Will Ahmed - Creator of Fitness Wearable Whoop

 You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan
 Alford. Hey guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast.
 It is the middle of the week here. We're on a Wednesday recording this. You'll hear
 this on a Tuesday, but I'm really excited to be joined today by Will Ahmed, the founder
 and CEO of Whoop. What's up, Will? How are we doing, Ryan? Thanks for having me. Yeah, man,
 my pleasure. I really appreciate you getting on. I know you're a busy man, and I definitely
 want to get into it. I know we talked a little bit pre-upsoared. You're in the lovely
 Boston area. Are we keeping warm there? Any snow on the ground? No snow right this minute,
 but I'm sure it's coming. Oh yeah, we're getting into it a little bit. In South Carolina,
 we don't get to see much of the white stuff. We're an hour to the mountains and two hours
 or so to the beach, but we don't get a lot of white stuff. I'm a little jealous because
 I did live in Manhattan for a little while and miss a little bit getting a little bit
 of snow here and there. My kids would enjoy it. Nonetheless, I appreciate you getting on.
 I definitely want, we usually just start with getting your background and talking about
 the business and things like that. So maybe for everyone listening, just a little bit
 of your story and what started Whoop and all those things. So let's start there.
 Yeah, so I run a business today called Whoop, which is really on a mission to unlock human
 performance. We build wearable technology. You can see on my wrist here that's designed
 to measure everything about your body and I think what makes Whoop different from other
 products in the market is that we've proven it can change behavior and improve health.
 So if you want to get fitter, if you want to lose weight, if you want to figure out how
 you can get more sleep, you want to be a better executive. You name it. Whoop is a product
 that has had a lot of success in helping you or will have a lot of success in helping
 you. I got into this space personally because I was in the sports and exercise. I grew
 up playing just a bunch of different sports and I ended up playing squash and hardwoods.
 I was a collegiate athlete and I felt like I didn't really know what I was doing to my
 body while I was training. I was someone who used to over train, which is kind of a sin
 you get fitter and fitter and fitter and then you fall off a cliff. I think a lot of
 hot, hard driving people, whether it's overtraining or burning out, don't have the right balance
 in their life. Anyway, for me at a young age, I realized I didn't have the right balance
 in my life and I got very interested in what I could measure about my body to better
 understand it. What does it mean to train optimally? What does it mean to be healthy? These
 were just basic questions that I was surprised that there wasn't a whole technology business,
 what not around. I did a lot of physiology research while I was at Harvard. I read something
 like 500 medical papers while I was in school, which was frankly a lot. I wrote a paper around
 how I thought you could continuously measure the human body and that paper really became the
 business plan for WOOP and so founded the company my senior year. By summer of 2012, we were
 kind of off for the races and so been building the business for, you know, eight and a half years
 now and it's been quite a journey and right now we're having a lot of success.
 Well, yeah, it couldn't be a better time period. We'll get to that and the implications for COVID,
 which have been really interesting. You know, and I am aware of myself, shameless plug
 there for you. I've been about, I'm only I guess four weeks or so, I was right around the hall,
 a little before the holidays. So it's been fascinating. I do want to ask you a couple of questions
 when we get into it. But I did find some interesting stuff, you know, with how you started the
 company. I read, you know, some of the GQ articles, a few other things and it was really interesting
 to me this notion of the contrary and belief with which you started because all when I think
 about I've worn everywhere a bowl and a lot of my friends and people that I run with, you know,
 like wear everything and it's always about, you know, okay, heart rates is like the same old
 thing. It's heart rate, what's your fitness level, you know, how much exertion have you had,
 and you kind of flip the whole thing on its head looking at the other side of it, which is the
 recovery aspect. Is it, is it just your smart guy and you thought through that on the other side?
 Or like what kind of took you down that path of the recovery and the sleep in and the
 importance of all those things? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, when I was a college
 athlete and I would talk to other athletes and I would talk to coaches about training optimally,
 so much of the focus was on training. And in fact, around when I knew I was going to start
 whoop, I went and interviewed coaches and said, you know, if you could have technology to
 understand your athletes better, like what would you want that technology to be able to do?
