WHOOP Founder Will Ahmed: How I Built A $3.6 BILLION Company

Episode 411: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) speak with Will Ahmed (@willahmed), founder and CEO of WHOOP, about building a $3.6 billion company based on a personal health and fitness wearable. ----- Links: * WHOOP * Whisper * deeptomcruise * @lilmiquela * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (00:40) - Will's background (01:54) - How he got Lebron and Michael Phelps as two of his first customers (05:35) - Big company CEO (11:05) - Biggest levers for good health (17:30) - Who are the super freaks? (35:00) - Which startups are going to take off? (48:20) - Shaan's sleep tweet (50:30) - What's the future of the company ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  How big is the business now? You guys have raised what like $400 million?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've raised 400 million. We last raised capital at $3.6 billion valuation. I think there's still, you know, a lot of potential for health monitoring. I think if you fast forward 10 years, I think a large percentage of the world's population will be wearing a continuous health monitor and it'll hook into everything that you do as it relates to the healthcare system and doctors. And so, yeah, I'm very bullish on the opportunity in this space.

• 0:42Sam Parr?

  Do you know what you're getting into or what?

• 0:45Speaker 01

  I've read the briefing and I'm a big fan of the podcast, so ready for you.

• 0:51Sam Parr?

  All right. So like the pod, it's called My First Million. It's kind of known for, Sean and I have both started a handful of companies and sold a few of them. And people like the pod because we brainstorm and we dive deep on different companies and we do like business breakdowns, things like that. So, but we'll spend a little bit of time kind of getting to know you because you've done a lot of amazing things. Well, I know one huge amazing thing that you've done, but I bet you there's a lot more amazing things that you've done. But we'll hear a little bit more about your background and then I'll, then we'll want to spend time like kind of diving deep on different opportunities in your industry. But first, like, do you want to like say like, kind of like your 30 second spiel of like who you are and the story of how you got there?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So, Will Ahmed, I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island. As a kid, I was kind of, I was into the sports and exercise. I ended up going to Harvard and playing squash in school and I was a competitive college athlete. And I felt like I didn't really know what I was doing to my body while I was training as an athlete. So that got me very interested in physiology, did a ton of physiology research as a student, read something like 500 medical papers and. I started to conceive of this idea of how you could continuously measure the human body. And the idea was initially around athletic performance, but broadly, I felt like

• 2:14Speaker 01

  there would be ways to continuously measure the human body for all sorts of of health implications. And, you know, what became as a sort of a curiosity ultimately turned into a very long research paper that I wrote, and then ultimately founding a company. This was would have been when I was 21, 22 years old, as a senior at Harvard. And, and then for the last 10 plus years or so, I've been, I've been building this, this business. The business whoop builds wearable technology, really to improve people's health. We started with the best athletes in the world and over time have grown to work with a large consumer population. And, and it's

• 2:57Speaker 01

  a really exciting time to be building that that technology.

• 3:01Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so yeah, you're the CEO of and founder of Whoop. If people have seen it, it's a Whoop band, you've, you have to have seen it on people's wrists. But you said something like, we started with high end athletes. I think I read something like this, that, is this right? That LeBron and Michael Phelps were two of the first 100 customers or users of Whoop? Is that, is that real? And how did, how did that happen?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  That is real. And this would have been around 2014, 2015. So, you know, we spent about two to three years really on the initial V1 of Whoop. And, you know, I wanted to start with the best athletes in the world. And really for two reasons. The first was that we were bringing sleep and recovery technology to market for the first time. And I felt like professional athletes who, you know, have to perform on a daily basis should really understand how they're recovering. That was one of the insights to starting the business. And, and then second of all, if we could get the world's best athletes to wear Whoop and organically like

• 4:04Speaker 01

  it, then we could build a whole brand around performance that ultimately could could scale to, to consumers. And, and I grew up very inspired by brands like Nike and, and the Jordan brand and, and just how. Like a swish on something could make make the whole product feel completely different, independent from anything else about the product, just because of the storytelling behind it or the brand behind it. So I was interested in how health monitoring could have a brand to it. And so that was really the thesis for targeting professional athletes. And and so in the case of getting to LeBron and Phelps, the I think the key insight was finding people in their lives who had a big influence on them, who a bunch of people

• 4:49Speaker 01

  didn't already know. You know, if you go to their agent or their manager or their wife, like, they get inundated with this stuff. So you have to find someone in their in their life who who other people don't know. And it also turned out back then that the personal trainer was a somewhat underrated or unknown person in a professional athlete's life. And that also happened to be the right person to go to for technology like Whoop. So in the case of LeBron, I got to know Mike Mancius. In the case of Phelps, we got to know Keenan Robinson, both of which were personal trainers to those athletes and got them on Whoop. And then they got their athletes on Whoop. And yeah, the rest is history.

• 5:30Sam Parr?

  How big is the business now? You guys have raised, what, like $400 million?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've raised 400 million. We we last raised capital at $3.6 billion valuation. I think there's still, you know, a lot of potential for health monitoring. I think if you fast forward 10 years, I think a large percentage of the world's population will be wearing a continuous health monitor and it'll hook into everything that you do as it relates to the healthcare system and doctors. And so, yeah, I'm very bullish on on the opportunity in the space.

• 6:04Sam Parr?

  Do you like being the CEO of a of a big company? Or do you wish, do you like, still wish that you're in the early days of like getting in the nitty gritty? Because I imagine you're like, kind of just making decisions now and managing people as opposed to maybe getting your hands dirty on the product?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Well, I've still tried to stay close to the product because I think it's something I've had a relevant perspective on even as the company has scaled. And I've been able to see around corners in a few areas for the Whoop product. I think that

• 6:40Speaker 01

  The role of being CEO, as you guys know, changes a lot with stage and scale, right? Like 10 person versus 100 person versus 500 person. Like at each of these inflections, your role is definitely changing.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  I think because Whoop as a technology gets increasingly interesting with scale. It's made my role increasingly interesting as well. So what do I mean by that? You know, the overall data set that you have on a larger population makes the data much more predictive and much more powerful. The coaching as a result can get much more comprehensive. I think for other founders I've met who have been building a business for five years or even 10 years, they get to a point where they're kind of like, okay, this can run itself or I'm going to bring in someone new or I've kind of reached the relative peak of the mountain. And I don't feel that way. I feel like there's still a bunch more levels to go.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  I feel that the insights that the technologies are able to get, the number of people that it can potentially use by, all of that feels like it's amplifying, not shrinking. And so for those reasons, yeah, I'm very excited about about being CEO. It's also, look, it's a daily challenge growing into it. I feel like at every stage of the business, I've had to learn how to, how to be a CEO. And it's not like this is the first, just the first company I started. It's my first full-time job. So, you know, I'm figuring a lot of this out as I go.

• 8:15Shaan Puri?

  Sam always asks that question and I'm just waiting for the one person who's like, I hate being CEO. I hate my job. I hate all these people that are in this office. This is terrible.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  There's certain things that change a lot, right? Like you, you're, the percent of time in which you think of yourself as an individual contributor versus a manager has to shift very dramatically. I think probably around the size of 50 people, it has to shift like that. Like Whoop's about 500 people, but. That's probably one of the most painful things that if a founder doesn't fully appreciate or recognize, they can screw the business up a lot. Like you have to recognize that you need to be shifting almost entirely towards manager and not being an individual contributor.

• 9:03Sam Parr?

