Whoop 4.0 – A Product Manager Perspectitive

Since the turn of the 21st century, there has been a growing awareness of health and active movement in everyday life. With an increase in weight gaining and health concerns, people are turning towards health technology to assist them in getting into shape. From apps that track your eating habits to monthly workout subscriptions, or wearable health-tracking devices the products to assist you are endless.

The Whoop 4.0 is a wearable fitness tracker. Its goal is to optimize your exercise and recovery time by tracking metrics like body temperature, heart rate, sleeping patterns, blood oxygen levels, and respiratory rate. From these metrics, Whoop has created software to calculate recovery time, required sleep, and strain score.

We believe everyone has an inner potential. A potential to perform at their highest level. We believe this potential can be harnessed by uncovering secrets your body is trying to tell you. Our mission at WHOOP is to unlock human performance. When you choose to partner with us, we’ll do everything we can to help you find your inner potential.

The Whoop business model is focused on maximizing the potential of your body through data collection and advising you on when to recover or push to the max. The software takes into account your training intensity, recovery, and sleep data from the past week to give you insight into what your body will be able to achieve on any given day. Over time the app will learn what your body needs and wants. So the longer you wear it the more accurate Whoop’s advice will become.

Technical Features

The Whoop’s latest model, the Whoop 4.0, boasts a couple new upgrades. This model is 33% smaller than its predecessor, is waterproof up to 10 meters, has been engineered to pack a 4 to 5-day battery life span, now captures data with the best-in-class accuracy using 5 LEDs and 4 photodiodes, and lastly, it can directly connect to Bluetooth equipment (bikes, rowers, treadmills, and more). Whoop comes in many color options like black, gray, gold, pink, green, and yellow to name a few.

Whoop has also come up with an innovative way to charge its product without taking it off. They provide a separate battery pack piece that slides onto the Whoop 4.0 and charges it. Basically think about a portable battery pack for your phone. You charge the battery pack while using your Whoop 4.0, when it is time to charge your Whoop 4.0 you simply slide and snap in place the battery pack, and the wrist strap begins charging. Therefore you never have to take off your Whoop 4.0 and plug it into an outlet!

A few additional features are the silent alarm, the Whoop App, and the Whoop community that comes with the product. The silent alarm sounds like an interesting feature where the wristband produces gentle vibrations when the software determines the optimal time to wake up. The app connects to your Whoop and serves as the centerpiece of visual displays for the data collected. Then within the app, you can create groups with your friends and compete for the top spot. Or you can join communities of like-minded health enthusiasts.

Funding, Acquisitions, & Partnerships

The landscape of wearable health trackers is growing quick. This industry is defined as devices that are explicitly intended for fitness and motion tracking. Data on the industry estimates the market size worldwide in 2022 is about $58.11bn and it is projected that the market will grow to $99.13bn by 2027.

Whoop launched in 2013 and since then has completed nine rounds of funding raising over $400MM. Their most recent funding was completed on August 30, 2021. They raised $200MM in financing led by SoftBank Vision at a $3.6 billion valuation. With this funding, Whoop is looking to grow its company internationally and further the enhancement of its product, software, and analytics. Leading up to this funding Whoop had hired an additional 225 employees bringing its total number of employees to more than 500. Also, they purchased a new headquarters in Boston that can house more than 1,000 employees.

Whoop also acquired the company PUSH on September 2, 2021. PUSH is a velocity-based training coaching solution that shared a similar foundation of sports science and physiological research. Whoop and PUSH also have a shared focus on delivering personalized data, actionable insights, and demonstrable health improvements. PUSH tracked metrics like speed, power, force, and acceleration with a forearm or waist strap product much like Whoops. What Whoop was really after was PUSH’s pattened algorithm for counting reps in lifting exercises (more information here).

Whoop also just partnered with TYR Sports apparel company. They specialize in designing, developing, and manufacturing competitive swim and triathlon apparel. Thus showing how Whoop is focused on targeting high-performance athletes.

Lastly, on October 28, 2020, Whoop raised a $100MM lead by IVP making 75% of their funding come within the last two years. Whoop has come hard and fast into the athletic world. Raising money quickly, acquiring competitors, and growing their employee base.

Company Dynamics & Design

Whoop has over 150 engineers and about 15 product managers. A company of this size with a software product and a physical product would require multiple product teams. A 1:10 ratio of product managers to engineers is about as big of a team as you would want.