 And it was always so focused on practice, games, training, you know, it was, you know,
 could we get better video analysis? Could we get better weightlifting strain? Could we get better
 sweat analysis? And what I realized is that there was a blind spot and the blind spot was
 what's actually going on the other 22 hours of the day? And I also realized just personally
 that that's probably where I was falling over. It's that I thought if I did a great practice and
 really worked my ass off, it almost didn't matter what I did after that. You know, I could stay
 up late, I could party, I could, you know, whatever. And it couldn't have been further from the truth.
 And in fact, I was erasing all the gains of training by not recovering properly.
 Yeah. And it's not so obvious to see that today. But for whatever reason, 10 years ago,
 that was a somewhat like contrarian point of view. And I think it was also around the time where
 exercise had sort of top ticked on the pendulum. You know, it was not, can you do a two a day?
 Could you even be doing a three a day? You know, it was just as crazy like more is more is more.
 And the other thing that was interesting is that when I talk to coaches about, well, what problems
 are you trying to solve? What are your biggest issues? It always came back to availability and injuries.
 You know, this idea that coaches had athletes who would get injured or would over train or weren't
 actually able to play on the day of the game that they needed to play. And so this is a good
 insight for any entrepreneurs listening to this. I would encourage you to ask your customers
 what their problems are, not necessarily ask them what solutions they think you should build.
 It's your responsibility as an entrepreneur as a business leader to figure out what the
 solution should be to their problems. And often, customers are phenomenal at describing
 problems and less capable at describing solutions. And so that's what I realized, you know,
 I've realized this years later, but in that moment in time, I was just recognizing a better way to
 solve their problems. And that was around understanding recovery and sleep. And we've talked about this
 Ryan from a very sports centric point of view. Admittedly, whoops, you know, our origins are in sports.
 You know, we had the best athletes in the world wearing whoop from the very early days.
 Two of our first hundred members were people like LeBron James and Michael Phelps. So we just
 started at this, you know, tip of the pyramid. However, today, which really is whoop as a big
 business now, we're, I mean, we're serving virtually every type of person. And I think what holds
 the whoop audience together is that it's a somewhat aspirational group of people who have something
 in their life they want to exceed that or improve that. And they can use whoop to find this balance,
 to understand how much they're sleeping, how much they're recovering, what the strain is that
 they're putting on their body, how different behaviors in their life are affecting their body.
 And they can use that information to perform at a higher level. So we, we very authentically took a
 formula that made the best athletes in the world effective and have now been able to deliver it
 to a much wider market. I love that, especially the notion of balance because, you know, when you
 think about, you know, motivation and the people, you know, like you mentioned, you know, 18 years
 ago, especially on social media, whether it's a high performing person or athlete or a business
 person, it was always like, well, how can I sleep three hours at night and how can I get, you know,
 more out of my day. But the notice, but the issue with that and having gone through some of them
 myself is, you know, that, that seems to work for, you know, how, you know, individually, maybe a
 month or two. But then you burn yourself out. Maybe the highest performers and the best athletes
 can make that last longer. But this notion of recovery and balance in your life in general,
 I think is, is dead on and obviously why I think you're building success because there's not
 been that point of view from the other fitness trackers and the other things out there,
 until even to this day and having been in the space a little bit, I started hearing about you guys
 and it just felt right. And so I think you're going to, you know, as you guys get more, you're
 obviously mainstream, you know, now with a PGA tour agreement and all that, I do want to talk
 about that. Can you talk about before I get into maybe some of those bullet points like
 for those, you know, we have a lot of CO types or aspiring entrepreneurs and things like that
 for the podcast. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, building the company, you know,
 some of the nuts and bolts of the realities of being an entrepreneur, a young entrepreneur,
 and, you know, having an idea, bringing it to life. Because I think a lot of people think that
 stuff happens overnight, but, you know, whoops, what, eight, nine years into making now. And now,
 you're seeing, you know, the fruits of this and that's been building, but can you talk a little
 bit about it from that entrepreneur's and business growth standpoint? Yeah, I'll start with a
 positive point of view, at least I'll frame it as positive, which is that starting a company
 and building a business is much harder than you think it'll end up being. But it's not nearly
 as hard as probably most people in your life will tell you, which is that it's impossible.