  Well, you know what it is is we, we, we, we talked to a lot of interesting people here and the CEO of like a 500 person plus company usually looks like shit. Not always, but usually like they look tired and there's rings under their eyes and they're usually a little chubby.

• 9:23Shaan Puri?

  As he takes a huge swig of coffee.

• 9:25Sam Parr?

  Well, no, they look like crap, but you're a, you're like the CEO of a fitness brand. You, you were a highly competitive athlete and so you look great. And so it's like you're, you're, you're kind of like skewing the, the, the average here, but like, I mean, you look pretty fit. Is, are you like, how are you balancing like being healthy and putting your, but also putting your company first? Because I like, when I was really in the think of it, I was like, dude, I don't have time to work out. Like, screw it. I'm just gonna eat this crap. But

• 9:56Shaan Puri?

  Well, you don't, you don't know this, but one of your competitors was my neighbor and we used to work out together in my garage every day. And then, and then he got promoted to CEO. He was like, he was like a different exec got promoted to CEO and then stopped having time to work out. Like he just kept coming by while I was working out.

• 10:15Sam Parr?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  And he was like, I gotta get back in here. And we're like, dude, you're the boss. You know, you could just like rearrange your schedule, right? He's like, I got crazy. It's crazy right now. Oh, it's crazy right now. And for like nine months straight. Oh, it was crazy right now. And he just stopped working out. I was like, bro, you run a health company. Like you gotta, if you don't sleep or work out or make time for this stuff, like, you know, what's going on here? And I just thought that was so funny. Like the, the fact that he was like, you know, I know we have to make this successful in order to do that. I'm gonna make these health sacrifices. As I go.

• 10:48Sam Parr?

  Well, super nice guy. I mean, dude, Will's got like a chiseled jaw. You got a nice head of hair. You're wearing a, it looks like a, like a vest. You look all, you look all spiffy and you look nice and shit. What, what are you, what are you doing to exercise right now? And how are you balancing that with work?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  I think it look, I think it's part of the the job for me that that I'm going to be in in good shape and healthy. And I spend a lot of time around people that are super into their health and fitness, whether it's professional athletes, or scientists, or even thinking about product features that are designed to improve your health. So as a business, like just thinking about the the product and technology that we build every day, that kind of orients me at least to be to be healthy. And not to mention, I'm using a product that is all about health improvement. So, you know, for a variety of reasons, it feels like it'd be super off brand if I was if I was really out of shape or.

• 11:46Shaan Puri?

  What's your like, sleep score when you sleep? Are your you know, you give us your give us your stats? And also, what are some things that, you know, a lot of this audience who listens to this, I would say, probably, I would guess, the majority don't regularly wear a continuous health monitor. But also, the majority care about performing well, peak performance, and as as an entrepreneur, typically, who's listening to this. So what are some things that they that you you've learned that, you know, they maybe should be doing, or, you know, some of the biggest levers that you've seen when it comes to, you know, kind of health and performance?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Well, I want to be clear that that I do believe building a successful company requires overcoming some level of stress that would break most people. So I do think you have to really push above and beyond what is comfortable.

• 12:41Sam Parr?

  I think the technical term is man up, Will.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, man up. But like, within that, I think there's a lot, I think there's a lot of techniques that you can develop for yourself that allow you to run at at a breakneck pace for a long, long time. You know, people always talk about this analogy of, okay, it's not a it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. But if you actually look at like, world-class marathoners, they're running like, four-minute mile, four thirty mile.

• 13:14Sam Parr?

  It's kind of a sprint.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, and how do you run a mile that fast? So I think for the entrepreneur or the, you know, the, the business leader listening to this, you want to figure out a way that you can be sprinting a marathon for a long time. And, and one of the ways I view that is taking care of myself and, and being in good shape.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I think we can start with, uh, uh, sleep, which, uh, is, is it, I think, a topic that's not talked about in the right framework. Most people, when you talk to, to them about their sleep, they're like, ow, I don't have enough time. I'm working hard, blah, blah.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  The thing to understand about sleep is it's all about the percentage of time that you spend in bed, getting high quality sleep.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  So if, if you ask your, your audience or you ask a friend who's never worn a health monitor, and you say, how much sleep did you get last night? They'll be like, oh, well, I went to bed at 11, I woke up at six, I got seven hours of sleep. Pretty good. Okay, the reality is you spent seven hours in bed. So of those seven hours, you are in a period of awake, a period of light sleep, a period of REM and a period of slow wave sleep. Awake and light are pretty much irrelevant. You're not getting any physiological benefit from being in, uh, uh, awake or light stage sleep. REM and slow wave, that's where all the magic happens. So REM sleep is, and your mind is repairing, so like real cognitive repair.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  It's when you have deep dreams. So if you're someone who can't remember dreams or you don't seem to have dreams, you're definitely not getting enough REM sleep. Any high performing exec entrepreneur, you need REM sleep. Um, slow wave sleep is when your body produces 95% of its human growth hormone. So just think about that for a second. 95% of your human growth hormone gets produced during this stage of sleep. You're not getting stronger in the gym, right? Or working out, you're breaking muscles down. You get stronger during slow wave sleep. So the more you get of that, the better. Okay? And let's take the person who spent seven hours in bed. That person could have gotten a total of 30 minutes of REM and slow wave sleep,

• 15:33Speaker 01

  or they could have gotten a total of five and a half hours of REM and slow wave sleep.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Like that's a like a massive, massive difference. That's a huge spectrum. The person with 30 minutes, I guarantee you has all kinds of problems in their lives. The person with five and a half hours, I guarantee you is very happy, very high functioning.

• 15:52Shaan Puri?

  And what's like, um, what's like really strong? If an eight hour block was, you know, I'm in bed for eight hours. What would be like a good level of REM and slow wave sleep?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  If you can get over 50% of the time you're spending in bed to be, uh, REM and slow wave sleep, like you're, you're doing pretty well. Uh, and so I, I'm in that camp and, and I'm also still optimizing my life more to be a CEO or an entrepreneur than a human. Right? If I was just fully focused on being a great human, I would probably spend eight to nine hours in bed, right? And I wouldn't look at my phone before bed and things like this, right? Um, but because I'm still optimizing for being an entrepreneur, I, uh, you know, I spend more like seven hours in bed or, you know, seven and a half, maybe if I, if I get a little extra sleep,

• 16:43Speaker 01

  but I've managed to make that time, you know, like the three to four hours, sometimes even four and a half hours of REM and slow wave sleep. So I'm getting the REM and slow wave sleep that like a, a person who might be spending eight or nine hours in bed is getting because I've figured some stuff out that makes me sleep better. So that, that's sort of a one whole category right there, which is sleep. And anyone listening to this should try to figure that out for themselves because it's, it, it'll just dramatically change the quality of, of your life. I'll give you another hack. I wear these blue light blocking glasses before bed and they've got a red, like kind of a red tint to them.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  And, uh, if you think about laptops, uh, iPhones, whatever, all of them are emitting this light that is telling your eyes and your brain to stay awake. And, uh, if you're like me and you're using your phone or reading an email, you know, closely before bed, uh, because, you know, you're, you're doing work or you're staying on top of things, uh, it's going to affect the way you sleep. But if you wear these glasses, it's like a get agile free card and you can look at all that stuff right up until the moment you go to bed and it won't affect your sleep. So, uh, so that's like one example of, of how you can hack both sides of it.

• 18:04Sam Parr?

