All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
00:47:12 · Jason Calacanis, Will Ahmed
[00:47:12] S1: I love it. Alright. Listen. There's your hour with Will from Whoop. Great product. I give it my highest endorsement, Eight Sleep. I'm an investor in. I love that product too. Those are my two favorite health products. And, hey, at the time of this recording, you have a little announcement about the king. No. Not president Trump. Gotcha. Not king Trump. But LeBron James, now playing for the Philadelphia seventy sixers. Big announcement. Yeah? [00:47:42] S0: Well, we're we're announcing today LeBron James is now a global ambassador for Whoop. So he's been on Whoop interestingly for eleven years, And we never had any formal relationship with him. We loved that he wore the product. Frankly, it was it was really important in the early days that he did wear the product because he was one of the first 100 people to ever wear it. And so it was incredibly validating that this incredible athlete was willing to try a technology from an unknown company called Whoop. And and it gave us a lot of hope that we're onto something. But it's been an extraordinary to see his career over two decades plus, and he's the... He's really the the pinnacle of performance and and, like, longevity. And and so he joins a roster of ambassadors like Cristiano Ronaldo and Patrick Mahomes and Lewis Hamilton and Aryna Sabalenka and Nelly Korda, so on. So it's a great group.
00:48:40 · Jason Calacanis
[00:48:40] S1: Now you had a philosophy though early on. We talked about this in our previous discussions that, like, hey. You're not gonna pay athletes to wear it, you know, and you're not gonna beg them to wear it because they're the customers. They're they're the ICP, the ideal customer profile. So is this like a maybe a change in thinking, or is this like a unique one of one case? Hey. He's been on the product for eleven years without a formal relationship, and, you know, he's in that era now. He's gonna, you know, retire in a couple of years. Hey, man. He's probably gonna go into this Kobe Shack post playing era where where he gets in deep into business. So what what... What's the thinking here? And how do you think about athletes writ large?
00:49:18 · Will Ahmed, Jason Calacanis
[00:49:18] S0: I think in general, if your business is pre marketing, so to speak, like you're not in a stage where you're doing big television advertisements and so on and so forth, you should be really careful paying anyone to use your product. You know, you want people to love your product authentically. And in our case, it just so happened that early on, our target market was these professional athletes. And so we needed them to organically love the product. And by the way, because you have to wear it twenty four seven, there's no amount of money I'm gonna be able to pay an athlete to wear something twenty four seven if they don't like it. Right. So on the flip side, it was like, well, if it actually works and it's measuring their sleep and recovery and they play better, you know, they should wanna pay for it. So that was our attitude for a long time. And, you know, we had a number of these individuals who are best in class of their sport and global people that wanted to invest in the company because they loved it so much. Amazing. And from there, we also developed relationships where we could use their name, image, and likeness, which has a value associated with it [00:50:24] S1: Heck yes. [00:50:24] S0: That we recognize to be able to do advertising. And so, you know, they've been amazing partnerships and I'm very grateful that LeBron James is is part of, the Whoop roster. [00:50:36] S1: Wait. Are the players allowed to wear these during games? [00:50:40] S0: Something that's something the NBA is still looking at.
00:50:40 · Will Ahmed, Jason Calacanis
[00:50:40] S0: Something that's something the NBA is still looking at. [00:50:43] S1: Got it. Yeah. Because they're not allowed to wear jewelry. They've gotta take all that off because of injuries. So... But they could put it... Because you could wear it on your, armband. They could embed it in like a wrapper. So maybe some of them have snuck it on the court. Who knows? [00:50:55] S0: Well, you you probably saw the Australian Open stuff. [00:50:58] S1: No. I didn't. Tell me. [00:50:59] S0: Well, in... At the Australian Open, the tennis tournament [00:51:02] S1: Yeah. I don't watch tennis. [00:51:03] S0: Of players were asked to take their whoop off while they were playing. And it was, I think, in part because the Australian Open didn't know what they were wearing, but they were just wearing it, you know, under their armbands and everything else. And the ITF, is the International Tennis Federation, actually had approved Whoop to be worn in matches. [00:51:27] S1: Mhmm. [00:51:27] S0: So the Australian Open was kinda out of line. And then next thing you know, the other majors have come forward saying that wearables can be worn. So I think there's this sort of natural evolution of Yeah. Resisting it, safety checks. And by the way, they're they're right to wanna be restrictive about what can be worn. [00:51:45] S1: It's not a... I don't I don't think it's a safety thing if you're wrapping it around your your armband or something like that. I'll tell you [00:51:51] S0: I mean, obviously, I agree.
00:51:51 · Will Ahmed, Jason Calacanis
[00:51:51] S0: I mean, obviously, I agree. [00:51:52] S1: I'll tell you what's going on in background. Your your marketing department's probably getting shaken down. They're probably like, hey. You know, we'd love to have Whoop involved. It'd be terrible if something happened to an athlete wearing 1.2 ounces. But if you were to put a logo behind them for $10,000,000, well, we might have a different opinion. [00:52:10] S0: You know all the ins and outs. [00:52:12] S1: Alright. But it's not my first time at this rodeo. I know they shake down when I hear it. [00:52:18] S0: How how are how are things for you in in early stage venture? Are you are you starting to lead these billion dollar seed rounds, or you're you're staying true to the the accelerator model? [00:52:29] S1: You know, it's... Nobody wants to do year zero work. So I am leaned into that. [00:52:36] S0: Great. But
00:52:36 · Will Ahmed, Jason Calacanis
[00:52:36] S0: Great. But [00:52:37] S1: then, you know, at the end, we we have the syndicate and we have 4,000 members of it. And we would syndicate our early stage c deals. Hey. If you wanna get involved in this, you know, J. Cal's putting in a 100 k. You might wanna put in 5 k. They kept asking me, can you get me into zipline? Can you get me into WHOOP? Can you get me into SpaceX, Anthropic, whatever it is. So we started a late stage practice that we just started this year at the syndicate. Thanks for asking. And Great. We did we did zipline. We did icon homes, the three d printed homes. These are all billion dollar companies, $5,000,000,000 companies in vast space. So when I know the founder, the CFO gives its approval... Because you have to deal with this. Right? People doing off the books transactions and SPVs and buying out early employees and other, you know, early investors. You have to deal with some of this SPV madness? [00:53:20] S0: I'll say this. It's complicated when your business is failing, and it's complicated when your business is winning. So it's always complicated. [00:53:28] S1: I think just... My advice to everybody with these SPVs off the books, whatever, is just build a relationship with the CFO of the company and just get their blessing for it and let them know what you're doing. And if they really don't want you to do it, then you're gonna have to accept that. Right? Like, it's their company. I I don't like this idea of going behind the back of the company and