 You know, I think that the hardest thing for me in building whoop was less so the actual
 business side of it, but more so me being comfortable growing into running today, what is,
 you know, now a business value over a billion dollars, right? Like, how do you grow into that?
 How are you making sure that you personally are advancing as a leader? And how do you deal with
 criticism along the way, self-doubt along the way? You know, it's a very vulnerable
 role being an entrepreneur because it exposes you, it exposes you to what your weaknesses are
 in such an obvious, transparent way. And what your strengths are too, which is in why in so many
 ways, I think people overstate the risks to starting a company or overstate the risks associated
 with being an entrepreneur, because the the process for becoming an entrepreneur for starting
 something reveals so much about who you are as a business leader, what your strengths are,
 your character, where your holes are, what you need to improve. I mean, it reveals that so rapidly
 and so effectively that regardless of whether the business ends up being a success,
 you as an individual have learned so much about yourself and and what it actually takes
 that you will go on most likely to do incredibly great things afterwards. So I'll just say that sort
 of first and foremost, the the process for becoming an entrepreneur and for building a business
 I think is an incredibly powerful one for anyone listening. The other thing that I'll say is that
 there's this there's this thing that happens at least it happened to me where you start a company
 and you start immediately comparing yourself to like the best entrepreneurs, you know,
 Oh, you know, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, whatever, right? Like these people wouldn't be
 struggling with this thing. And you know, here I am, I've got, you know, four people on my team and
 two of them are co-founders and and I'm struggling to get the fifth person like gosh, like they would
 just never would have had to deal with this. And I think that's a really unhealthy mindset and one
 that I overcame as well where you're trying to compare yourself to other executives, other leaders,
 other entrepreneurs and really you just have to focus on how can you become a better version of
 yourself in this role? And I'll bet you that when those heroes that we think of today as entrepreneurs
 were first starting a company, they didn't know that much more than you did. I mean, I really believe
 that. I think the key thing though that they did much faster than everyone else is how they got better
 themselves. And it's why if you look at what they've been able to accomplish later in their careers,
 it's so powerful. And it's why many of the best entrepreneurs also have these sort of like failed
 early startups in their careers too or things that weren't nearly as successful as what they did later.
 So again, I come back to this idea that you have to keep comparing yourself to yourself
 on that growth journey. I like that. And you know, you didn't say it, but again, I've read enough
 about your process and that notion of a lot of those you just named the ambition in the idea
 and making sure that's grand enough so that you know, you're kind of beating your competition
 ahead of the game, which I really like because I think a lot of people boxed themselves into the
 limits of the idea because it may seem easier. But while you're at it, what you're going to all
 these links be ambitious. And you know, I think that's what you've done with whoop. And you know,
 you're so I don't have every map shirts on your guys right competitive radar and all that,
 but you're already so far ahead, you know, that it that and I think that's what some of the best
 entrepreneurs have done, whether that was, you know, basis or jobs or whatever, you know, it was so
 ambitious. And you know, I think, you know, can you touch on that a bit? I mean, for the for the
 listeners that may not have read every article I already have. Yeah, you know, look, I think that
 again, back to this moment, like early stage of the company, one of the things that I constantly
 was told was that the vision for whoop was too ambitious. That why are you trying to build hardware
 and software and analytics and designed it all from scratch and manufactured all from scratch.
 And I believe, well, the key is that you need to have this vertically integrated system so that
 you control every element of it. So you at the end of the day could actually deliver on this value.