  Have you, you said you've been around all these interesting athletes and you also have access now to like millions of pieces of data. Who are some of the biggest freaks in nature that you've been around?

• 18:14Shaan Puri?

  Is there like Judy in Iowa that's getting like nine and a half hours of slow wave sleep and she's your hero? You got like a picture of her on your wall?

• 18:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, or like, like all these athletes that you've been around, like, is there anyone who you just like, you've seen them in real life?

• 18:25Shaan Puri?

  It's like, Dikembe Mutombo, incredible.

• 18:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, you're like.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  When we first started looking, we first started working with LeBron James, this would have been 2015, 2016. His sleep data, I could probably point to the one that was LeBron's, which is kind of amazing. Like, and it makes a lot of sense that, that he was so good at, and has been so good at recovering in his career because he's taking care of that third of his life and, and sleeping great. I think it's maybe the most REM and slow wave sleep of anyone I, I've talked to, named Alex Honnold. Do you guys know that name?

• 19:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  So Alex Honnold is from Free Solo.

• 19:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the climber.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  The climber, right? So this is a guy who, who, you know, climbs mountains without a rope, essentially, and, and does these insane feats that are extremely dangerous. So the interesting thing about REM sleep is researchers were able to find the more REM sleep you get, the less heightened your amygdala response. So your amygdala response is, is fight or flight, you know, it's what signals to your body to, to, to be nervous or to, to get animated. So it makes a lot of sense that the guy who's capable of climbing, you know, rock climbing these environments that no one's done before without a rope.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Has this insane ability to sleep because that's probably in part what makes him so calm as he's doing these activities.

• 20:07Sam Parr?

  Dude, I just, I just Googled Alex's name and then REM sleep. I think we just gave you the promo of the century, man. Like this, this is the marketing, this is like, it should be, it comes up, the first thing that comes up is like a TED Talk. Now, your company talking about how you sleep more, you get more REM sleep than you're able to like, take a little bit more rest and be calm. I mean, that's like a really, that's like a really interesting play here.

• 20:33Shaan Puri?

  One second, on those athletes, do you think it's a sort of like intentional thing? Like you think that they, you know, like is LeBron or Alex, are they doing something that's making their sleep that much better? Or do you think because they happen to be great sleepers, that that is what allowed them to become such great athletes or such great performers?

• 20:51Speaker 01

  I mean, there's certainly, there's certainly genetic things that make people better or worse at sleeping. But there's also so many things that you, the individual can do to enhance your sleep. Sleeping at a very consistent time, so going to bed and waking up at a very similar time will just, will just unusually elevate the quality of your sleep. Often sleeping in a very cold room, a very dark room, a very quiet room, a room of high air quality. Athletes who are serious about this stuff will, you know, measure all of that and dial it in. I still think athletes aren't sophisticated enough about sleep and recovery, given how

• 21:34Speaker 01

  important it is to their overall performance. But those are a variety of things you can do. We talked about blue light, there's certain supplements that work better or worse for people, magnesium, melatonin. Interestingly, harder, harder, harder sleep drugs like the Ambians of the world, they, they knock you out, so your sleep latency is short, but the quality of the sleep is never that high. So again, back to that percentage of time that you're in REM and slow wave, it is rarely, you know, maybe if you're someone who normally be at 30%, you're going to be at 20%.

• 22:09Sam Parr?

  Dude, I've uh, I was a 400 meter runner, division one 400 meter runner in college. So I used to be like fairly competitive and I knew a bunch of basketball players. Yeah, and I knew a bunch of basketball players who ended up going to the NBA because I, I was friends with them in college. And uh, dude, it's shocking how bad, myself included, how bad most competitive athletes are when it comes to like diet and recovery. Like, I didn't know anything. I just, like, I would eat like ranch and pizza every day. And uh, a couple of my friends who went and went, went on to play in the NBA, like, we're just eating McDonald's like on a regular basis. It's pretty amazing how like, some people are still freaks, even though they don't do any of that nonsense, you know? It's pretty wild.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  And we've worked with a lot of athletes like who, yeah, they used to play video games from 11pm to 2am. You know, you got a game the next day in front of a million people. You know, and it doesn't occur to them that that actually is going to affect their performance. And then you look at the data and it's like, okay, you're, you've got a red recovery, even though you didn't even drink alcohol because you stayed up late staring at a screen. Whereas if you, you know, had gone to bed at the same time that you started playing video games, here's the difference in what your, your performance is.

• 23:26Sam Parr?

  Sean, you gonna make fun of me or something?

• 23:28Shaan Puri?

  No, I don't know. I was gonna ask, actually, uh, uh, this is a, a personal question. Naps, what's, what's the word on naps? Because I am a prolific napper. In fact, one of my life goals is to be able to take a guilt-free nap every single day. And uh, I know athletes are pretty big on naps as well. But I don't know if you could get to those deeper stages in a quick, you know, in a one or one and a half hour nap. Uh, what's the word on naps?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Very Winston Churchill if you'd have a daily nap. That'd, yeah, that'd be pretty good.

• 24:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  I feel like he's the coolest, he's the coolest person I can think of who, who really pioneered the daily nap as a, as a hardcore.

• 24:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's a hardcore nap. I'll, I'll, I like that. I think that sounds better because my, my nap marketing is pretty, pretty soft right now. I need to, I need to up it. I need to have a Churchill nap. In fact, I'm going to brand it as, I'm going to brand it as a Churchill nap.

• 24:25Sam Parr?

  Dude, I, I do it every day as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. About two o'clock for, for about 30 or 40 minutes every single day.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  And you get in bed or you just lie on a couch kind of thing?

• 24:35Sam Parr?

  No, I only go, Sean, do you go to bed? I only go to bed for nighttime sleeping and then I, I refuse to lay in the bed.

• 24:41Shaan Puri?

  I go to a different bedroom. I have a nap bedroom and I have a master bedroom.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Really?

• 24:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Interesting. And you, you wear a sleep mask or anything? You just close your eyes?

• 24:50Shaan Puri?

  I, I wear a sleep mask, but I get knocked out. Like I wake up two hours later and I'm like, I'm a whole different human being. I feel like.

• 24:57Sam Parr?

  And you, wait, and you could sleep at night after two hours? I can't do two hours.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Two hours is a real nap.

• 25:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Churchill.

• 25:04Sam Parr?

  Is that really what you do? You do two hours?

• 25:07Shaan Puri?

  Not every day, but that's my goal. My goal is to get that to be an everyday thing. Right now it's an every third day.

• 25:13Sam Parr?

  Sean, it's like, here's my life advice, young man. You gotta get a solid 16 every day. Life's cream cheese.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  I'm not a, a big nap person personally. I, I almost rarely ever take naps, but I think that there's certainly a plenty of research that shows that for most people getting a nap versus not is going to make them feel better and perform better. I certainly think a lot of athletes take them in the afternoon, or even some will take them almost right up to the time before tip off or when they, when they have their, their event. So.

• 25:51Shaan Puri?

  And they, because I think one of the reasons for them is they also need to peak in their performance much later in the day than most people, right? So like an NBA game might start at 7:30 or eight and they're playing until, until nine or 10 or whatever. And so, but whereas most people are winding down at that time, but they, so they kind of need to shift their, their peak performance later in the day. Whereas most entrepreneurs are trying to be, you know, tip top at nine AM or whatever.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's right. The, the challenge with naps is that the percentage of time that you spend in, in trying to sleep is often lower as a quality standpoint. So that's why I was kind of interested in whether you guys get in bed or whether it's more casual because. You might up the intensity of the setup of your nap to really maximize the the quality of the sleep. So try things like a sleep mask or try, you know, a couple of little things and you might all of a sudden feel even better after your nap.

