Will Ahmed is the CEO and Founder of Whoop, an innovative company in the field of physical metrics. He grew up on the North Shore of Long Island as an only child. His father was of Egyptian origin and a street-smart person, while his American mother was well-educated. Mr. Ahmed attributes his affinity for problem-solving to his upbringing from his parents.
His college squash experience also exhibited a significant role in honing his skills and founding his company. He became the captain of the Harvard Squash Team, and from there, he grew accustomed to Physiology. He obtained knowledge regarding Human Physiology by studying numerous papers and authoring a paper concerning the continuous comprehension of the Human Body. The latter paper was the initial business plan for his company, Whoop, which was founded in his senior year.
The Breakthrough of Whoop
Whoop is a pioneering company in the field of Human Body metrics. They produce wearable technology for various parts of the human body to derive measurements that facilitate the user’s behavior change and training habits. A person who has been utilizing the Whoop technology for a significant amount of time oversees major changes in his physical and psychological condition. This innovative technology promotes the idea that people can attain their peak health status and significantly improve their lifestyles.
Whoop’s vision has always been to inspire people to fulfill their full potential, be in elevated spirits, and be in their best physical condition. Two of the first users of Whoop were Lebron James and Michael Phelps, and many more partnerships with highly esteemed Sports Leagues and Teams were forged throughout the years. Nowadays, many everyday people are using the Whoop technology due to their willingness to improve in all facets of life.
Whoop is a promise that has come of age. Today the widespread usage of smartphones, iPhones and tablets and the Fourth Industrial Revolution of Data Science and Data Analysis has paved the way to a future that seemed unfathomable a few decades ago. With the ease of a click and a glance, people can monitor vital health metrics such as heart rate and pulse.
Whoop has established a paradigm that only the essential metrics and data should be taken into account. Overburdening the users with unnecessary information deters their effort to improve their health and does not elicit any behavior change. Behavior change and health improvement come only after deriving robust conclusions from crucial metrics such as heart rate variability.
The Importance of Heart Rate Variability And Health Monitoring
Heart rate variability is an indicator of the function of the autonomic nervous system, which consists of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity. Sympathetic activity is the outcome of a person’s actions in an anxious and intense mode. These outcomes are increases in his blood pressure, heart rate and respiration. On the other hand, parasympathetic activity involves all the actions and consequences when a person is relaxed, where all his physical metrics are considerably low.
Heart rate variability was a metric that has been intriguing Mr. Ahmed since his college years. He has amassed tons of knowledge on the subject and has found that many sectors of the economy utilize it to derive robust deductions. If a person exhibits a balanced sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, he/she displays high heart rate variability. Professional athletes like cyclists utilize it to detect the optimal training program. Furthermore, the CIA had been using heart rate variability for decades in their notorious lie detector tests.
Mr. Ahmed also states that heart rate variability has a direct link with electrocardiograms, as heart rate variability accompanies the results of the electrocardiograms in several cases. A predominant example is doctors’ predictions for possible heart attacks in their patients. The possibilities and the applications of heart rate variability are endless, and Whoop has delivered affordable solutions to the public. For many years the utilization of this metric was a laborious and expensive task.
Furthermore, Whoop has established routine and continuous measurements regarding heart rate variability. Continuous measurements confer stability and credibility to the entire process and greatly facilitate the physicians’ conclusions. In addition, another factor that determines someone’s heart rate variability is the impact of the stressful and relaxed moments of the day.
The stressful and relaxed moments in a person’s day are easily recognizable on the surface, but there are stress triggers that are inconceivable in speaking. Mr Ahmed draws an interesting parallel with the recent pandemic of COVID-19, where he states that many people were carriers of the virus and could spread the disease but were asymptomatic. He concludes this notion with the remark that health monitoring was the primary weapon against COVID-19, which should be the main course of action in any potentially severe circumstance.