 You know, people would say to me, well, why don't you just build software on top of the Fitbit or
 software on top of the Apple Watch or whatever, right? And and I thought that was such a flawed way
 to think about the market. And it totally missed the actual problem that you were trying to solve.
 And the end user experience for the customer, which at the end of the day is the most important thing.
 And so this was a recurring piece of criticism. And in fact, I'll just say broadly, I think that
 the more ambitious your idea is, the more potential it is, that's obvious. But it has all these
 lists, it has all these other benefits that you sort of don't fully appreciate in the moment.
 The first is, for example, that you end up being able to recruit insanely good talent.
 Like the best, best talent by far. You know, today whoop has a 96% job offer acceptance rate,
 which in like the world of engineering is kind of unheard of. And the reason we have such a high
 job acceptance rate is that what we're doing is so hard that it attracts these like insanely
 competent people because they want to work on the hardest problems. You know, it's why SpaceX and
 Tesla, for example, also have, I'm sure, amazing engineers because they're doing stuff that's on the
 cutting edge. So if you're doing stuff on the cutting edge, I think you inherently have these
 advantages of being able to attract really great talent. You also have the opportunity to work with
 other very cool brands because those brands want to associate themselves with the next thing,
 like the cool cutting edge thing. I mean, look, it has limitations, right, or challenges.
 First of all, you have to be able to raise a lot of capital. This was something I got better at
 over time. Whoop is raised like $200 million. I mean, at this point, over $200 million of capital
 in order to pursue this vision. And you said it yourself, like, you know, we've been building
 the business for eight, nine years, but six or seven years into it, the whole thing almost blew up
 or, you know, went bankrupt. You know, so are you, you know, are you willing to really put that
 much time into something to see your vision through? I think you also need to know that
 if you're going to take something on that super ambitious. How's, uh, you know, on the raising
 capital side? And I know we could go down this road for more time than we have. But, uh, what was
 that like for you, you know, being, you know, a young entrepreneur, you've got a great idea
 you're building it? Where do you, did you know that that was the path? I mean, were you just insightful
 enough? Or did you have ins or people were telling you like to get this where you got to go?
 You're going to have to take on investors. And then once you take on investors, did you feel
 more pressure of suddenly not that you aren't the owner? You're still the CEO, the founder. You
 still have all this a lot of skin in the game. But what was, what was that, you know, what was that
 like? You know, I think it's, it's like a lot of things that we've discussed where again,
 you have to keep getting better at it. I think, you know, for example, raising the first 700 grand
 as a 22 year old founding group was harder than the last round of financing in which we raised
 $100 million. So don't, you know, don't ever look at the headline big number. All of these things
 are relative to the stage that you're at, the proof points that you're at, and also how much time
 you've spent raising money. I mean, now I've spent nine years learning how to raise capital.
 So I think I've started to understand the ins and outs and what investors are looking for and
 what they're not looking for. So anyway, I bring up those two numbers, though, just for your
 audience to appreciate like just because you're having a hard time raising that first 250 grand
 or that first million dollars or whatever it is, it doesn't mean you can't go on to raise an
 enormous amount of capital. It's, it's just learning, it's learning the fundraising process.
 The other thing I'll say that I feel fortunate about is I have, I've raised capital from investors
 that I've built great relationships with over time. And, and I will say that, you know, when you
 take capital from someone, it's, it's like a marriage except that you can't get divorced. I
 mean, it's, it's, I mean, it's, there's a real bond that happens there. You're now both on the
 capital. And so, you know, you need to just be pretty thoughtful about that. And I would also
 say that you don't want to, you don't want to take any capital. You want to make sure that there's
 some real alignment around what you're, what the vision is for that capital. And that's, that's
 been another thing that I think has boated well for Woop and being very ambitious. You know,
 it itself selected out investors who were maybe at the early stage scared of losing their money.
 They knew that there were some real technology risks. And so they said, like, let's take it on.
 Whereas now at a later stage, you know, it's more of a, it's more of a business model story.
 You have to think about these things relative to the stage as well.