• 26:48Sam Parr?

  Are you the only founder? Are you are you a solo founder?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Well, I I was fortunate in that I met two really talented engineers when I was graduating from Harvard. So one is John Capalupo, who for 10 years was our chief technology officer. And the other is really a Nikolai, he's still with me and he's our chief mechanical engineer. And the combination of of the three of us really built really built the company. Now, a lot of it was algorithms development, you know, computer science, data science, having the right prototypes. And yeah, so it was it was a it was very technical out of the gates.

• 27:36Sam Parr?

  Well, what um, but you're you're you were the the you consider them co-founders or just meaningful contributors?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I consider them co-founders. I mean, I I came up with the the idea for the company, the uh, you know, years before I met them. But but they've been an amazing, I mean, amazing piece of of the whoop story and critical.

• 28:00Sam Parr?

  What do you um, so you're the CEO, you're you're a founder of a multi-billion dollar startup. What what do you do with? I assume, I don't know if you're liquid or not, or if you have a lot of your equity still tied up. What are you gonna do with all your money when you eventually do get liquid? Do you have like any big aspirations? Are you just like a boring guy who just like what I am?

• 28:23Shaan Puri?

  Have you taken secondary along the way? Any any secondary?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have. I have. It's a

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Well, look, it doesn't, it doesn't actually change your, your motivation all that much in building the business. That was something that I remember someone saying to me, uh, at various points when I had the, the option to sell some shares. And, uh, I think it's really just made the quality of my life higher.

• 28:52Shaan Puri?

  You, you should post your sleep before and after the secondary. Be like, do I sleep easier at night? Now that I got 50 million in the bank? Yeah, it turns out I do. Actually, I do sleep a little easier at night.

• 29:05Sam Parr?

  Taking secondary, I remember when I was first getting going in my career and I heard about these secondaries and I was like, that's bullshit. I think it was rooted a little bit in envy, but I also was like, you gotta be all in. And now that I've like done a little bit of stuff, I realized having a safety net, and this is like a very obvious thing to say, so I sound like an idiot here, but having a safety net, particularly like a meaningful safety net of, of, of liquid net worth, I think 100% makes you better at building your company. And I think taking secondaries, it, it changes on a scale. Sometimes it's too much, but taking secondary, I think will make you a better company builder. Do you agree with that?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  I do, especially if you're like a growth stage of company. I don't, I don't think I ever sold shares until whoop was worth at least a billion dollars. And they were for rounds that were super oversubscribed. So, but I do think that's a fair, I think that's a fair lens to look at it from. I've read about people taking secondaries at the, you know, series A stage or something. And I don't know, everyone's, I could look, everyone's circumstances are different. So you don't want to, you don't want to judge, but, um, I do think for a company that's at a later stage where you're trying to, you're making this calculus of is this a company that's going to be acquired in a short period of time? Or is this a company that we're trying to build to be a standalone business? And

• 30:25Speaker 01

  I think if it's more of the latter, you want your, your founders or your key, your, you know, your CEO, you want, you want folks like that to be, um, not sort of looking at their bank account, wondering when they're going to cash out on this thing. You want them in a mode of, hey, I can keep going for a while. Uh, and, you know, really optimize the business. So, yeah, I agree. I agree with you.

• 30:49Sam Parr?

  What, what do you do with your money? Do you just do like boring, uh, Vanguard, uh, or like index funds or, or, or do you do something a little more risky? And what do you like to spend, spend your money on?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say I'm the biggest spender of money, but I, I mean, I've enjoyed investing in stuff, investing in startups, meeting founders. I've enjoyed backing stuff that my friends do or start. I

• 31:18Shaan Puri?

  If you go out to dinner with your friends, do they just, Bill comes, do they just sort of look at you and wait now? Or

• 31:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they got T Rex arms, they can't

• 31:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, all suddenly that wingspan shortened up big time, couldn't even get to the pocket anymore.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  No, I mean, look, I think it's, it's great, of course, to be able to be generous too and, and take care of people or cover bills or whatever.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I think it just sort of creates a peace of mind for you in an important way. If you're going to be trying to do something for the next 10 years.

• 31:56Sam Parr?

  What companies did you want to start before that? Because I'm looking at your background. So you said you're from Long Island, you live in Boston and went to Harvard. So that's amazing. But you studied economics, like it didn't look like you, and then you worked at a bank, right? Or you were just like an intern at a bank. You were, I know my wife's from Long Island, it looked, you're going down this very typical path of just being some like banker type in the city. But you kind of like took a left somewhere. What, what other companies were you thinking about starting?

• 32:25Speaker 01

  I wasn't thinking about starting companies at all, actually, and your observation's right. I sort of, I thought in the back of my mind, I would go work in finance after I graduated, because that's what a lot of people seem to do. And, and I had some background in finance because my dad had worked in finance. But, you know, internships are a great thing to figure out what you don't want to do.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  So I worked at a hedge fund after my freshman year. I worked at an investment bank after my sophomore year. And I worked at a private equity firm after my junior year. And the question I asked myself at each of those places is, you know, did I want to be my boss's boss or boss's boss's boss? Or, you know, if I could be one day and

• 33:07Speaker 01

  And I just didn't, I didn't feel that pull. I didn't feel this like gravitational pull towards it. And at the same time, I was becoming sort of obsessed with this idea. And I think I ultimately became an entrepreneur before I really knew what an entrepreneur was. It wasn't like I was choosing between three or four different ideas. It was just this one idea that I became obsessed with.

• 33:28Shaan Puri?

  Well, in the last decade that you've been doing this, you know, any entrepreneur, I think, sees other opportunities. You see things that are pain points for your business that you're like, man, somebody should make this easier. Or you meet a bunch of other entrepreneurs and you realize, oh, wow, there's like a whole universe of potential businesses that that can be started and be successful. A lot of people listen to this podcast to try to get ideas to think about, oh, what's, what's possible, what's possible, what can I be doing right now? And so do you have any business ideas that have come to you, you know, as you've been running whoop, that you're not going to go do because you're running whoop, but like, you know, maybe somebody else could do it?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I have a lot of sort of funny tangent, like business ideas that are sort of silly business ideas that you think up in the shower or whatnot. And so we can, we can riff on some of those. And then I have, you know, I have some that are more-

• 34:23Shaan Puri?

  Don't, don't tell us which ones are the serious or the silly. Well, we probably will get them all mixed up ourselves anyway. So take one off your list and let's, let's hear it.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Okay, this is a very funny one. So the, the idea for the company is, is car pipes. And it's, it's vocalist lessons while you're commuting in the morning. So you're in your car and you've got someone who's teaching you how to sing. And, you know, you're, you're a car pipe.

• 34:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you're in a safe space. So you can, you can belt it out.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. Those are the types, those are the types of ideas I feel like that I think of a lot.

• 35:04Shaan Puri?

  I'll give that one, I'll give that one a B. Sam?

• 35:08Sam Parr?

  Uh, F.

• 35:09Shaan Puri?

  I think I, I always wanted to sing.

• 35:13Sam Parr?

  Look dude, you, you, you have so much, listen, you have so much data. So I both.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I sounded like car pipes.

