All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
00:01:54 · Will Ahmed, Jason Calacanis
[00:01:54] S0: Yeah. So Whoop, we build wearable technology to improve performance and health. I've been building this company now for fourteen years. It was founded in in 2012. And I think like, a lot of maybe overnight success stories, it took a very long time to be an overnight success. You know, it took about twelve years for us to get to a million members and then another eighteen months or so to 2,000,000, about six months to 3,000,000, and and we expect to end the year around 4,000,000 members. [00:02:26] S1: 4,000,000 members. And, hey. Listen. I'll I'll tell people right out. The service at first seems expensive because I think it's like $40 a month, $30 a month. Am I am I in the approximate range or... What do I spend? 300 a year on this? [00:02:40] S0: Depending on what plan you're on, it's anywhere from 15 to $30 a month. [00:02:44] S1: I'm on the top top plan with the top top sensor. But you took a very thoughtful approach to saying we're gonna go for subscriptions, and we're gonna take out the cost of the device. So you don't have this cost losing the device anxiety. So take me to that decision. And to be totally honest, for a dollar a day, I think this is, one of the best things you could spend on your health or or even less than a dollar a day. But take me through that decision as a business to go with $30 a month.
00:03:11 · Will Ahmed
[00:03:11] S0: Yeah. Thank you. It's a unique business model. And in 2017, we had launched to consumers. It was a one time fee, $500. At that point in the company's history, we had really built Whoop as like a performance brand. You know? It was known amongst the best athletes in the world, and and we worked with all these sports teams. And we said, okay. We're gonna go to consumers and and target, you know, an athletic and fitness enthusiast audience. And over the course of the next twelve months of having that product in market, we really observed two things. The first is that people who bought Whoop would wear it for a long time. And that's always been a challenge in the wearables industry around drop off rates and engagement. And fortunately for Whoop, that's been a strength of our of our product. But then the other thing we observed was that not that many people were buying the product. So we still had a sales problem. And because the engagement was so high, we asked ourselves, well, is there a business model here where the entry price is lower so people can get introduced to Whoop? And if they fall in love with the product, then over time, it can be a good business for Whoop too. And I think that immediately created all kinds of of growth for Whoop back in two thousand eighteen and nineteen, and we quickly became a recurring revenue business versus a hardware business, which, of course, is more attractive to investors. And then, you what I underestimate is how much it changed our DNA because when you're a subscription business, you become really obsessed with your existing members, arguably more so even the new members. And so it's all about innovation cycles and continuing to rapidly improve the product and obsess over the member experience.
00:04:52 · Jason Calacanis
[00:04:52] S1: See, this is, I think, a critical observation for founders who might be watching. When you're selling widgets, you know, you're... It's about distribution and, you know, marketing. But once you get a subscriber, hey, they're your customer next month and the following month and the following year. So you start obsessing about churn and engagement. Right? The metrics kinda shift. Right?
00:05:15 · Will Ahmed
[00:05:15] S0: Yeah. Totally. You get you get very focused on user engagement, how often people are are using your product. You get focused on how effective it is. You know, how... Are you actually driving behavior change and and health improvement? It it changed our hardware cycles as well. So when you're a hardware business, you're incentivized to ship new hardware every 12 months whether or not it's actually innovative because you always need that next dollar from a hardware sale. And, also, when you're a pure hardware company, you're you're not incentivized to be innovating on top of that existing product, right, because you wanna convince people to buy the next thing. And for us, we're actually... We're the opposite incentives. We wanna launch hardware when it's really innovative and it's a step function better. And and then we're really focused on trying to continue to update the the membership and the subscription. So, you know, someone who joined, I don't know, eighteen months ago may not have known they were gonna have ECG monitoring or A fib detection or advanced labs, which is now the blood work feature that we have in the app or HealthSpan, which, you know, tells you your Whoop age and is a whole longevity feature, blood pressure insights, which is a new capability that allows people to to look at their blood pressure every day. So these are all examples of new features that we've brought to market with hardware that's in market.
00:06:40 · Jason Calacanis
[00:06:40] S1: Yeah. And what that does is you get over the issue we have with Apple products, which is, like, you're taking on as Whoop the responsibility for telling me when to upgrade and why I should upgrade, but it's not like some high pressure thing like your iPhone cycle where they're constantly, you know, pressuring you to upgrade so they can make the money on the hardware. Now let's talk about the innovation inside the software. And, you know, I've used everything, Fitbit, which is, I guess, Google Health now, Apple Watch. I've had all of it, Aura, over many, many years. And I settled on Whoop. Why did I settle on Whoop? Well, I thought your software actually, which was hard for me to get my head around at first because you have this recovery score, you have the sleep score, you have stress. But... And then there's this journal feature. It was a little complex for me compared to the other products, but ultimately, what I found was it gave me more value once I committed to the product. So what is committing to the product mean? I think if you put in and you fill out the journal every day or just, you know, a couple times a week, you get much more out of it. So let me have you explain what the most important metrics are here. Heart rate variability, the recovery score, high stress sleep, etcetera. And then and and then work me into, like, some of the the the features around journaling and why that's important.
00:08:11 · Will Ahmed, Jason Calacanis
[00:08:11] S0: Yeah. The three main pillars on Whoop are around sleep, recovery, and strain. And so most people start their day by looking at how well they slept last night, and that'll be everything from our sleep score to their sleep consistency. Do they go to bed and wake up at the same time? Your hours of sleep. So how many of those hours were quality sleep versus the time that you just spent in bed trying to sleep? How much was restorative? Slow wave sleep, REM sleep, you know, a pretty deep understanding of your body's overall circadian rhythm and how well you're sleeping. And then ultimately, your recovery score, which is red, yellow, green, zero to a 100%. By the way, I'm I'm pretty pumped about mine today. I want you to know I'm ready for you. [00:08:55] S1: Oh, man. 93%. Hold on a sec. [00:08:58] S0: I I just had to show you that. [00:09:00] S1: 93% is pretty good. [00:09:01] S0: That's pretty strong for [00:09:03] S1: me. That's very strong. For me, not so good. I'm on a 67. [00:09:08] S0: Okay. But you got a green dial. [00:09:10] S1: Those I got green dial. And my sleep is 83%. [00:09:13] S0: Yeah.