Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let's switch gears though and talk about completely and talk
Speaker 2: about wearable health tech company Whoop. It's announced it raised
Speaker 2: five hundred and seventy five million dollars in a series
Speaker 2: G funding that values of the company at more than
Speaker 2: ten billion in total. And here to discuss the latest
Speaker 2: round is Will Ahmed, the CEO of Whoop. Will great
Speaker 2: to have you on a I'm a longtime Whoop wearer.
Speaker 2: I'm on a three hundred and ninety day streak right now,
Speaker 2: and it's nice to see your valuation up to more
Speaker 2: than ten billion. That's around the same I noticed as Aura,
Speaker 2: and so I'm wondering what you think about what must
Speaker 2: be your biggest competitor. I mean, is there room in
Speaker 2: this space for two powerful companies or is this you know,
Speaker 2: winner take all scenario.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me on, Matt, and thanks for
Speaker 1: being a longtime Whoop member. I appreciate that. You know,
Speaker 1: if I actually just look back over the last decade,
Speaker 1: because I found it been twenty twelve, so I've been
Speaker 1: building this company for fourteen years. There's been an enormous
Speaker 1: number of players in the space over the years. In
Speaker 1: the early days, you had you know, big wearable or
Speaker 1: big sports apparel brands excuse me, so you had the Nike,
Speaker 1: under Armour, Adidas, Puma Crowd. You then had entries from
Speaker 1: the tech market, so you had Microsoft and Google and
Speaker 1: Intel and Amazon Meta and so there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of players, I would say broadly in the wearable space.
Speaker 1: Today there's actually maybe the fewest number of players that
Speaker 1: I've seen in the last five years, and yet the
Speaker 1: wearables market has grown enormously. You know, when I first
Speaker 1: started the company, I think less than five million wearables
Speaker 1: were sold a year. Now that figure is three hundred
Speaker 1: to four hundred million devices a year and continues to grow.
Speaker 1: So we're very excited about where the company's positioned, and
Speaker 1: we think we're still in the early days despite the
Speaker 1: maturity of the business.
Speaker 2: So, you know, I'm obviously a customer, and so many
Speaker 2: people here around me are customers? Do they stay? Do
Speaker 2: we stay?
Speaker 1: Are you?
Speaker 2: Are you retaining customers? Those that have twelve month subscriptions,
Speaker 2: are they going to twenty four? Are they renewing?
Speaker 1: Well, we recently actually launched three membership tiers. So it
Speaker 1: used to be sign up for two hundred and forty
Speaker 1: dollars a year. Now there's a lower plan and a
Speaker 1: higher plan three hundred and sixty dollars a year for
Speaker 1: Whoop Life, and we've actually seen an overwhelming number of
Speaker 1: people migrate from our middle tier to our highest tier,
Speaker 1: and that demonstrates I think that our members are willing
Speaker 1: to pay for enhanced features, premium capabilities, an additional medical
Speaker 1: sensing portfolio that we've rolled out, so now Woop has
Speaker 1: ECG monitoring with aphib detection. We've come out with blood
Speaker 1: pressure insights, which were the first wearable to do. We
Speaker 1: recently launched Advanced Labs, which is blood testing. So overwhelming
Speaker 1: we see our members wanting to invest more in their
Speaker 1: health with Whoop, They're buying additional services, they're moving up
Speaker 1: in their membership tier. And then in addition to that,
Speaker 1: we have some of the best user engagement in all
Speaker 1: of health. Our members are opening the Whoop back up
Speaker 1: eight times a day, which is pretty extraordinary user engagement.
Speaker 1: We have an eighty three percent down mau ratio, which
Speaker 1: I believe is second only to WhatsApp in terms of
Speaker 1: how often people are using and engaging with the product.
Speaker 1: So it really speaks to I think the value that
Speaker 1: we've been able to create and the fact that our
Speaker 1: members are in fact improving their health.