• 35:20Sam Parr?

  No, it's stupid. You're, you're, you're a brilliant man and you just had one dumb idea. I'm allowed to say that. You, both Sean and I have both invested in a continuous glucose monitor companies. Um, I don't know. I don't know if you ever, I, I think I had an opportunity to pass on your company, Will, or somehow a deck made it my way and I, and I was a fool and I didn't do it. Or maybe I just didn't have any money. I think that's what it was. I think, I think I just didn't have any money. I think I was just, I just didn't have enough cash. Um, I mean, I want to know like, which of these wearables do you think are going to be awesome and which wearables in the future are going to be, uh, are going to be a thing? You know, on the pod, what we've talked about, I don't have a background like

• 36:03Sam Parr?

  you. So I'm, I'm just kind of riffing here, but I've always thought it was ridiculous how you can have like a cancer or something bad inside of your body growing. And, uh, you know, I've had family members who have passed away and it was like, you know, had we just gotten this MRI or CAT scan like six months ago, you would have been fine. And I've always thought it's very strange that something can be in your body and it's just a matter of you just didn't get it measured. Uh, otherwise you would have been, you could have been fine. I've always thought that to be quite strange. And Whoop actually told me one time when I had COVID and I thought that was sick. And I'm like, well, sick, you should tell me if I have like cancer as well. You know what I mean? Uh, that's, that's a, that's something that's always fascinated me.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I would put, I would put all that sort of in the category of like, uh, obvious innovation that's coming. Um, the combination of body scans, blood work and continuous monitoring through a non-invasive wearable, um, will ultimately be able to predict a lot of things that, that, uh,

• 37:06Speaker 01

  You know, our, our disease states or, or leading indicators for death. And so I'm, I'm very optimistic about how profoundly the healthcare space, the relationship with your doctor. I mean, all of that'll change. It's so, so obvious. And then the other thing is, and, and artificial intelligence is a very popular expression these days, but AI will be enormously valuable for analyzing a lot of, a lot of these somewhat complicated scans to look for things inside your body that might be off,

• 37:47Speaker 01

  which, which otherwise required, you know, an expensive radiologist to look at or something.

• 37:52Sam Parr?

  Which startups do you think that are at like the sub 100 or sub 50 employee count and maybe sub 300 ish million market cap or value? Like below that, do you see in the health, health and wellness and anything related to that category that you think is going to have a similar trajectory as you guys and has a bunch of meat on the bone for, for growth and upside?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny because I, I think I've spent so long thinking about health and wellness. It's almost like the bar to invest in a health and wellness thing is, is, is too high. So I actually find that I don't invest in all that much related to health and wellness. Like I'm racking my brain right now, thinking of something that I'm involved in that's, and that's directly health and wellness. A related company that I think is quite, quite powerful is called Whisper, which I am an investor in. And it is, they've essentially built technology that allows you, that can transcribe your thoughts, which is, is pretty powerful technology, if you think about it.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  The ability to think something and, and it gets written out. So I really like deep tech stuff like that, that feels. Feels like magic, feels like the future.

• 39:13Shaan Puri?

  And how does it do that? You're wearing like a brain scanner device type thing? And then you literally think something and it writes it? What happens?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  I don't want to butcher this, but the short of it is it looks like, you know, an old jawbone might have one of those Bluetooth sets. And, and that's, you know, that's what the technology's form factor looks like.

• 39:36Shaan Puri?

  You literally just think something and it writes it? Or you have to like sort of whisper it?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Uh, I believe it's using your, your brainwaves.

• 39:45Shaan Puri?

  What's the URL of this?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Uh, it's whisper.ai.

• 39:50Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I just saw it. It looks like a little, uh, it looks like a, like a hearing aid.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:55Shaan Puri?

  Oh, that's cool. How much money have they raised? Do you know?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Uh, I want to say something in like the 15, 20 million range.

• 40:04Shaan Puri?

  Wow, that's pretty fascinating.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  This data is wrong every freaking time.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Have you heard of HubSpot?

• 40:13Speaker 04

  HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Whoa, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  HubSpot, grow better.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  So here, here's a category of work that's a little more serious.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Obviously you guys have seen, uh, everything that's come out in terms of deep fakes and the ability to create videos of people that are almost indistinguishable from, uh, from a real video, right?

• 40:51Speaker 01

  I think that there, there's going to be like, uh, a talent agency of sorts that's for non-living people. So, you know, imagine if you're, uh, if you're Tom Cruise at towards the end of your career. The same way Justin Bieber just sold like the rights to his songs. Maybe Tom Cruise sells the rights to Tom Cruise. And you can keep making movies with Tom Cruise for the next hundred years. Or another version of that is you can have, uh, an actor like Tom Cruise who's completely artificial.

• 41:29Shaan Puri?

  Have you seen the Tom Cruise deep fake on TikTok?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 41:33Shaan Puri?

  It's incredible. Sam, have you seen this thing?

• 41:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's amazing. You know who did that, Sean? We talked about it. Fucking, the South Park guys.

• 41:44Shaan Puri?

  Is that Deep Voodoo or that's somebody else?

• 41:45Sam Parr?

  I thought it was Deep. I thought Deep Voodoo did the Tom Cruise one. Am I wrong?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Miles Fisher. Miles Fisher.

• 41:52Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And

• 41:54Speaker 01

  He's the one who does them.

• 41:55Shaan Puri?

  I think it's him and this other guy.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Because he kind of looks like Tom Cruise, but there's a whole technology, I think, that doesn't even need a human involved, which, you know, would just essentially take the fact that Tom Cruise has made 50 movies and be able to

• 42:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but that's interesting. You're like, instead of selling your back catalog, sell your future catalog, basically. So you can sell your likeness to, you could create an AI likeness and just license it out to whoever wants to kind of use it, which obviously has some potential, like, you know, ways it can be misused, but seems valuable enough where people would figure that out.

• 42:31Sam Parr?

  Have you guys heard of, I think her name's, is her name Michaela, the Instagram influencer who doesn't exist? You know what I'm talking about?

• 42:37Shaan Puri?

  Lil' Michaela, yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a model that is completely made up, right?

• 42:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but now, but now she's got like a boyfriend. I don't actually know if they're together or not anymore, but she's got like a whole cast of characters now and I've been getting into it. And they raised a bunch of money and like she's getting ad deals. It's super fascinating, dude. It's super fascinating. And what's more fascinating is I think that if I had to guess, the way that they're making the way that she looks, they're using AI to come up with like the ideal, like the ideal person that both men and women are attracted to or like want to like follow and be into. And I follow her boyfriend and he's super skinny and he's little androgynous and I'm like,

• 43:20Sam Parr?

  fuck, they don't like yoga boys anymore. Like, you know, these, and so it's kind of funny to see like what they're like making is like the ideal person. It's very fascinating, but the business is making a lot of money, I believe.

• 43:31Shaan Puri?

  Well, on this pod a while back, I had said, uh, somebody needs to create a deep fake OnlyFans model. So I was like, oh, you could just have a virtual OnlyFans model that even kind of looks a little virtual. That's okay. And now this is just a moneymaker for you, right? You're like, basically like some sort of virtual pimp. If you created these, these AI OnlyFans characters and a guy did it. So, so a guy reached out and, um, and so he created it. He's like, he basically used his girlfriend who's like a model or whatever as the model for it and then created a AI clone of her. And now we're like, setting it up and we're gonna see how it goes. So I'm really curious to see if this thing like takes off or not.