 Is, you know, transitioning a bit, we are a marketing podcast. I mean, what were, you know,
 maybe some of the successful, you know, marketing tactics or, you know, in the early days versus
 now, I mean, obviously with the PGA agreement, certainly helps when you have a killer product and
 you get some organic things already happening. You know, anybody would love to have, you know,
 LeBron or or Justin Thomas or whoever, you know, throw your, throw your band on. And I mean,
 I know some of those are starting to probably become paid engagements, but, you know, maybe
 talk about some of the early marketing tactics versus where we're at now.
 Well, one strong point of you I had around the product was that it needed to be able to be good
 enough such that a famous person and a professional athlete, someone who wanted to improve,
 would wear whoop and we weren't going to pay them. Like essentially, we didn't need to sponsor
 everyone who wore the product. And I said that if the product delivered on its value proposition
 was, which was that it could measure recovery. It could tell you how hard to work out. It should
 tell you what to go to bed. It could make you a better athlete person. You name it. Then people
 should pay us for that. And by the way, if if it didn't deliver on those things, there was no
 amount of money we could pay someone to wear something 24-7 that they weren't getting value at them.
 I mean, ask yourself how many things in your life do you wear 24-7? And so, you know, and we saw
 was that a very few. Yeah, right. So we saw this with like the Nike fuel band, for example,
 which was, you know, sort of a Fitbit like wearable in 2013 or 2014. And they had athletes like
 LeBron James, and Tiger Woods, and Serena Williams. And meanwhile, none of those athletes were
 wearing the Nike fuel band, even though they were paying these guys like hundreds of millions of
 dollars. So it was obvious to me that we were never going to sort of pay our way into the sports world.
 We needed to authentically build the best product. And that we held that to such a high bar that
 it became actually a marketing strategy in that athletes paid for who we didn't sponsor them.
 And that was a really strong point of view. And what it did is then when you saw these athletes
 wearing the product, it had a real authenticity around it. And so we were able to authentically
 build a brand, which was also a marketing strategy. We said early on, we wanted to be a brand.
 Not every company needs to be a brand to be successful. But we believe that health monitoring
 as a broad landscape would consolidate around brands that, you know, it would make all the sense
 in the world that a company that owns human performance would be a brand. And so while the product
 I've always wanted to build a product that added value for really a wide audience of people,
 added value for a wide audience of people, the brand I always liked the idea of it being
 anchored around high end performance. You know, I think that so much of what we learn in health and
 fitness has come from professional athletes. And I think it's often taken for granted. You know,
 the fact, for example, that weightlifting really, you know, started with pro athletes in the 90s.
 You know, it wasn't that long ago. I mean, so let's call that 25, maybe 30 years,
 tops where most professional athletes lifted weights. I mean, now you can't go to a hotel in
 America that doesn't have a gym. And that story, I think, just permeated directly through sports
 into society. And so I've believed for a while that the next version of that story will be around
 sleep and recovery. And you're starting to actually see this happen, right? You read a 5,000,
 you know, word ESPN report on like LeBron James spending a million dollars a year on his body to
 recover, right? Like there's just, it's the new, it's the new angle that people are talking about,
 sleep and recovery. And so I think a lot of that story is being told by the best athletes in the
 world. And so I always wanted Woop to be anchored in sports. And so as a result, that's also where we've
 looked for big marketing partnerships. Woop just became the official recovery wearable of the PGA
 tour. So that's a, you know, a situation where every member of the PGA tours can be wearing Woop.
 And we're going to be creating a lot of cool visualizations around data for those players.
