This $3.6B powerhouse of a brand almost did not exist.
100+ investors laughed them out of the room.
Amazon desperately tried to copy them out of business.
Now? The world's best athletes refuse to train without it.
Here's the wild story no one's telling: 🧵
While others chased step counts, WHOOP unlocked human performance data worth billions.
Amazon's copycat attempt failed so badly Will now inscribes "don't bother copying us" inside each device.
Dive into their journey & the untapped content goldmine that'll become their true $30B MOAT.
In 2011, Will Ahmed was Harvard's top squash player when everything crashed.
Sudden 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.
That pivot unlocked something massive:
The cost barrier to entry, in getting the product, became almost nothing.
AND every time Whoop upgraded the device, the new one comes free + users can gift the old one to try for free.
That's how I got hooked 6 years ago!
Way more users = way more data = better insights.
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.
As a creator, I think WHOOP's sitting on content gold no one's mining:
It's not their tech—it's millions of human performance stories waiting to be told.
Elite athletes breaking limits. Real-time longevity transformations.
I see a $30B opportunity nobody's talking about.
Here's a show I'd pitch to WHOOP: "Pressure Tested"
What separates champions from everyone else? WHOOP data shows us.
Put elite athletes & regular people through the exact same pressure scenarios. Track everything. Watch the difference.
UFC fights. Chess championship moments.
Next WHOOP series I'd produce: "The Night Before"
24 hours before their biggest moments. Elite athletes. Intimate access.
WHOOP tracks their sacred pre-game rituals, sleep patterns, recovery scores.
The vulnerability before world record attempts. This is streaming gold.
"10 Million Mornings" - the format that could break platforms.
WHOOP sits on an unprecedented dataset of millions of morning routines.
Track exactly what separates elite performers from everyone else.
Perfect sleep. Peak performance. Productivity hacks that actually work.
Executing this content strategy:
• Test as YouTube shorts (low cost, high feedback)
• Scale winners to series
• License to streamers hungry for fresh sports content
• Build a media arm that does what Red Bull did for extreme sports
I built Jubilee to 9M subscribers by turning human stories viral.
WHOOP can go 10X bigger.
The path from $3.6B to $30B isn't hardware innovation.
It's storytelling at scale.
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.
If you enjoyed reading, please retweet the first tweet.
Follow me @ryanhashemi_ for more threads on YouTube, content, and business growth.
It's taken me $20M and 15 years on YouTube to learn what I know. I'd love to share all that insights with you!