Most likely the division of responsibilities for the Whoop product would have a clear separation between the software and the physical product. With the software division, you might have a team that works on each of the features within the app. While the physical product divisions would have product teams separated to work on the wristband, battery pack, and biometric tracking hardware.

The app design for Whoop is seamless and data-driven. Its home page gives you an overview of your maximum potential for that day while also providing quick access to Whoop’s metrics in detail like strain, recovery, and sleep. Followed by the second menu where Whoop provides its coaching and advice on how hard to push today, how much sleep you should get later that night, and some additional data like respiratory rate, blood oxygen level, resting heart rate, heart rate variance, and skin temperature.

Whoop had its first product released back in September 2015 with the Whoop 1.0. Followed by Whoop 2.0 released in July 2016 and Whoop 3.0 released in May 2019. Making updates to their app a long way. Their last big release was the Whoop 4.0 and their clothing line which was released in September 2021. This lines up chronologically with furthering their partnership with SoftBank Vision and raising $200MM. From a product point of view, 2021 can be seen as a huge milestone for Whoop as it doubled its funding, released Whoop 4.0, and launched its clothing line. Clearly, the CEO and product teams have a vision for what the company should achieve in its future.

Pricing

Whoop offers a subscription model for their wrist strap. You do not pay a lump sum upfront for the hardware like an Apple Watch, Fitbit, or Oura Ring. Whoop has a $30/month member fee which includes the Whoop 4.0 and a membership to their app and software that displays all your data. Whoop offers two yearly bundles, a $25/month year membership or a $20/month two-year membership. From a product standpoint, this is a great idea to have a subscription payment platform and collect monthly recurring revenue. This could also mean the development of the hardware does not carry as much overhead as the software for the app does. If you are to cancel your monthly membership you are not required to return the Whoop 4.0 hardware. So, what you are really paying for and utilizing are the software and data collection.

There is also an option to become a Whoop Pro member for $12/month. In this membership, you get one item every three months free from their new clothing line. The new clothing line allows you to put down the wrist strap and collect data by placing their Whoop 4.0 hardware into pockets built into the clothes. Within the Whoop store, you get free shipping and 20% off every item. Lastly, Whoop offers its Pro members early access to all new designs, colors, and new releases.

Whoop has also created two other streams of revenue to enhance or complement its main product. You can also purchase personalized engravings on your Whoop for an extra $25 and recently launched blue light glasses to help prepare you for bed.

Target Group

Whoop differentiates itself from competitors in two ways. First, they tailor their marketing towards high-performance athletes. Their product is for data-driven enthusiasts who want to push performance. They market their product with athletes like Patrick Mahomes, LeBron James, and Michael Phelps. They have partnerships with the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, and the NFLPA. Whoop is also approved for in-game use by the MLB. Thus showing how Whoop aims to play a larger role in professional sports and extend the product to high-performance individuals.

Secondly, they are a behind-the-scenes data collector. You simply wear their product and let the software do its thing. No screen. No Notifications. Just strap it around your wrist and go! You can view all your data through their app. Compared to the likes of an Apple Watch or Fitbit which have screens and lots of other functions. The Whoop 4.0 simply gathers data and the magic happens in the background.

To gauge their market size let’s start with 332 million people living in America. Only about 23% of Americans meet national exercise guidelines. This means at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity every week. A more accurate data point is that it is estimated only 2.7% of Americans get moderate amounts of exercise, eat right, keep from pilling on fat, and avoid smoking (The most common lifestyle of an athlete). That’s about 9 million Americans that fit a user persona of Whoop’s target group. So how would you target such a small demographic?

Whoop most likely has built multiple user personas to build marketing strategies around. When interviewing, researching, and marketing to customers, over time, trends start to appear and a user persona is created to group similar customers together. A common trend for Whoop throughout this process would be working with individuals who either strap on cleats and hit the field, stretch that rubbery swim cap over their head, or enjoy Spartan Races. Most of their customers are passionate about sports and keeping themselves physically fit. Maybe some of them were once college athletes and want to maintain or return to their athletic capabilities. All these would fall into their target groups and be broken out into user personas.