 Although, again, the reason that deal came, came to be Ryan was that all those golfers were
 actually wearing Woop organically. And that's where we realized, oh, this is going to be a great
 partnership because these guys organically like the product. So hopefully that puts a bow on some
 of what I'm saying here where you want to find people who authentically organically use your
 product and then help tell stories with that. Yeah, I love it. So I'm sure, like you just
 mentioned, the organic with PGA tour. I mean, is there anything you can talk about? I mean,
 I'm not asking you for like numbers of, but I'm assuming this is a, this is a paid agreement
 between Woop and PGA on some level. Or are they, but you're also giving them data. I mean,
 there's a lot, there's a fairly equal, not equal, but there's a mutual exchange happening there
 for both them and you, not to mention, you know, so maybe start there, but the COVID aspect,
 which was just fascinating with Nick Watney this past summer, in the notion of the advanced data
 you guys are getting with these things are now leading to potential, if not early, real time,
 you know, signals that someone might have COVID. I know that was kind of a dual question there,
 but anything more specific you can say around the PGA agreement, you know, as far as, you know,
 how that will work and things like that. Well, our PGA tour relationship probably goes back
 a couple years now where, you know, we discovered that about 50% of the PGA tour was organically
 wearing the product and the way that I would discover that is just by watching golf on the
 weekend, and I would see it on their other risks. And so I got to know a bunch of the players in
 that process and then COVID hits and golf says it wants to be one of the first sports that comes
 back. And Nick Watney, who is one of the professional golfers who had worn loop for a long time,
 tests negative for COVID-19 on a Tuesday, the tournaments on a Thursday,
 he plays in the tournament on Thursday, wakes up on Friday and looks at his Woop data, right? So he
 looks in the Woop app and he sees that his recovery is incredibly low. Recovery is like this metric we
 give from 0 to 100% red yellow green. He's got a red recovery, which means his body's really run
 down. And he also had something on Woop, which is called an elevated respiratory rate.
 So what is that? Respiratory rate is a measurement of breaths per minute. So, you know,
 most people have, on average, about 10 to 20 breaths per minute while they're sleeping.
 And it's a very static statistic. It really doesn't change. So Nick Watney, if you looked at his
 data for 10 months, every single day, he would wake up with a respiratory rate of 14. It's a very
 boring statistic. It doesn't change. However, this morning, he wakes up with this red recovery
 and a respiratory rate of 18 and a half breaths per minute. So for 10 months, no change. And then
 all of a sudden, it's 18 and a half breaths per minute. And we had just published all this research
 showing that an elevated respiratory rate could be a predictor of COVID-19. Now,
 that's quite a statement. Why would we say that? Well, we had thousands of Woop members get tested
 for COVID-19. And we saw that the ones who tested positive all had this elevated respiratory
 rate. And in fact, an elevated respiratory rate caught about 80% of the cases who of these
 Woop members who got COVID-19. Now, this is published research. It's been peer-reviewed. I encourage
 listeners to look it up. So we have this peer-reviewed research that shows an elevated respiratory
 rate can be a predictor of COVID-19. And Nick Watney sees that he has this super elevated respiratory
 rate. Now, just to be clear, why does it matter that you have an elevated respiratory rate? COVID-19
 is a lower respiratory tract infection. So it makes all the sense in the world that if you have a
 lower respiratory tract infection, your respiratory rate would go way up. Anyway, Nick goes to see the
 doctors on this morning, instead of playing in the tournament, he says, look, I think I should be
 tested again. They say, you're clear to play. He says, no, I've got an elevated respiratory rate
 on Woop. They say, what is Woop? Okay, you can figure it. And so anyway, they test him again.
 What is this group we're talking about? Who are you out with last night?
 So they test him again and sure enough, he tests positive and he's able to drop out of the
 tournament. And within 24 hours of the PGA tour learning of this story from Nick and the background,
 they procured a thousand Woop straps, not just for every player on the tour, but also for
 every caddy, every media member, everyone in the bubble. Because again, if you're creating a bubble,
 you want to have everyone as safe as possible. So that was this summer. And then over the course of
 the past six months, we started talking about what would be a partnership that could one benefit
 player help, but two also help elevate the Woop brand and do some things around fan engagement
 that baby unique. And that's where we came up with this idea of Woop live. And Woop live is essentially
 our brand name for putting physiological data on videos. So you can do this in the Woop app even if
 you go to the camera, you can put your heart rate, you can put your calories, you can put your
 strain in real time on top of a video. And so we got thinking about, well, what if you were
 watching golf in real time, and you could see Rory McElroy's heart rate as he's putting on 18,
 or you could see what was happening inside his body during a high pressure moment.
