"so two of our first hundred users were LeBron James and Michael Phelps [Music] Nike and apple and a dozen other companies were entering the space but when it comes to health monitoring we're the best ..."

"from an insane level of focus in the beginning on what we were trying to solve one of the reasons whoop has been successful is there were a lot of counter-intuitive decisions along that Journey one ob..."

"as you look back on your your life and you connect the dots that led you to to do what you've done now with whoop and your professional life um what are those dots well I I grew up on uh the North Sho..."

"things are very very unusual one of the first unusual things is I mean we all train we all a lot of people train and work out and stuff but we don't then fall into an obsession about how to optimize t..."

"me like that bothered me that I didn't I didn't fully understand what I was doing to my body what was what was the missing ingredient so to speak and I just sort of started pulling at that thread and ..."

"betrayal right because you're pushing yourself so hard to get stronger and fitter that you actually get to a place where you're completely broken down had I asked you at 14 years old say 14 16 years o..."

"at Harvard to most undergrads do you know different internships and whatnot after my freshman year I did an internship at a hedge fund my sophomore year I did an internship at an investment bank and m..."

"think it's fair I think it also stems from this uh ability to throw myself out there um you know back to how your childhood influences your your future uh there's there's a story I don't know if I eve..."

"yeah I'm gonna go around this and I don't even remember what happened in that race I don't even remember the captain's race uh which in some ways emphasizes his point but that whole thread of just sho..."

"read the quote from you that said you're an entrepreneur before you realized you were yeah that's true that books that narrative a little bit which I think entrepreneurs sometimes try and sell because..."

"company but once you make that commitment the learnings come in fast right and I'm sure you've experienced that yeah yeah yeah and I see it all the time especially in young people who um they're using..."

"telling and what role has that played that obsession with that with solving the problem and solving that challenge and your general interest in it what role has that played in your hardest times as in..."

"and conversely I'm sure you and I have both met Founders entrepreneurs who have watched their company go like this but meanwhile they're spinning out of control right and I think the faster that I cou..."

"it can't be that uh if the company has a great day you're feeling like a rocket ship and if the company's having a bad day you're feeling down and so a lot of my I think growth as an entrepreneur has ..."

"then about yeah about eight and a half years later when I sit here with CEOs who many of which have had panic attacks yeah funny funny enough um and they'd talk to me about meditation I always seem to..."

"get that you feel while you're meditating the more powerful benefit and this is what I meant about feeling certain stages of having done it is at least for me it started to feel like I had a third per..."

"changer 2014 you cite um in a few things you've you've spoken on um as being a very difficult year that's when you had as you said 20 to 30 employees you'd raise 20 million things were pretty crazy in..."

"in terms of having a strong perspective on what the world should look like when the technology is built and actually measuring all the things it needs to Super accurately I think building whoop was wa..."

"changed our business model on its head which was a bet the company moment you know and uh and so there were just a lot it was a lot yeah and I told you at 22 the next was 22 when you founded the compa..."

"you said team and we there co-founders yeah how important is that in hindsight because I feel like you don't find out the answer to how well you've chosen your co-founders until a couple of years in y..."

"that we were trying to do was so hard like inventing a wearable that could measure uh hurry variability as accurately as an electrocardiogram or raise Capital at a time that you know Nike e and apple ..."

"it you know I I think startups really only fail if the founders quit or you run out of money so like if you can overcome those two things you've got a pretty good shot and and so commitment's critical..."

"that's best for the company not like I came up with it so that would I think that's a pretty good starting point commitment intensity humility when you think about the the most difficult times so I kn..."

"done on that day and uh yeah I'm so glad I did I've been there I've been there for multiple payrolls I told this funny story about it being Payday on that day in the bank not our bank at the time not ..."

"challenges did you get anxiety through that period totally but I I also like I was able to build a whole lifestyle and process to approach um stress and I do think that success may come for people whe..."

"mean for the whole of my professional career yeah I just come I just Brave face it was like you would have no idea if it was the best day or the worst day because my face was the same so you got good ..."

"there I think about that all the time as like are you controlling all the controllables and often if you are or even just you know setting sitting down in your mind or even putting on paper hey what a..."

"well I've got my my workout clothes out I'll have the what I'm gonna wear to work the next day um I'll I'll probably have written down like two or three things that I'm gonna focus on the next day and..."

"um yeah and then I wake up and I'm like out the door really quick shower workout clothes got my stuff I always give my wife kisses before I leave that's like a nice relationship hack uh while she's wh..."

"happiness and so I end a hundred percent of showers that I take cold and as cold as possible the colder the better and then the the steam room aspect or the sauna aspect depending on where I am is uh ..."

"so it's a very powerful statistic it's a fascinating statistic and I'm mostly got like a lot more people are measuring it it seems to know us before we know ourselves to know how to describe it one of..."

"invincible I think covid-19 was a big wake-up call for people in that category right of um of feelings are overrated because here you have a virus that you can get that you don't feel you're not even ..."