Another remarkable effect of health monitoring is the increased comprehension of the human body. A predominant example is the ability to detect a lower respiratory tract infection such as COVID-19 by measuring the respiratory rate. Furthermore, the Whoop technology enabled people to understand whether a severe pathological condition such as a heart attack occurs. Therefore, people receive these signals from their bodies and proceed cautiously to adopt the necessary prerequisite measures to tackle their pathological condition.
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The Role of REM and Slow Wave Sleep in the Quality of Life
Mr. Ahmed also addresses the importance of quality sleep to maintain our health properly. There are four different stages of sleep, which are the following:
1) Awake
2) Light sleep
3) REM
4) Slow wave sleep
The benefits of sleep solely stem from REM and slow wave sleep due to the fundamental physiological changes occurring in these two types of sleep. During REM sleep is where the mind heals and repairs its function. A distinctive attribute of REM sleep is if someone remembers his/her dreams, while the inability to recall dreams manifests a low level of REM sleep. During slow wave sleep, the human body produces 95 % of its human growth hormone, and, therefore, it has a profound effect on muscle repair.
Mr. Ahmed states that the effects of high-quality REM and slow wave sleep are distinctive in a person’s appearance and overall health. Slight changes in our diet, sleep hours, and alcohol consumption can work wonders in our sleep patterns and health improvement. Moreover, other factors such as anxiety, fighting with our close ones and how light or dark our bedroom is exhibit significant influence on our sleep patterns. Whoop facilitates people to improve the aforementioned health indicators by providing information to enhance their lifestyle.
The Modus Operandi and Challenges of Whoop
Whoop gathers tons of data to provide efficient, high-quality solutions for its clients. Some examples of this data are the following:
1) Heart rate
2) Heart rate variability
3) Skin conductivity
4) Body temperature
5) REM sleep slow wave disturbances
6) Sleep latency
7) Respiratory rate
8) Pulse ox
Whoop does not merely gather all these data but also provides insightful qualitative analyses about them. Suppose a person has been in stressful situations for a significant time. In that case, Whoop assessed qualitatively this period with the metric of strain and quantifies the recovery from the strain as a score from zero to 100. The gradual recovery period enhances people’s belief in their healing regardless of their physical condition. Therefore, the entire process positively impacts their psychology and accelerates their recovery.
Whoop has also launched a B2B platform with the name Unite, which promotes the health and performance of entire organizations. One example of such an organization is the Navy SEALS, among 150 other businesses and organizations. These businesses value the importance of quality sleep and health monitoring to be more effective in the hurdles and challenges of today’s competitive environment.
Mr. Ahmed states that the principal reason behind the founding of Whoop is to obliterate the damaging process of overtraining. Overtraining negatively impacts a series of health indicators, such as heart rate variability and respiratory rate, and causes severe mood disorders and possibly a mental breakdown. Challenging the concept of overtraining was one of the principal reasons for the success of Whoop, which has led to a backing of $400 million from various investors throughout the years.
Despite investors’ impressive backing, founding Whoop had enormous challenges for Mr. Ahmed. The first and foremost hurdle was to secure the amount of investment needed for such a breakthrough during the initial years after the founding. Whoop also owns and takes responsibility for every aspect of its technology, and due to its innovative nature, the financial projections often go awry.
In Wrapping Up…
Mr. Ahmed advises the prospective Leaders to have a clear vision and orientation and have a firm grasp and knowledge in their field. He also recalls that the processes of collecting data, building hardware and applying the necessary data analyses were cumbersome, but all these challenges paid off in the end. Another crucial part at the beginning of Whoop was to convince the public that it is not a mere watch but a health monitor device.
After founding Whoop, Mr. Ahmed adopted some habits to alternate his lifestyle and improve his health and overall well-being. The most prominent ones are:
1) Not having coffee after 2 p.m.
2) Meditating
3) Wearing blue light-blocking glasses during sleep
4) Drinking tons of water
5) Eating three meals per day without any snacks
6) Taking melatonin and magnesium before sleep
Mr. Ahmed, as the CEO of Whoop, adopted the above scientifically proven methods for improving his quality of life and sleep. As a true leader, he sets the principles and paves the way for the other members of his company and the clients.
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