 And so that's where we came up with this idea of Woop live and we're going to have a lot more
 to come with it. Hopefully the marketers listening to this can appreciate how fun of an idea it is.
 Yeah, and so it's a five-year deal and a lot of it comes down to improving
 player health and performance and creating Woop live, which we think is going to improve the broadcast
 experience and improve the fan experience. Yeah, that's awesome. And yeah, we'll see.
 You'll probably be a whole, I can just think of the applications of who's got the lowest heart rate
 over the most critical puts. You know, I bet you it's, you know, Brant's net occurs. One of the
 really good putters, they probably just have like a flat line heart rate or something. I don't know.
 Yeah, I mean, I don't know either, but it's intriguing. It's very intriguing.
 One of the interesting things about COVID was, you know, they started showing all these replays
 of old sporting events. And, you know, you're watching the Masters in 1997 or the Super Bowl in
 the early 2000s or whatever. And I remember thinking to myself, like, gosh, this is over 20 years ago.
 And how can I tell that it's over 20 years ago versus the broadcast today?
 And really the only difference, I mean, the only meaningful difference is the resolution of
 the camera. And if you think about how much our world has changed in the last 20 years,
 you know, doesn't that seem kind of underwhelming? Very. And I think professional sports broadly has
 gone through this, this sort of crazy bull run. You know, you bought a sports team, it went up.
 You're a player, point guard, all star in 2010 versus 2020, you're now making more money, right?
 It's like, everything's just been up until the right. And so when your winning innovation comes
 more slowly, right? And I think what's what's about to happen, and we're starting to see this with
 some serious rating declines for certain sports leagues. But we're starting to see is the evidence
 that there is a younger generation coming up that is glued to their phones. I mean, a lot of
 generations are glued to their phones. But pro sports today are competing with TikTok,
 Netflix, sleep, you know, like they're competing with things that that 20 years ago maybe they
 weren't competing with the same way. And I mean, you know, those things barely existed 20 years ago.
 You know, in the case of at least TikTok and some of these other social platforms. So I just
 think that you're going to need to see pro sports adapt and innovate in a way that they haven't.
 And I think, you know, the leagues that do are going to continue to thrive. And I think that, you
 know, in the next 10 years, we may see a major sports league disappear. You know, if they don't
 innovate, you know, I think I think there could be real trouble ahead. Yeah, baseball might be on
 that list. I mean, it's talk about just the speed of the game. And you know, golf is playing with
 that too. And I think that's why it's brilliant to be integrating things like this that make it more
 interesting. The data points, the live aspect, because you know, golf is the biggest complaint for
 non players watchers is just the speed of the game as well. So they're doing things like this that
 make a ton of sense for making that a more engaging experience because look, there's only so much you
 can do to speed up the game. So you've got to add interesting things that make the engagement,
 you know, more to the attention spans of today. And let's face it when in the TikTok world,
 we live in for a younger audience that spans, I think exactly 8.7 seconds. Maybe less.
 Yeah, yeah. So anyway, that's, you know, I hope we can play a role in that innovation. But I'm also
 a sportsman. So I hope that I hope that all the leagues are thinking right now, like what can we do
 differently and and taking that very seriously? Well, as we close out, Will, and I appreciate your time
 on this. But where are we going? I mean, you know, obviously, you were way ahead of the game. It's
 landing perfect for you with being in the position you are with not that anyone's wishing for a
 pandemic by any means. I know that. But your position, well, because there's just more overall awareness
 of health and recovery and all these things. And it's obviously the benefits that Will pass with
 identifying maybe some of those markers. So again, being an innovative company, though, what's
 the in game for you? Maybe with both the business and for yourself personally? And I know that's
 a loaded statement, maybe not in game. But, you know, where do we want to see things go?
