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For the better part of a decade, Whoop sold itself as a secret weapon for serious athletes. LeBron James was convinced to slap on the company\u2019s fitness band in Whoop\u2019s first year. Michael Phelps came soon after. Other Whoop wearers include Cristiano Ronaldo, Patrick Mahomes, and Rory McIlroy. The message to the public? The world\u2019s best performers track their bodies with this device, and you can, too.<\/p>\n
It has worked. Whoop, the Boston-based health wearable company that Will Ahmed founded in his senior year at Harvard, now operates in more than 200 countries, and, according to Ahmed, grew revenue more than 100% last year, as well as reached cash-flow positive. The hardware \u2014 a band worn around the wrist, bicep, or torso \u2014 measures sleep, recovery, heart rate variability, and a growing list of biomarkers. The subscription model, which bundles hardware and software for between $200 and $360 a year \u2014 the device itself included, with no separate purchase required\u2014 has proven remarkably sticky: 83% of monthly active users open the app on any given day, a ratio that Ahmed says trails only WhatsApp.<\/p>\n
The next chapter is a harder sell.<\/p>\n
Ahmed, 36, wants Whoop to be less of a performance tool and more of a life-saving one \u2014 a continuous health monitor that doesn\u2019t just help you recover from a hard workout, but one day tells you, unprompted, that you\u2019re about to have a heart attack and need to get to a hospital.<\/p>\n
The company has already launched medically cleared features including ECG monitoring and atrial fibrillation detection \u2014 a capability that flags an irregular heartbeat that can lead to stroke \u2014 and what it calls blood pressure \u201cinsights,\u201d which Ahmed says makes Whoop the first wearable to offer the feature.<\/p>\n
The FDA challenged that last one in a warning letter last summer, arguing the feature constituted medical diagnosis rather than wellness monitoring; Whoop said the FDA was \u201coverstepping its authority,\u201d and kept building. <\/p>\n
Today, a blood testing partnership with Quest Diagnostics \u2014 which has over 2,000 U.S. locations \u2014 lets members take a blood test and upload their biomarkers directly into the app, where a clinician reviews the results alongside their Whoop data. A feature called Health Span calculates your biological age. Ahmed says it has become the company\u2019s most popular feature since its launch in May of last year.<\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> The device itself has no screen, no notifications, no step counter. The decision was strategic from the start. \u201cIf you have a screen, then you\u2019re a watch,\u201d he tells TechCrunch via a Zoom call. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re a watch, then you\u2019re competing with a lot of other watches, because people will never wear two watches.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only can Whoop be worn alongside whatever watch you already own, he suggests, it can be tucked away entirely, a sensor slipped into a bicep sleeve, a sports bra, or a pair of shorts, disappearing into your clothing. It\u2019s probably safe to say the overwhelming majority of Whoop\u2019s customers want to wear the band as a fashion statement, but when asked directly, Ahmed offers that the company\u2019s apparel line, launched in 2021, grew 70% last year.<\/p>\n But Whoop isn\u2019t alone in moving beyond its roots to wanting to pull everyone into the tent. Oura, the Finnish company behind the smart ring that has become Whoop\u2019s most direct rival, has built a large and loyal following of its own \u2014 largely among the kind of high-performing professionals who approach their bodies with the same rigor they bring to their work. <\/p>\n Oura\u2019s model works differently. Customers buy the ring outright for around $350, then pay roughly $70 a year to access the platform. When I spoke with Oura chief product officer Dorothy Kilroy last fall<\/a>, she said retention at the 12-month mark was hitting the high 80s, a remarkable figure for any wearable, most of which quickly wind up in a drawer.<\/p>\n Both companies now say women are their fastest-growing segment, and last fall they announced blood-testing partnerships within<\/a> one day<\/a> of each other \u2014 a coincidence that neither side was eager to discuss.<\/p>\n Whoop\u2019s numbers still reflect where it started. Though Ahmed is circumspect about sharing too many figures publicly, he says Whoop skews more male than female. He also says the business is now roughly evenly split between the U.S. and the rest of the world \u2014 a shift from just a few years ago. Whoop formally ships to 60 countries.<\/p>\n What has set Whoop apart, at least in its telling, is that its most famous users didn\u2019t have to be persuaded. The Australian Open earlier this year instructed players including Carlos Alcaraz to remove their Whoop bands mid-tournament, despite the device having been approved by the International Tennis Federation. The players pushed back. Though Whoop has brand ambassadors \u2014 Aryna Sabalenka is one \u2014 others like Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, both of whom wear Whoops under their wristbands, simply didn\u2019t want to take them off.<\/p>\n \u201cIt created a whole set of media outrage,\u201d Ahmed says a little gleefully of the resulting coverage, \u201cand further spotlighted the fact that all these very talented people are just organically wearing Whoop because of the value it provides.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahmed is careful to protect it. The company has a long-standing policy against giving athletes equity in exchange for wearing the band. His reasoning? If they like the product, they\u2019ll wear it regardless. Formal partnerships with Ferrari, the PGA Tour, and UCI mountain biking work differently; they\u2019re about putting the brand in front of larger audiences who share the same sensibility.<\/p>\n Oura, by the way, is doing the same math. Founded just one year after Whoop, the company is widely reported to be exploring an IPO. If Oura goes public first, it sets the financial benchmarks \u2014 revenue multiples, growth rates, retention metrics \u2014 against which Whoop will be measured. Whoop currently employs around 750 people and is in the middle of hiring 600 more.<\/p>\n Ahmed gives little away on the subject. \u201cIf we focus on building great technology and growing our business,\u201d he says, \u201cwe\u2019re going to be happy with Whoop when we\u2019re a public company, independent from who goes public first.\u201d<\/p>\n He speaks throughout the conversation the way someone does when they\u2019ve thought carefully about what they should and shouldn\u2019t say. Ahmed was captain of the Harvard squash team and counts Ali Farag, who went on to become world number one, among his former teammates \u2014 though he\u2019s quick to note that proximity to greatness shouldn\u2019t be mistaken for greatness itself. <\/p>\n \u201cYou probably have the wrong impression of how good I am at squash on the basis of me being teammates with him,\u201d he jokes.<\/p>\n He started building what would become Whoop in 2011, reading hundreds of medical papers while studying economics and government, trying to solve a problem he\u2019d experienced firsthand: overtraining without any reliable way to measure its toll on his body.<\/p>\n Whoop isn\u2019t just Ahmed\u2019s first company. It has been his only full-time job. When I ask whether he\u2019d recommend that path to a founder sitting where he was in 2012, it\u2019s the question he answers most freely.<\/p>\n Starting a company is, for the right person with the right intentions, \u201cwithout question, the most extraordinary thing you can do in your career.\u201d But it is, he adds, \u201ca very painful experience to be an entrepreneur and to try to build something from scratch, and you have to have a reasonably high pain threshold that I think often gets lost in the glamour of fundraising announcements and milestones.\u201d You need to be, he says, \u201cmore obsessed with the problem you\u2019re solving than with the idea of being a founder.\u201d <\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t seem to have much doubt about which side of that line he\u2019s on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n