00:00I'm a longtime whoop wearer. I'm on a 390 day streak right now and it's nice to see your valuation
00:06up to more than 10 billion. That's around the same I noticed as Aura. And so I'm wondering what you
00:12think about what must be your biggest competitor. I mean is there room in this space for two powerful companies
00:20or is this you know winner take all scenario. Well thanks for having me on Matt and thanks for being
00:25a longtime whoop member. I appreciate that. You know if I if I actually just look
00:29back over the last decade because I founded whoop in 2012. So I've been building this company for 14 years.
00:35There's been an enormous number of players in the space over the years. In the early days you had you
00:41know big wearable or big sports apparel brands excuse me. So you had the Nike Under Armour Adidas Puma crowd.
00:48You then had entries from the tech market. So you had Microsoft and Google and Intel and Amazon met. And
00:57so there's been a lot of players I would say broadly
00:59in the wearable space. Today there's actually maybe the fewest number of players that I've seen in the last five
01:05years. And yet the wearables market has grown enormously. You know when I first started the company I think less
01:11than 5 million wearables were sold a year. Now that figure is 300 to 400 million devices a year and
01:17continues to grow. So we're very excited about where the company's positioned. And we think we're still in the early
01:23days despite the maturity of the business.
01:25So you know I'm obviously a customer and so many people here around me are customers. Do they stay? Do
01:32we stay? Are you are you retaining customers? Those that have 12 month subscriptions? Are they going to 24? Are
01:39they renewing?
01:40Well we recently actually launched three membership tiers. So it used to be you can sign up for $240 a
01:46year. Now there's a lower plan and a higher plan. $360 a year for Whoop Life.
01:51And we've actually seen an overwhelming number of people migrate from our middle tier to our highest tier.
01:55And that demonstrates I think that our members are willing to pay for enhanced features, premium capabilities, an additional medical
02:03sensing portfolio that we've rolled out. So now Whoop has ECG monitoring with AFib detection.
02:09We've come out with blood pressure insights which were the first wearable to do. We recently launched advanced labs which
02:16is blood testing. So overwhelmingly we see our members wanting to invest more in their health with Whoop.
02:21They're buying additional services. They're buying additional services. They're moving up in their membership tier. And then in addition to
02:26that we have some of the best user engagement in all of health.
02:30Our members are opening the Whoop app eight times a day which is pretty extraordinary user engagement. We have an
02:3683% Dow-Mow ratio which I believe is second only to WhatsApp in terms of how often people are
02:43using and engaging with the product.
02:44So it really speaks to I think the value that we've been able to create and the fact that our
02:49members are in fact improving their health.
02:52I think about all this stuff that you can do and I see the labs myself as well and the
02:58blood pressure monitoring.
03:00You can not predict but you can see whether you're in line for a stroke or a heart attack.
03:07Is this a fitness company or is it like a clinical diagnostics tool?
03:12Well we want to build the most powerful personal health platform in the world and we see that as an
03:17evolution from fitness and sports which is our origins to now working very broadly across health and medical capabilities.
03:26You know two of our investors in this latest financing were Mayo Clinic and Abbott.
03:31Mayo Clinic of course being one of the best health institutions in the entire world and we're going to be
03:36announcing a lot of research with the Mayo Clinic.
03:39And Abbott of course being one of the best medical device makers in the world and we're going to be
03:43announcing more with them as well.
03:45And so I think this overall financing really shows the past and the history of Whoop with the athletes coming
03:51in.
03:52Cristiano Ronaldo, Rory McIlroy, now LeBron James as well as the future of Whoop with many of these health strategics.
03:59You need to get some squash players.
04:01You need to sponsor some squash players here.
04:03Well we love squash.
04:04I've played squash my entire life.
04:06Ali Farag, former world number one, is a good friend and a Whoop member so we'll do more in squash.
04:12You are cash flow positive.
04:14I mean you're making money.
04:15So why raise this additional half a billion dollars plus now?
04:21Well we want to accelerate a lot of the work that we're doing.
04:23We think the opportunity to own health monitoring and integrate deeply into the healthcare system is now just completely up
04:31for grabs.
04:31And there's only a few players in the market and we really want to attack the opportunity.
04:36So we're going to be leaning in on research and development.
04:38We've announced that we're hiring 600 roles this year really across every single function.
04:44So we're actually growing our headcount 80 percent which seems to be a counter narrative move right now.
04:49And then we're also growing internationally.
04:52So we've brought in some really great strategic investors from around the world.
04:56Sovereign wealth funds like QIA and 2.0 and Mubadala and others.
05:01And we're going to be investing heavily in growth around the world.
05:05How can you put AI to work?
05:07And I know you already have an AI assistant on your platform.
05:10Obviously I'm on there many times a day.
05:12But how much do you think it can be improved?
05:16Well I think ultimately Whoop will either make you healthier or it will save your life.
05:22And those are really the two areas of development for Whoop.
05:25And as we think about coaching and alerting those are the two areas that we're investing in.
05:31And so we do believe that AI sitting on top of all of this data is going to be able
05:36to deliver value in those categories.
05:37I think it's inevitable that a huge percentage of humanity will be continuously wearing a health monitor.
05:43And it's going to make you healthier or it's going to save your life one day.
05:46Will you go public before that?
05:48I mean I think I read series G right?
05:50We're getting pretty far along in the alphabet.
05:53When is the IPO planned for?
05:54Well we still see it on the horizon of 18 to 24 months.
05:58You know fortunately Whoop's operating cash flow positive.
06:01We've just added 575 million to our balance sheet.
06:04So we've got a very strong balance sheet and it allows us to be I think really thoughtful and control
06:10our destiny en route to IPO.
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