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The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

E189: Whoop Founder: How I Built A $3.6 BILLION Company & BEAT Apple! Will Ahmed

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.613.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2022

⏱️ 107 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Will Ahmed is the founder of Whoop, the fitness monitoring app worn by LeBron James and Michael Phelps, and which goes toe to toe with Apple, Google and Amazon. Will is the classic example that business and entrepreneurial drive follow on from being obsessed with a problem. After repeatedly getting injured in his college sports career, Will became obsessed with understanding his own body. He read over five hundred medical papers and realised the product he was pining for didn’t exist, so he invented it. Will has one of the most original perspectives on how to bring your personality to your business that we’ve ever seen. Employees at Whoop get a bonus if their sleep is good, and the company is ruthless in its priorities to make sure it’s only focused on a couple of things at a time. All of this means Whoop has some of the best wearable tech on the market, despite only a fraction of the resources of its competitors. Topics: Early years What was it that made you obsessed with optimising performance? Are you a curious person? Your business becoming your identity How to stay calm in the chaos Did you have doubt in the early days? Co-founders The most difficult time for you Like style hacks - your day to day routines Heart rate variability Blue light blocking Strain on the body Employee sleep bonus How do you keep your innovative nature when growing Focusing Competition The importance of the right investors We both hate networking Listening to feedback with a different perspective Being counterintuitive Were you wrong about anything with Whoop? Offers to buy whoop Whats next The last guest question Will: https://bit.ly/3VX7chq Whoop: https://bit.ly/3F46h97 Wait list for The Diary - add your name here: bit.ly/3fUcF8q Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb Follow us on Telegram: https://g2ul0.app.link/E5re0ADNKsb Sponsors: Amex - https://bit.ly/3TATNKc Huel - https://g2ul0.app.link/G4RjcdKNKsb Mercedes-Benz - https://bit.ly/3yXTQI1 Craftd - https://g2ul0.app.link/gZ8in6Dsvsb

Transcript

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0:00.0

So two of our first hundred users were the Bronze and Michael Phelps.

0:03.5

I'm fucking ho.

0:04.7

At $3.6 billion company.

0:06.9

Wearable health and fitness comes from the founder of Weikwil on it.

0:11.3

You know Nike and Apple and a dozen other companies were entering the space.

0:16.2

But when it comes to health monitoring or the best game in town,

0:19.7

that really came from an insane level of focus in the beginning on what we were trying to solve.

0:24.5

One of the reasons Weikwil has been successful is there were a lot of counterintuitive

0:29.2

decisions along that journey.

0:31.2

One obvious one is that we're just saying I shall steal that.

0:35.3

It's worth emphasizing for your audience why that matters.

0:38.2

So there was a phase in building a loop where it was so much about the next milestone

0:45.6

that I was running almost exclusively on like a dopamine engine.

0:49.0

If the company has a great day, you're feeling like a rocket ship.

0:52.0

And if we was failing, I was failing.

0:54.1

What's the person who told on you in those moments that people don't see?

0:58.6

I was super stressed out. I was drinking too much.

1:01.6

And I remember I was driving my car and I'm on the highway and all of a sudden it's like your

1:06.6

peripheral vision starts narrowing on you and you feel your fingers and they're like numb.

1:12.5

I actually drove myself to the hospital and they do all these analysis.

1:17.5

I mean, it turns out I had a...

1:21.6

Without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett and this is the driver of a CEO.

...

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