Whoop — for changing the fitness game

Fitness trackers and wearable technology have been around for a while (Nike+, FitBit and Jawbone, to name a few). So why do we have Whoop on our list for 2021?

Because Whoop 3.0 is not just another imitation or incremental iteration of a ‘fitness tracker.’ Instead, they see themselves as ‘personal performance optimization’ and seem poised to genuinely disrupt and change the game in the industries of fitness, sleep and wellness.

Whoop is challenging two fundamental aspects of the ‘wearable technology’ industry.

First, they are not just about physical exercise and fitness.

Instead, they take a holistic view of personal performance, with a device and application that measures, tracks, stores, analyzes, and optimizes three essential aspects of personal health and wellness:

‘Strain’ – how strenuous and effective is your exercise.
Sleep – quantity, quality and patterns.
Recovery – when to rest or reduce the strain.

Second, they have a unique business model. You cannot just buy a Whoop band. Instead, you buy a $30 monthly subscription service and receive the band when you sign up. Whoop is more in the business of collecting and analyzing data and charging its users for exclusive membership access to that service as well as a community of athletes from whom they can learn and with whom they can share and compete. Whoop is an excellent example of giving the product away while charging for the service and experience, and building a brand through a community of like-minded people.

So what makes Whoop an interesting Challenger to Watch?

First, it recently raised $100m in the Fall of 2020, putting a $1.2bn valuation on the company. We haven’t seen eye-popping valuations like that since dot-com boom-bust days or the rise and fall of Quibi more recently.

So it begs the question? Will Whoop continue to grow and acquire customers and build a sustainable business model and community to justify that hefty valuation? Or will Whoop fail to catch on or fade away like other ‘wearable technology’ like JawBone?

Or perhaps Whoop will get acquired in 2021 by one of the larger technology companies like Amazon, Apple or Google who have been known to pay a hefty premium for successful startups and new business platforms (remember Apple and Beats from Dr Dre?).

Many of the early investors in Whoop are professional athletes like Rory McIlroy and LeBron James. Likely, they are all looking to score a nice ‘exit event’ payday much like 50 Cent got from Glaceau, Ryan Reynolds got with Aviation Gin, and George Clooney scored with Casamigos.

Secondly, Whoop has very promising potential to ‘change the game’ when it comes to measuring, tracking, analyzing and optimizing your health and fitness performance.

Case in point, look at what Whoop did for Scott Stallings, a PGA tour professional, who has been wearing Whoop for more than three years to make him a better and stronger golfer. Last fall, Scott noticed some irregularities in his heart rate data and patterns, and those indicators prompted him to seek medical treatment. It turned out he had Covid-19, yet was mostly asymptomatic. Stallings credits Whoop with providing an ‘early indication’ that allowed him to get diagnosed and treated for Covid, rest, recover and return to golf healthier than ever before.

“Data and analysis will become an integral and vital part of our lives in the future.”

In summary, Whoop 3.0 is an excellent example of a challenger delivering a new and compelling reason to choose its brand and product – namely exclusive access to data, analysis, optimization and a community of like-minded ambitious athletes – rather than just introducing a disruptive new technology/product.

It’s also a great experiment and an example of how data and analysis will become an integral and vital part of our lives in the future.

With that in mind, it’s good for us all to heed the wise words of Lord Kelvin and Albert Einstein, when they said respectively: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” and “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.”

So let’s pay attention in 2021 to the data we collect, use and analyze. Whoop sacrifices measuring everything to focus and prioritize data for Strain, Sleep and Recovery.

Finally, if for no other reason, it’s refreshing to see disruptive technology and stratospheric valuations for a startup coming from somewhere other than Silicon Valley, reminding us that we need not live in Silicon Valley to get access to capital or change the world!