• 44:12Sam Parr?

  So are you actually interested in this business? Are you, are you gonna be?

• 44:16Shaan Puri?

  How am I not interested in this business? This is so interesting to see if this works or not.

• 44:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but like, how do you work with like, softcore porn all day?

• 44:26Shaan Puri?

  I'm not doing anything. I'm just like getting the update. He just DMs me and says, check this out. And he'll be like, yo, we got the account made or we're gonna, you know, and he'll start sending me updates on how much money they're making, right? That was, I just want to see how it turns, how the experiment turns out. I don't have to sit there and like, train her.

• 44:42Sam Parr?

  Think about the investor updates that Will sends. He's like, you know, here's like screenshots of our new prototype, you know, like we've effectively, we've, we've gotten, uh, people's REM sleep to improve by 5% by just adding this little feature. Here's a mockup. And they're like, what, what's it gonna look like to you?

• 44:58Shaan Puri?

  It's gonna look great. I don't know. I don't see what the problem is.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's actually, so a theme that I think about is like, okay, 50 years from now, what are things that the, the future generation will look back at our generation and say, oh, that was so crazy that that was happening then. Like, there's a lot of easy versions of that for us today, right? Where it's, you know, you can say smoking on, uh, smoking on airplanes or, um, you know, the number of people that died giving birth or, uh,

• 45:40Speaker 01

  You know, people dying from just traveling across the country, right? Like, so there's all these examples of that. And then if you try to pull it forwards, what would they say about things that feel sort of a little too normalized today? And

• 45:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what are things that your grandkids will say like, really, grandpa? Like, you know, slavery? And you're like, I don't know, it was just the norm back then, right? Like, what are those? What are those things today that 50 years from now will seem either like crude or rude or whatever in some way, right? Like, I think the health monitoring is an obvious one. It's like, you just didn't know how you were doing? And it's like, yeah, we just didn't know. You go to the doctor once a year, maybe? And like,

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just randomly measured my blood pressure once a year. Right? That was, that was my checkup.

• 46:27Shaan Puri?

  That's, that's to me, the most obvious one that will seem like, wow, you guys were really capable. You just rolled the dice with that one, huh? Your whole, your whole health thing? And that, that's just going to be so different in the future.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  The number of people that die from car accidents seems like it would be on that list.

• 46:45Sam Parr?

  Dude, I was driving last night on a late night, like two, one lane road and a huge truck went by me and I, and it shook my car and we were both going 80 miles an hour, like, you know, passing each other. And it does seem so, in about 20 years, it's going to be so archaic. We're like, can you believe that we are basically one sneeze away from like an 80 miles an hour, like car crash all the time? Like you just, just literally 10 feet away, five feet away sometimes. It, that is, that's going to be, that's going to be our generation's smoking section in restaurant. That, that, that cars, two cars going, that's really, it's going to be like smoking or not smoking. Like, you used to drive these cars going in opposite directions and you were 10 feet

• 47:30Sam Parr?

  away from each other. That's what it's going to be like, I think.

• 47:33Shaan Puri?

  And like, my wife is vegan and she's like, yeah, like that, the thing that's going to be, you know, the 50 years from now is like, you just killed animals and ate them? Like, what, why? Like, you just thought that was okay?

• 47:45Sam Parr?

  I bet, I bet. It's like, Dude, I bet Will's got a total opposite take on this.

• 47:48Shaan Puri?

  Yes, that's what I wanted to hear. What's your take on sort of like vegan, carnivore, plant based, you know, all these different, you know, more extreme versions of diets? Have you seen anything or where, where's your head at? Or what's the data say around that?

• 48:02Speaker 01

  The data says it's highly personal. So you could put two people on identical diets and they could have literally the exact opposite effects on those, on those people. I remember, I mean, take professional athletes, for example, that you guys remember when LeBron got really skinny? It was like around the Olympics?

• 48:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  And he was, he'd been playing with Ray Allen. So Ray Allen got him to go on the paleo diet. And because Ray Allen was obsessed with the paleo diet, and again, as an example, it was amazing for Ray, terrible for LeBron, like terrible. And so there's every version of that for, for the rest of us. For me personally, I eat, I eat three meals a day. I try not to eat crap.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  I eat carbs. I, I, you know, I would say I have like a Mediterranean type diet, a lot of meats and fishes and vegetables. I don't really drink that many calories, mostly drink water and coffee. So, so that's my diet. I also think diet is easier if you like the right things and then you can kind of eat as much as you'd like, or as much as fills you up versus having to count calories in part because a lot of the calories you consume are really bad calories. So those are my quick perspectives on diet.

• 49:29Sam Parr?

  Dude, have you seen, well, have you seen Brian Johnson? Do you know who that is?

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, uh, he created a really cool, or is creating a very cool company that measures brainwaves.

• 49:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But have you seen Blueprint?

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Well, that's his whole age reversal.

• 49:48Shaan Puri?

  He's like a human, he's like a human Whoop band.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he wears Whoop and, and so that's how I know him. And he's come on the Whoop podcast before. I think he's coming on actually soon.

• 49:59Shaan Puri?

  Is his, uh, is he like in the, is he in the top like 1% of, of data? Cause if not, he's doing a hell of a lot of shit with his lifestyle. If that doesn't work, if that doesn't give him some off the charts readings on his, on his sleep and his strain, then I don't know.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Well, I want to be clear that I don't have access to every single person on whoop's data, but, but I think some of the stuff we went over, because he was on a podcast maybe a year or two years ago, and he was telling me some pretty good stats then. And it sounds like he's dialed it in even more since. So I'll definitely listen to the podcast, you guys through them.

• 50:34Sam Parr?

  Well, so listen to this, Sean. This just happened, I think this morning it was released. So basically, he was on our pod, and he looks like a freak, you know, like he's like chiseled. He looks awesome. And I don't know how old he is, actually.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  He's like forty-six or something, yeah.

• 50:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but he like, he's, he's, looks great. And, but you know, he does all this insane stuff that you'd expect a billionaire to be able to do. He's got like a thirty doctors, like helping him do all this. He's, he, you know, whatever. Well, it just released that, or it was just released that you can spend, I think, like, a lot, like, one point five or two million dollars a year. And you basically can, he's gonna like, anyone can use his doctors and go through his system in order to, what he's trying to do for the listeners is, he's basically, it's kind of like this thought exercise, but he's taking it seriously, which is he's trying to reverse his age, which you can do through like improving your blood and losing weight, things like that. So reverse his biological age faster than his chronological, chronological

• 51:30Sam Parr?

  age goes up, because in theory, if you do that, you live forever. Obviously, that won't happen, but it's like an interesting like thought exercise. But now anyone can sign up and apply to use like, all the crazy shit that he's doing.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  You gonna, you gonna do it, Sam?

• 51:43Sam Parr?

  It's like two million dollars a year. No. Also, like, I have a, here, I have a thing with all the fitness people. And Brian, I called Brian out for this, and he actually answered it well. But I'm like, do you ever experience joy? Like, like, like,

• 52:01Sam Parr?

  like, so I don't drink alcohol. And a lot of people will say like, oh, I've been wanting to do that. And I'm like, well, do you have a problem? And they go, no, it just thought, but like, then, like, it sounds dope, then just get drunk every once in a while. That like, you know, that's like, that's like a life worth living. It's like when you have things to celebrate, and like, you can build camaraderie with your friends. Like, yeah, just do it. You might live a little shorter, you might be sick for a few days, but like, you know, like, experience joy, that's good. And so with Brian, I was like, do you ever like had birthday cake for your kid's birthday? Like, do, and he's like, no, I've only cheated like once, one meal over like, two years, or something like that. And I was like, well, are you happy? And he said, I'm happy. So my opinion of that is, okay, great, you're winning. But for most people, I don't know, experience joy a little bit, like be healthy and also like get effed up every once in a while.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  I think that's good advice.

