Flashback: Why Failure is a Path to Progress, with Will Ahmed of WHOOP

For Starters with Alexa von Tobel

As a D1 athlete, Will Ahmed became obsessed with the idea of recovery. How do you unlock human performance, and what data would you need to do so? This interest led to the creation of WHOOP, the next gen wearable technology. Will started WHOOP in 2012, immediately after graduating from Harvard College. Since then, he's raised over $100M in funding, saw 7x member growth in the last year alone, and has been worn by the likes of Lebron James and Michael Phelps. Will shares how the product was born out of his own over-training as an athlete, why he believes WHOOP is fundamentally a data company, and why the most important part of being a CEO is figuring out who to listen to—and when.

Note: This episode was recorded in early March, just as the Covid-19 outbreak took hold of the U.S. Since then, WHOOP has been leveraging their data to aid in health research.

Original Air Date: 4-16-2020