Speaker 2: You know, I think about all this stuff that you
Speaker 2: can do, and I see the labs myself as well,
Speaker 2: and the blood pressure monitoring you can not predict, but
Speaker 2: you know you can see whether you're in line for
Speaker 2: a stroker a heart attack. Is this a fitness company
Speaker 2: or is it like a clinical diagnostics tool.
Speaker 1: Well, we want to build the most powerful personal health
Speaker 1: platform in the world, and we see that as an
Speaker 1: evolution from fitness and sports, which is our origins, to
Speaker 1: now working very broadly across health and medical capabilities. You know,
Speaker 1: two of our investors in this latest financing were Mayo
Speaker 1: Clinic and Abbot. Mayo Clinic of course being one of
Speaker 1: the best health institutions in the entire world, and we're
Speaker 1: going to be announcing a lot of research with the
Speaker 1: Mayo Clinic, an Abbot of course being one of the
Speaker 1: best medical device makers in the world, and we're going
Speaker 1: to be announcing more with them as well. And so
Speaker 1: I think this overall financing really shows the past and
Speaker 1: the history of WHOOP with the athletes coming in Christiano Ronaldo,
Speaker 1: Ory McElroy now Lebron James as well as the future
Speaker 1: of Whoop. With many of these health strategics, you.
Speaker 2: Need to get some squash players, You need to sponsor
Speaker 2: some squash players here.
Speaker 1: Well, we love squash. I've played squash my entire life.
Speaker 1: Ali Farrag, former World number one, is a good friend
Speaker 1: and a WOOP member, So we'll do more in squash.
Speaker 2: You are cash flow positive, I mean, you're making money,
Speaker 2: so why raise this additional half a billion dollars plus now?
Speaker 1: Well, we want to accelerate a lot of the work
Speaker 1: that we're doing. We think the opportunity to own health
Speaker 1: monitoring and integrate deeply into the healthcare system is now
Speaker 1: just completely up for grabs and there's only a few
Speaker 1: players in the market, and we really want to attack
Speaker 1: the opportunity. So we're going to be leaning in on
Speaker 1: research and development. We've announced that we're hiring six hundred
Speaker 1: roles this year, really across every single function, so we're
Speaker 1: actually growing our headcount eighty percent, which seems to be
Speaker 1: a counter narrative move right now. And then we're also
Speaker 1: growing internationally, so we've brought in some really great strategic
Speaker 1: investors from around the world. Sovereign wealth funds like Qia
Speaker 1: and two point zero and Mubadala and others, and we're
Speaker 1: going to be investing heavily in growth around the world.
Speaker 2: How can you put AI to work? And I know
Speaker 2: you already have an AI assistant on your platform obviously
Speaker 2: I'm on there many times a day, But how much
Speaker 2: do you think it can be improved?
Speaker 1: Well, I think ultimately Whoop will either make you healthier
Speaker 1: or it will save your life, and those are really
Speaker 1: the two areas of development for WHOOP, and as we
Speaker 1: think about coaching and alerting, those are the two areas
Speaker 1: that we're investing in. And so we do believe that AI,
Speaker 1: sitting on top of all of this data is going
Speaker 1: to be able to deliver value in those categories. I
Speaker 1: think it's inevitable that a huge percentage of humanity will
Speaker 1: be continuously wearing a health monitor and it's going to
Speaker 1: make you healthier or it's going to save your life
Speaker 1: one day.
Speaker 2: Will you go public before that? I mean, I think
Speaker 2: I read Series G right, We're getting pretty far along
Speaker 2: in the alphabet. When is the IPO plan for.
Speaker 1: Well, we still see it on the horizon of eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty four months. You know, Fortunately, whoops. Operating cash
Speaker 1: flow positive. We've just added five hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: million to our balance sheet, so we've got a very
Speaker 1: strong balance sheet and it allows us to be I think,
Speaker 1: really thoughtful and control our destiny and root to IPO.
Speaker 2: All right, Will, great having you on sett Thanks so
Speaker 2: much for joining us. Will. I'm d there, the CEO
Speaker 2: of we