• 52:48Shaan Puri?

  Will, I have a, I have a similar thing that you'll just, you'll, you'll hate slash disagree with, which is, uh, on my Twitter, I have this tweet that's pinned that just says, here's some semi controversial things that I believe. And one of them is, um, you don't need a sleep tracker. Great sleep is obvious. And, uh, I think you would probably disagree because it's kind of the premise of your life right now, but you gotta admit, pretty catchy. And there, there's some nugget of wisdom in there. There's some nugget of truth in that, in that belief.

• 53:16Sam Parr?

  Just because it sounds good, doesn't mean it's true.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think that might be true in like extremely binary terms, you know, oh, I had to wake up for a 4 a.m. flight or, uh, you know, uh, the, the alarm kept going off last night. Like, yeah, okay, those are bad nights of sleep. But I, I think it's, it's a profound lie in the sense of if you're actually trying to understand your nightly sleep and routine. Like, I think there's just a lot. It's a, think about it this way. It's a third of your life that is a complete black box. You have no idea what's happening during that third of your life. And, and science has proven that that's a third of

• 54:01Speaker 01

  your life that dramatically affects the other two thirds. And if you're good at sleeping, it decreases every form of potential disease that you can have. Like, it is the magic pill. So I don't agree with your tweet, but I respect that it probably had a lot of retweets.

• 54:20Shaan Puri?

  Tons of retweets, right?

• 54:23Shaan Puri?

  We do it for the retweets around here.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  And, uh, I, I do think that, that Sam's point's a good one. Good one though, as it applies to that tweet, which is if you make all these things seem.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  You know, like discipline in spite of joy or or sort of soulless. Then then, of course, there's some kind of a rebellion against it. Right. And so I've heard people talk about sleep tracking in a way that makes sleep tracking seem profoundly not cool. And so I understand it through that lens. But I think the reality is you can measure things about your body passively. That give you a great insight into into your life and can make your life better.

• 55:10Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, okay.

• 55:12Sam Parr?

  So what do you what do you think's gonna happen, Will? 10 years. What's your what's the what's the vision here? Are you gonna go public? You're gonna sell this for $10 billion? What do you think's gonna happen?

• 55:20Speaker 01

  I think we will ultimately go public. I think that it'll probably be sooner than that timeframe that you gave. And I think we're gonna build technology that's able to predict a lot of massive life events as they pertain to your health and and along the way provide a 24 7 coach that helps people meet their goals well beyond health. You know, psychological goals, professional goals, just because of the the value that understanding your body can provide.

• 55:50Sam Parr?

  Dude, you've stuck it in the face of all the finance bros. You're saying I didn't have to go that route and I still crushed it. I think that's awesome. I've got so many New York friends and they just in Long Island friends and they do the same thing over and over and over again. I'm like, you're selling your soul, man. This is the worst. And it's so cool that you kind of saw that route is not maybe for you and you you're gonna just crush it. We're big fans of whoop. I've never tested the Oura ring, so I've been loyal to to my whoop. I've been calling it I call it whoop and whoop. So my apologies. I actually didn't know the right way to pronounce it.

• 56:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what is the right way? Whoop. I can I kind of like whoop, too.

• 56:34Shaan Puri?

  Like, I would never say I'm whooping ass, but I would say I'm a whoop ass to this. So, you know, like, I kind of, I don't know.

• 56:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's gonna be your next announcement.

• 56:44Shaan Puri?

  The founder of it or Sam?

• 56:47Sam Parr?

  What do you know?

• 56:51Shaan Puri?

  If you wear it inside out, it's whoop.

• 56:56Sam Parr?

  I never knew how you pronounced it, but my wife and I have our paid subscribers. How much do we, I think we pay you $300 a year. I don't even remember.

• 57:03Shaan Puri?

  I paid you for two years and I just didn't have my band. I lost my band and then I just kept the subscription going. So, you know, you're welcome on that one, but now I got my band back and now I'm getting the value.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. If you reach out to membership services, they'll send you a band. No problem.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  If you're a subscriber, the hardware is included. I mean, that was one of the more.

• 57:23Shaan Puri?

  That was like more.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Now in hindsight, but in 2018, we changed the whole business model to being a subscription where the hardware was included.

• 57:32Sam Parr?

  How mu- was that like a huge, I mean, did your economics drastically change?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, we used to sell the product for $500 one time fee, everything included. Then we went to, you can sign up for as little as $30. Like picture the, just all the cash implications, gross margin implications, everything that happens almost overnight when you do that. And it was also about the business moment because, okay, companies founded in 2012. If you're changing your business model that profoundly six or seven years later, you're also admitting you haven't figured out the right business model six or seven years into building a company. So, uh, yeah, that was all, that was all quite, quite, uh, painful and concerning, but we, you know, we created a really cool business model that now has been amazing.

• 58:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Now you're going to get, maybe you can make, you're going to make an argument. I don't know if you're going to get it, but you're going to make an argument that you get those SaaS multiples.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I think there's a fair case for that.

• 58:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I don't know what your churn is, but that'd be, that'd be badass because I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a, you know, five times more valuable company. Um, well dude, this is awesome.

• 58:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Thanks for coming on. We took you a little over time. Sorry about that, but, uh, but thanks for coming on Will. This is, this is fun and, uh, yeah, everybody go get some sleep.

• 58:53Sam Parr?

  And by the way, Sean.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  From you, that's a big pivot.

• 58:56Shaan Puri?

  Well, I said, great sleep is important. I just said, great sleep is obvious.

• 59:01Shaan Puri?

  Uh, you know, directionally, you know which way you're going, whether you track it or not. And then, once you get, once you get going in the right direction, then start measuring it and optimizing it.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Did you have a Twitter thread that was killing, uh, clubhouse?

• 59:15Shaan Puri?

  I did, um, that blood is on my hands. Yes.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Wow, that's, yeah. How's that?

• 59:22Sam Parr?

  What are you gonna say?

• 59:24Shaan Puri?

  On point.

• 59:26Shaan Puri?

  And all the clubhouse investors who blocked me because they thought I was just being a hater. You know, the, um, my door has a little mail slot for apologies and, uh, they're welcome to go ahead and slip the, slip the apology back in.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm connecting the dots on some tweets of yours that I've, I've read now. Uh, because I also remember that sleep one, I think about it.

• 59:50Shaan Puri?

  That was my version of the, of the clubhouse thread for you.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know that business very well, but it certainly seems like it's, uh, not doing as well as it was in the middle of COVID.

• 1:00:02Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think.

• 1:00:02Sam Parr?

  What a hypocrite Sean is, by the way. He's got, he owns a whoop.

• 1:00:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Sam Parr?

  Whoop, whoop. He owns a, he owns a whoop and he's still saying you don't need a sleep tracker. That's bullshit, man. Call him out, Will.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I, I definitely will now.

• 1:00:19Shaan Puri?