"it's so exciting another conversation I've been having recently with a friend is about blocking out certain types of light I heard you do that yeah so uh blue light essentially what emits from a cell ..."

"but REM and slow wave sleep that's like where all the magic happens so REM sleep is when your mind is repairing cognitively it's when you'll have uh deep dreams so people who say they don't remember t..."

"about my entire life and the fun thing is you can optimize it like once you measure it you can manage it yeah I kept my girlfriend at the bed I said goodbye well you don't have to go yeah you don't ha..."

"the other time that I wasn't familiar with until I got away was this idea of strain I I'm gonna be honest I we talked a little bit before we started recording about my little fitness group yeah the wa..."

"and you also want to try to vary the in the The Strain level so if you're at a 50 recovery maybe you're doing a 10 if you're at a 75 recovery you're doing a 16 or 17 or an 18. and a lot of this goes b..."

"of all the of all the metrics that attract on the whoop is heart rate variability the one you love the most well on a personal level it was the thing that jumped off the page to me you know 10 years b..."

"quick one some of you may know we've got a brand new sponsor on this podcast American Express and you've got a brand new exclusive offer for a limited time only which I can't wait to tell you about fr..."

"company um the business you've built I heard that your employees that would get a bonus if their sleep is considered to be good on their whoop how much truth is there to that it's a fun uh it's a fun ..."

"when you talk about why your company has done so well and it has one you talk about there being a more Scrappy kind of nature to the team which sounds more like innovation how does one go about as you..."

"and it carried us through to today there were a lot of counter-intuitive decisions along that like along that Journey um one obvious one is that whoop is not a watch uh and I can't tell you how many p..."

"so that was something we did that other people didn't do right um everyone was measuring steps we didn't think steps was physiologically relevant so we we tried to stay true to our identity and I thin..."

"it as you've identified but those are all like first principles that came from whoop I think what what's different about your product is also what makes it special and I think that true Innovation oft..."

"I didn't know that so I could put up my boxer shorts lining yeah oh nice dope yeah now also kind of crazy to start a wearables company and realize you're designing boxers but that goes back to your fi..."

"the cost of like mental time for the whole team the cost of like everyone waking up and being in the shine thinking about a different problem and then we had a recent incidents where we spent I'm goin..."

"here this this Vision the focus how are you how are you teaching me that well a lot of it comes back to the core mission of the company right which is to unlock Human Performance to improve health a l..."

"I think rightfully so we have to earn their their subscription every month competition you've got some big competitors I mean I saw the I saw Apple's recent announcement that sleep is now going to be ..."

"but they took a huge shortcut and that shortcut was they just built a product they thought the mass Market would like and so it wasn't a product that LeBron James was going to wear or Serena Williams ..."

"it's interesting because I sat here with Scott Galloway earlier on and Scott talked to me about how once upon a time maybe 30 years ago um because of the way we learned about products and the lack of ..."

"authenticity that consumers gravitate to whether they're intentionally recognizing it or not and yeah for us that's been core to our identity we've had very unusual relationships with athletes and uh ..."

"it helped marginally if they accepted it yet but interestingly it was uh it was something that for a couple years did buy us time for for like building a real business was the fact that we could get a..."

"going well we have something in common which is you don't like networking it's my idea how that's good research that's how I know you're good at this I [ __ ] hate networking and then when I read you ..."

"is critical another piece of advice you gave to CEOs was this which I found fascinating which is there's a difference between hearing and listening what did you mean by that so back to some of the ear..."

"importance of humidity again doesn't it and why that's such an integral thing when you're hiring or picking co-founders you know I've also heard you say that um customers are really great at telling y..."

"and at the time that was super counter-intuitive but that again that word counter-intuitive seems to be come up over and over again when I read your story about being a contrarian and being counter-in..."

"might stop listening and you might you know oh it's worth noting that the level of conviction that we've talked about on certain things yeah is not a level of conviction that I feel like all the time ..."

"for everyone versus one of these segments and so there's there's certain aspects of the the rate at which we would help someone who's trying to lose weight versus someone who's trying to improve sleep..."

"that's for sure but look it goes back to some of the resolve of the of the company and the I think that the culture at whoop where we do feel kind of David versus Goliath we are comfortable with peopl..."

"I mean I don't want to be critical of them I think Amazon is a pretty amazing company and I'm sure has an enormous number of amazing people I think what what's inspired what inspired whoop in that mom..."

"of course about putting a line like that on a circuit board is the only person who's ever going to see that circuit board is someone who's trying to copy you so you know I think there's I think there'..."

"more and more people on the product as well it creates I think more and more momentum for it it's also a product that you see people wearing all the time so like everywhere I go I now see whoop which ..."

"monitoring is so profound that uh you know it determines a full-time my full-time attention for now we have a um tradition here where the previous guest asks a question for the next guest um they don'..."

"you get to this milestone and that has a that has a an important physiological effect in that it literally creates dopamine because you're anticipating this thing um but then when you get to that thin..."