I feel pretty grateful for both of those things.

1050
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:14,440
Speaker 1: You know, God forbid, I was a super successful college athlete,

1051
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 1: maybe I wouldn't have started Whoop, and God that would

1052
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:21,800
Speaker 1: have been such a bummer. I really love Whoop. Or yeah,

1053
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:25,400
Speaker 1: like I think I only I think I only learned

1054
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:28,319
Speaker 1: to meditate because I hit sort of a moment of

1055
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 1: rock bottom where I had to force myself out of it.

1056
00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:33,760
Speaker 1: Back to your theme on failure for a second, those

1057
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: are the ways I think to look at a moment

1058
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:40,520
Speaker 1: of down right and sort of look at okay, well,

1059
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:44,000
Speaker 1: because you got to this point in time, you were

1060
00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 1: able to build something really positive out of it. I

1061
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:49,680
Speaker 1: also think it's butterfly effect. You can't go back and

1062
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:51,920
Speaker 1: change one thing and still end up where you are today.

1063
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:53,840
Speaker 1: I don't have many regrets in that regard.

1064
00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:56,279
Speaker 2: I love it. Thanks so much for taking the time

1065
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 2: to sit down with me.

1066
00:53:57,440 --> 00:53:58,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, It's been fun.

1067
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:01,480
Speaker 2: Please take moment and we have a quick review of

1068
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:03,719
Speaker 2: the podcast by clicking the link with the description to

1069
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:06,640
Speaker 2: this episode. We all face multiple hurdles in life. I

1070
00:54:06,719 --> 00:54:08,440
Speaker 2: want to hear about yours. Reach out to me at

1071
00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:11,120
Speaker 2: Emily at Hurdle dot us. Connect with the podcast on

1072
00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:14,319
Speaker 2: Instagram and Twitter at Hurdle podcast. Will How do they

1073
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 2: find you? How do they keep up with you? Where

1074
00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 2: do they find Whoop? Give me the details?

1075
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:22,759
Speaker 1: Find us online woop dot com. You can find us

1076
00:54:22,800 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 1: on social media at Woop w h O O P.

1077
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:28,200
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media at will am

1078
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 1: at w I L L A H M E.

1079
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:35,719
Speaker 2: D I am at Emily Abody Another hurdle conquered. Catch

1080
00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:36,520
Speaker 2: you guys next time.