 You know, I do think that will has the opportunity to be like a massive stand-alone business
 much bigger even than we are today. And I think a lot of our
 responsibility is going to be helping individuals understand and improve their health. And it's
 it's no easy thing to change behavior. It really isn't. And it's and it's certainly
 no easy thing to improve health. But, you know, we as society are realizing from a global pandemic
 that feelings are kind of overrated. You know, you can have this virus and be asymptomatic and give
 it to a loved one and it gets that person incredibly sick and God forbid they die, right? And so,
 I think, you know, I think everyone's sort of waking up to this realization that feelings
 are overrated. And in fact, there may be things that you can measure about your body that can
 help you understand the status of your body. You think about the health care system today. It costs
 a fortune. And it's so inefficient. For example, should I go see a doctor on a random day of the
 year? Or should I go see a doctor 30 minutes before something's about to happen? You know, I mean,
 to me, everything around medicine and health care improves when it's preventative versus
 curative. All the cost reductions are optimized around preventative care. And so I think wearable
 technology can play a huge role in preventing on the preventative side of this and creating awareness.
 And then when something does have been providing that alert. So you'll see over time,
 we'll play a much bigger role in health broadly. And there's a lot of horrible things that have come
 from this global pandemic. But one positive I would take from it is that I think society at large
 is now taking a very close look at the health care system, at broad health awareness.
 And it's saying, yeah, this is something we really need to get right over the next decade.
 I love it. So what about you personally? I mean, you know, like, do you see,
 are you in the, is this the brand? Or is this, you know, you never could really see Steve Jobs
 disconnected from Apple. I mean, is Will Ahmed and Woop? And, you know, do you see this being the
 forever ride? Or do you have like, are you a good, you see yourself being a serial entrepreneur?
 Well, I'm someone who's all in until I'm not. So, you know, right now it's all in on Woop.
 It's making Woop the biggest success it can be. It's certainly a mission I'm incredibly passionate
 about. It's working with a group of people. I'm incredibly passionate about
 and who I think are exceptionally brilliant. And look, I got to keep growing too, you know,
 12 months ago Woop had 100 employees. Today we've got 375, right? The role of a CEO for 100 people
 versus 375 is different. And I know we're going to blink and, you know, probably be at 700 or 1000.
 So, you know, I have to make sure I can keep growing. And so that's exciting too.
 I love it. And, you know, I think you're blending what you're searching for, which is this humility
 combined with an intensity that I feel. And I think you're going to get where you plan to go.
 And I really appreciate you coming on, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO. Tell everyone, Will, if they
 want to keep up with you and the brand, obviously, all those locations where they could find you.
 Yeah, you can learn more about Woop just at Woop.com that's w-o-o-p.com.
 You can find me on social media at Will Ahmed. And then at Woop as well. And I also host a podcast
 where I interview, you know, interesting athletes, entrepreneurs, CEOs, you name it.
 And that's the Woop podcast. And you can find that as well on everywhere podcasts are hosted.
 Man, really appreciate it. And really appreciate the time. It's the big things for Woop.
 I'm going to keep track in my HRV and hopefully getting that up. It seems to fluctuate a bit,
 but it all seems to come back to my five-and-a-half hours of sleep, which needs to get up as well.
 Keep that HRV high. Keep the respiratory rate flat. Keep the sleep disturbances low. You got it all gone.
 I know. I'm going to keep doing it. Well, I want to follow up with you in the next day.
 You went from 100 to 375. And let's follow up in the next day to 12 months and see where we're at then.
 Okay, that sounds good. Ryan, I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me on.
 Thanks, Will. All right, guys. We really appreciate Will coming on today. You know where to find
 everything, the radcast. That's the radcast.com at the.rad.cast on Instagram. And you know where to find me on
 Instagram at Ryanofford. And we really appreciate you listening in. And we'll see you next time.
 Yo, guys, what's up, Ryanofford here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it.
 Do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the radcast, you need to share the word with a friend
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 Let's get your business going. 864. 729-3680. We'll see you next time.