Whoop Founder: How I Built A $3.6 BILLION Company & BEAT Apple! Will Ahmed

Oct 24, 2022 1h 45m 17 insights
Will Ahmed, founder of Whoop, discusses building a $3.6 billion health monitoring company through counterintuitive decisions, extreme focus, and personal growth. He shares insights on managing stress, the power of meditation, optimizing sleep and recovery, and navigating intense competition.
Actionable Insights

1. Disassociate Identity from Company

Separate your personal identity from your company’s performance to avoid emotional highs and lows. This helps maintain a steady hand through chaos and fosters healthier leadership, as tying identity too closely can lead to unhealthy stress and panic attacks.

2. Meditate to Filter Thoughts

Practice meditation, such as transcendental meditation, daily to learn how to filter thoughts and gain control over your actions and feelings. This practice helps you sense what you’re about to do or say before you do it, acting as a ‘superpower’ for self-control.

3. Balance Gratitude with Drive

Actively introduce gratitude for current achievements and progress while remaining driven towards future milestones. This approach makes the entrepreneurial journey more sustainable and prevents burnout from solely relying on a ‘dopamine engine’ for motivation.

4. Maintain Extreme Focus on Mission

Cultivate intense focus on your core mission, clearly defining what you are building and, crucially, what you are not. This discipline, even if uncomfortable, drives true innovation and competitive differentiation by preventing ‘scope creep’ and resource dilution.

5. Optimize Sleep Environment

Sleep in a cold, dark bedroom and aim for a consistent bedtime to significantly improve sleep quality. These conditions are shown to enhance restorative sleep stages like REM and slow-wave sleep, which are crucial for cognitive and physical repair.

6. Use Blue Light Blocking Glasses

Wear blue light blocking glasses in the evening, especially when using devices, as a ‘get out of jail free card’ for device use. This practice significantly boosts REM and slow-wave sleep by preventing blue light from signaling your brain to stay awake.

7. Vary Exercise Strain by Recovery

Adjust your exercise intensity (strain) based on your body’s daily recovery status. Avoid consistent high-strain workouts every day; instead, allow for recovery or lower-intensity activities when recovery is low, and push harder when your body is peaking, to prevent overtraining.

8. Control Breath, Influence Nervous System

Consciously control your breathing to influence your autonomic nervous system and heart rate variability. Inhaling is sympathetic (activation), and exhaling is parasympathetic (calming), allowing you to actively regulate your body’s state.

9. Focus on Controllables Under Stress

During highly stressful or challenging times, identify and focus solely on the things you can control. This exercise can be very calming and focusing, helping you navigate difficult situations with clarity and purpose.

10. Cultivate Commitment, Intensity, Humility

When building a founding team or hiring, prioritize individuals with commitment, intensity, and humility. Commitment ensures perseverance, intensity drives hard work, and humility fosters collaborative problem-solving for the company’s best interest.

11. Hear Feedback, Don’t Always Listen

When receiving negative feedback or disagreement, make an effort to ‘hear’ it by absorbing and sitting with it, rather than immediately ’listening’ or internalizing it. This allows for critical self-reflection and a more objective evaluation of your convictions.

12. Identify Customer Problems, Not Solutions

When engaging with customers, focus on understanding their underlying problems rather than just the solutions they propose. This approach allows for more innovative and effective product development that addresses core needs.

13. Build Authentically Loved Products

Prioritize building a truly great product that people genuinely love and derive value from, rather than relying heavily on advertising. Authentic user advocacy and word-of-mouth are more powerful in competitive markets.

14. Prioritize Morning Workouts

Schedule your workouts for the morning to ensure they get done, allowing flexibility for work demands later in the day. This strategy helps maintain consistency in exercise and prevents missed sessions due to unforeseen evening commitments.

15. Embrace Cold Exposure for Adrenaline

Incorporate cold exposure, such as ending showers with cold water, into your routine. This practice provides a jolt of adrenaline, forces proper breathing, and can lead to a feeling of happiness and invigoration.

16. Prioritize Sleep Consistency

Strive for a consistent bedtime and wake-up schedule, as routine helps your body recover faster. This consistency, beyond just total sleep duration, contributes significantly to overall sleep quality and physical restoration.

17. Use Sauna/Steam Room for Longevity

Regularly use a steam room or sauna a few days a week, as research suggests this practice can contribute to increased longevity. This provides a physiological benefit that supports overall health.