WHOOP Chief Business Officer on New Technology & Unlocking Innovation for Teams

How We Are Investing to Help Organizations Thrive

We often hear, “WHOOP is just for athletes, right?” The answer in part depends on your definition of an athlete. I define an athlete not as an individual who plays sports, but rather as someone who needs to operate with high levels of agility, focus, and cognitive function to achieve their goals. All athletes need to perform. But, the definition of performance is relative. In healthcare, performance may be saving the life of a patient experiencing acute trauma or identifying a breakthrough treatment to a chronic, debilitating disease. In government, it may be supporting military operations or fighting fires raging across the Western United States. In business, it’s showing up to work as a teammate who contributes new ideas and creates value for customers, or maybe it’s safely transporting goods or people across the country with appropriate rest and recovery. In sports - yes, we serve those athletes too - it’s being the best player, teammate, and student you can be on and off the field. So as we serve customers across healthcare, government, business, and athletics, we work with many different types of “athletes,” and I could not be more excited about what our recent product innovation and investment holds for the future of these teams. Here’s my quick take on the biggest unlocks for teams and organizations using WHOOP across a variety of industries.  

EMPOWERING A RICHER HEALTH DIALOGUE TO IMPROVE OUTCOMES

WHOOP 4.0’s Health Monitor and downloadable Health Report are a force for good--providing a tool for individuals to better understand their physiological baseline and easily identify and investigate deviations from that baseline. This functionality, along with the ability to easily export 30 and 180-day summaries, enables individuals to play a more proactive role in managing their wellness and gives providers the opportunity to see longer term trends and data. In turn, this can lead to more informed conversations. With the addition of skin temperature and blood oxygen monitoring in WHOOP 4.0 sensors, our users can gain additional insights into their overall health and daily well being. These features have benefits in a variety of settings. For example, they may be useful for military and sports teams who are seeking a deeper knowledge of who is primed to take on a rigorous mission or face grueling competition.  

ENABLING VERSATILITY AND REMOVING DISTRACTIONS

WHOOP Body with Any-Wear Technology allows our customers to focus where it counts--on the game, the procedure, the mission. This is paramount to military teams who must minimize distractions while still allowing for 24/7 wearability and data collection, thus requiring hidden, durable sensors. Several sports also prohibit the use of wearables on the wrist, or they may interfere with the game. WHOOP Body gives all of our customers diverse options for continuing to train and perform without compromising data quality or comfort.  

IMPROVING REST AND RECOVERY TO SHOW UP AT YOUR BEST

It’s no secret that sleep is the foundation of mental and physical performance. In fact, our recent collaboration with McKinsey’s Executive Leadership Program demonstrated that every 45 minutes of sleep debt a person accrued led to a 5-10% decrease in mental control the next day. Additionally, findings from our COVID Resilience Project showed that getting less sleep and lower sleep consistency prior to the pandemic made it more likely for individuals to report anxiety or depression, substance use, and burnout. The debut of haptic alerts with WHOOP 4.0 provides our customers’ end users - employees, patients, soldiers, athletes - with a greater arsenal of tools and recommendations to get a better night’s sleep and show up ready to take on the day with reduced risk of injury, illness, or even sadness and negativity.  

GROWING OUR CUSTOMER BASE AND ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES

We are thrilled to welcome PUSH into the WHOOP family, adding more than 450 customers across professional, collegiate, and Olympic sports, as well as elite military teams, to the hundreds of customers that we already serve. Incorporating PUSH’s velocity-based training data and algorithms will allow us to better understand the composite picture of an individual’s health, activity, and stress. While strength training is often viewed as core to sport and military performance, it is also critical to helping patients rehabilitate from musculoskeletal injuries and disorders. We look forward to delivering novel insights and recommendations to individuals, teams, and organizations who benefit from our enhanced platform and richer community of customers.  

FUELING OUR EXPANSION ACROSS MARKETS AND INDUSTRIES

I am humbled by the vote of confidence from our customers and investors that allowed us to raise $200 million of additional capital, valuing WHOOP $3.6 billion, making us the most valuable standalone human performance company in the world. We are delighted to welcome SoftBank’s Kristin Bannon to our Board and serve alongside other notable SaaS companies with breakthrough analytics and AI across the Vision Fund’s portfolio. Our investment will help us reach and serve customers in government, healthcare, business, and athletics, in the US and beyond. We are already privileged to work with customers ranging from healthcare providers to construction firms, from startups to sports teams, from first responders on the battlefield to first responders in the ER. They are all athletes, and they all deserve a higher level of performance. Being able to deliver on that promise and keep raising the bar for organizations and teams motivates us every day. In short, the best is yet to come for our business and we’re glad you’re along for the ride.   Looking to learn more about how WHOOP works with teams in government, healthcare, business, and athletics? Check out https://www.whoop.com/whoopforteams/ and get in touch with us.