Ryan Hashemi
@ryanhashemi_
Will Ahmed built the $1B company that forever changed fitness tracking.
Whoop is the only product the greats like Lebron & Ronaldo put on their bodies.
Amazon tried to steal their product, and 100+ investors laughed them out of the room.
If you care about building a brand, this one's for you:
WHOOP isn't just disrupting wearables.
They're redefining human performance:
1. The Harvard breakthrough Silicon Valley overlooked
2. Why LeBron & Phelps became early believers
3. How data turned into a $3.6B revolution
Even Amazon couldn't copy their playbook. Here's why: 👇
In 2011, Will Ahmed was Harvard's top squash player when everything crashed.
3 straight losses at peak fitness.
No answers from doctors.
No data from tech.
His obsession with understanding human performance would disrupt Silicon Valley.
So Will went deep. Really deep.
500 research papers.
Countless sleepless nights.
One breakthrough paper of his own.
He discovered something no one was talking about: HRV
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) wasn't just another metric. It was the master key to human performance.
2015: WHOOP launches their first product.
A $500 subscription-based device that:
- Had no screen
- Skipped notifications
- Only tracked recovery
"You're going against Apple with this?"
100+ investors walked away. The company burned through cash fast.
Will's genius move?
While others chased mass market, he targeted pro athlete trainers—the gatekeepers who could spot game-changing tech instantly.
They saw what Silicon Valley missed: recovery data was worth millions.
The strategy worked like magic:
LeBron's trainer loved it. Then LeBron got hooked.
Phelps and Ronaldo followed.
But the real breakthrough?
Athletes wanted to own their health data.
In an industry that treats bodies like commodities, WHOOP gave power back to players.
Their tech left others behind:
- 100x more daily data than competitors
- 1000x faster sampling
- Works during intense workouts
The secret? Advanced PPG sensors even hospitals trust for sleep data.
2017: WHOOP hit rock bottom.
Investors weren't buying in.
Cash was burning fast.
Then came 2018's boldest bet in fitness tech:
- Killed the $500 price tag
- Gave away the device for free
- Charged $30/month for insights
The pivot that changed everything.
And the pivot also unlocked something massive:
Their health database exploded:
- 50-100MB of data per person daily
- 24/7 monitoring across all metrics
- Real-time HRV tracking during sleep
- Medical-grade accuracy in a wristband
Silicon Valley never saw it coming.
And the cultural impact went beyond tech:
"WHOOP strain" became fitness vocabulary.
CrossFit made it official wearable.
PGA Tour players swear by it.
Even NFL changed rules:
First wearable allowed in-game.
First time players owned their health data.
WHOOP shifted the entire performance narrative:
From: "Track your steps"
To: "Optimize your life"
What started with elite athletes created a new category of consumers:
High-performers obsessed with data driven optimization.
Like @bryan_johnson using Whoop to track his sleep performance.
The real genius? WHOOP isn't selling a device. They're selling elite performance.
While Apple tracks steps, WHOOP users are:
- Optimizing recovery like LeBron
- Managing stress like CEOs
- Understanding sleep like pro athletes
Marketing masterclass.
WHOOP's also quietly dominating longevity:
Their user data shows younger generations care more about lifespan than fitness.
Even Gen Z WHOOP users optimize for:
- Better REM cycles
- Higher sleep efficiency
- Lower strain scores
Silicon Valley missed this completely.
From a marketer's lens, WHOOP's real asset isn't tech:
It's millions of high-performance stories waiting to be told:
- Elite athlete breakthroughs
- CEO stress management
- Real longevity data
- Performance transformations
A content goldmine no one's tapped.
Thanks for making it to the end. Here's a little more about me:
- I grew Jubilee to $8-figures/year (10M subs, 5B views)
- I advise top brands on YT like @netflix & @ProcterGamble
- I'm an Emmy-nominated producer (Film & TV).
I now run Snowball & develop content mastery for the world's biggest brands.