  Well, I'm waiting for the version that like just auto charges or just like stays charged for like two years. So I can just leave it on because, uh, I'm a notorious lose shit guy. So, you know, I'm on my 18th AirPods. I, uh, you know, I've gone through three whoop bands and, uh, it's the charging that gets me every single time.

• 1:00:39Sam Parr?

  Same. What's the plan, dude? Is a 30 day charge gonna happen anytime soon?

• 1:00:43Shaan Puri?

  How hard is it for a guy to get an infinite battery around here?

• 1:00:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, just do better.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  And by, by the way, the, the modular battery pack, I think was a good innovation at least. So you don't have to take it off. But, but, uh, you know, originally I was hoping we'd be able to do it like watches or there's certain watches for movement.

• 1:01:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Keep it alive. The reality is that because we collect so much health data, we're driving the battery pretty hard and the sensors pretty hard. So, uh, in some ways it's great that we've gotten to four or five days, but, but, uh, customer feedback heard. Okay. We'll, we'll work on the two year model for both of you.

• 1:01:22Sam Parr?

  No, that's been my same thing, which is that's why I don't wear an Apple Watch is I think it's so stupid that you gotta charge those things all the time. I think.

• 1:01:28Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I lost my wedding ring on my honeymoon because I just lose everything.

• 1:01:31Sam Parr?

  Same. I had, I got mine tattooed on my hand because I lost it so much.

• 1:01:37Sam Parr?

  Same. I think I, but yeah, the charging thing.

• 1:01:39Shaan Puri?

  Like, I'm not smart enough to get away with this absent minded professor shit where it's like, oh, he's so messy, but he's brilliant. It's like, well, he's, you know, above average. It's like, it doesn't have the same, doesn't have the same, uh, you know, excuse power for me.

• 1:01:53Sam Parr?

  That's all right. You're, you're, you're good enough that you can screw up every once in a while, but, uh, yeah, the battery thing, man, you guys got to figure that out, but we have. I think we have Will's email in the calendar invite. So Sean, you're just gonna, you're just gonna message him, hey, Will, lost my band.

• 1:02:09Sam Parr?

  Please hook up. Thanks.

• 1:02:10Shaan Puri?

  Right. I will delete. I'll delete tweet.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  You don't have that many people losing it because they wear it all the time. So you must be taking it off too.

• 1:02:23Shaan Puri?

  I also got little kids and my little kids are like, oh, bracelet, toy, you know, they just think it's the theirs. And so they just steal it when it's charging on the counter and they, they now I lose it. So, you know, whatever.

• 1:02:35Sam Parr?

  Well, dude, thanks for doing this.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, guys.

• 1:02:38Sam Parr?

  Your, uh, your PR guy, John, is my good buddy. John, uh, hooked us up with, um, uh, Ariel Hawani, you like UFC, uh, Ariel and John are good buddies and Ariel's like the face of like UFC journalism. He hooked us up with that. He made the introduction to you. So, uh, we, we owe him a shout out, but I appreciate you coming on. This is awesome.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Are you a big UFC fan?

• 1:03:01Sam Parr?

  Oh yeah, we both are. Yeah, we're both huge into it. Are you?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm not a huge fan, but I mean, I observe it, uh, from a distance. I, I think athletes are like, you know, some of the more, uh, impressive physical specimens in the world.

• 1:03:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Besides the whole brain thing, besides that.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the slap league thing, that they gotta put that away.

• 1:03:22Sam Parr?

  That's the stupidest fucking thing on earth. I hate the slap league.

• 1:03:26Shaan Puri?

  What?

• 1:03:26Sam Parr?

  I hate the slap, dude. That is the dumbest thing.

• 1:03:29Shaan Puri?

  I made on the slap league.

• 1:03:30Sam Parr?

  What? That is so stupid.

• 1:03:33Shaan Puri?

  I watched three minutes of the preview and I was like,

• 1:03:38Shaan Puri?

  just when I thought I was out, Dana White, you got me back in.

• 1:03:42Sam Parr?

  Dude, that is the dumbest thing ever. You really are a fan of that?

• 1:03:46Shaan Puri?

  No one's saying it's not dumb.

• 1:03:47Sam Parr?

  I think it's horrible.

• 1:03:48Shaan Puri?

  You know.

• 1:03:49Sam Parr?

  And they get knocked out. So for those listening who don't know what I'm talking about, it's basically, I think they have weight classes, but it's usually always like the big old fat guys looking like they're supposed to be strong, but they look huge. And they just stand in front of each other and they smack each other five times, right? Is that the rule? It's five slaps and but they almost always get knocked out. It looks like.

• 1:04:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you just take turns open hand slapping each other, but the slap is like a thud. It's not like a slap. It's a basically a punch. And yeah, it basically results in a brutal knockout like every, every single match, which is pretty crazy.

• 1:04:23Sam Parr?

  And their faces are so swollen. Have you seen the like where their jaws are so swollen? Dude, and they wear earplugs because they will rupture your eardrum. You know, if you ever got hit in the ear, it looks horrible.

• 1:04:33Shaan Puri?

  Sam, did you see the trailer for it? Like they released the preview that was like supposed to hype you up, introduce the league and they're like, these people come from, you know, everywhere. They come from nothing. This guy was doing this. Now this has given him this opportunity and he's the baddest guy. And then one guy goes, I just want to change the world, man. And I lost it. I was like, this is your plan to change the world?

• 1:04:55Sam Parr?

  One slap at a time.

• 1:04:56Shaan Puri?

  Brother, what are you doing?

• 1:04:58Sam Parr?

  We're democratizing slaps.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Chris Nowitzki, who's done all this concussion research,

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  at Boston University is one of the key guys for doing concussion research in the NFL.

• 1:05:13Sam Parr?

  He was in the WWF, wasn't he? He was like a professional wrestler. Yeah.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  And he had a bunch of concussions and, and he's like, it's, it's just half a step from having people just stab each other on live TV and then seeing who, who makes it.

• 1:05:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we should also get, get ratings, right? There's this idea of pain containment. Have you ever heard this term?

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  I get the idea of it from.

• 1:05:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's a great, great name for that reason, right? Which is we love entertainment of people suffering, you know, and so like whether this is TV shows like Survivor or Naked and Afraid or whatever, where they have to suffer in that way, or it's somebody suffering in an emotional way when you're watching Dr. Phil or Jerry Springer and somebody finds out they got cheated on or their Maury tells them they are not the father, whatever. There is a, you know, they used to have executions publicly and people would come and watch the execution, literally like, you know, whatever in France in the old days. And so there's this long history of people enjoying stuff, watching suffering as a form of entertainment. And it's this crazy thing, but it's, it's something that, that does exist. I'm not saying it's

• 1:06:20Shaan Puri?

  good or bad, but like, I do think it's a, I do think it's gonna work for that reason.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  There's some darkness there.

• 1:06:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Sam Parr?

  Well, thanks for making this happen, dude. We appreciate it.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just fun. Thanks for having me, guys.

• 1:06:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, we'll be in touch because, you know, I'm gonna be emailing you all my complaints about my whoop, but maybe I'll be one of your investors whenever you IPO, but this is awesome and we appreciate it. Do you, you can give a shout out, by the way, what's your, do you use social media at all?

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  At Will Omid are my handles.

• 1:06:51Sam Parr?

  Well, thanks for making this happen. We really appreciate it. We'll talk soon.

• 1:06:54Shaan Puri?

  You will.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Talk soon, guys.

• 1:06:56Shaan Puri?

  Cool.