An example user persona the Whoop marketing team most likely created is someone like Dale. Dale is 26 years old and once was a college baseball player. Dale lives just outside Boston, Massachusetts. He regularly workouts 3-5 days a week, commutes 30 minutes to work every day, loves watching sports, likes to compete in a spartan race or bike race every six months, enjoys skiing in the winter, and is interested in performing at his best. The Whoop marketing team would put together videos like this to reach this target group.

Key Performance Indicators

Some KPIs that Whoop would use to measure their performance are metrics like total users, active users, new users by source, retention rate, the behavior of users, reviews, lifetime value (LTV), customer acquisition cost, and revenue. Unfortunately, due to Whoop being a privately held company it is extremely difficult to determine some of these KPIs, luckily through some research and inferencing, you can draw some conclusions.

Growth

Below is a snippet from google trends, which is a great site for product managers to get an idea of buzzwords surrounding their products. Even though Whoop first came out in 2015 it didn’t hit big until the pandemic. The leaders of Whoop were smart and acted quick, securing 75% of their funding and building partnerships. Clearly from the image below you can see the hype from the pandemic has leveled out. This chart doesn’t directly correlate to the growth Whoop is having though. This is simply showing how many people searched for “Whoop Strap” on google.

Using our investigation skills we can infer Whoop is set strongly for its continued growth. In the last two years, Whoop has raised $300MM, hired an additional 225 employees, purchased a new HQ that can house 1,000 employees, acquired PUSH, launched a clothing brand, partnered with TYR, and became sponsors for some big-name pro athletes.

Engagement

Using social media to gauge Whoop’s user base we find out they have 485,000 followers on Instagram and 63,500 followers on Twitter. Even with a growing following on social media, the engagement on their posts and tweets is minimal. One of the more memorable social media mentions for Whoop was the heart rate chart of Patrick Mahomes in the 4th quarter of the AFC Divisional Championship game in early 2022, this was great publicity for the company. Worldwide, Whoop averages 297,8000 searches per day and Whoop 4.0 averages about 41,800 searches a day. Its popularity is growing and it has created footholds in the world of professional sports, its main target demographic.

User Happiness

There is a love for Whoop only if you truly understand what it’s trying to do. If you do not care about your recovery then the Whoop is not for you. If you do not care about pushing to new personal records then the Whoop is not for you. Does prioritizing your sleep sound like something you want to focus on? If not, then the Whoop is definitely not for you.

The reviews out there of people who tend to dislike the product are either not using it to its full potential or have a hard time believing the accuracy of the data that’s gathered. Others disapprove of the product having no screens or additional functions like other wearables. Users will create blog posts directly comparing the Whoop to its competitors claiming differences in data and Whoop being the incorrect one (Check them out here and here).

On the contrary, there are many reviews filled with excitement and gratitude for Whoop’s ability. People who enjoy pushing themselves and getting “insider” information on how their body is really dealing with all the physical exercise. Some users become addicted to the data and find themselves working to live healthier lives because of it. (Can check out some user reviews here, here, and here)

As a product manager for Whoop, product review articles, Twitter, and online forums are areas I would focus on to learn about what customers are saying and how can the product be improved to increase user happiness (The best two articles I found are here and here). The key is to be able to sift through the noise and pick out what really matters toward the product’s success and what features need adjustment to match the direction of the company.

Revenue

In its last funding Whoop was valued at $3.6bn and it is estimated to bring in about $153M per year in annual revenue. The CEO or Head of Product would pay very close attention to its streams of revenue. With the launch of a new clothing line in late 2021 Whoop will want to have already determined its level of success with the launch. Does the clothing line need more resources because sales are through the roof? What are customers saying about the product? Does the clothing need iterations? These are the types of questions a product team would have to answer and gather information on.

They also just release the blue light glasses, and the product manager would be working with marketing and sales to ensure its lift-off while consuming as much customer feedback as possible. If the glasses are going to fail you would prefer to fail fast, move on, and reduce losses.

A major cost most people don’t understand is customer acquisition cost (how much does a company spend to bring a new customer on board?). Within the company database, the CEO and team would be able to organize data to calculate this. Another large factor is ROI. What is the overhead, is the company making more than enough money to cover expenses & make a profit, and is there still more market share that can be taken are additional questions Whoop would be measuring to ensure success.

Who are Whoop’s Competitors?

Apple Watch

Apple Watch was launched in 2014 and is more than just a health-tracking device. Apple is attempting to make the most versatile watch! Making phone calls, sending texts, searching the internet, checking the weather, watching the stock market, and setting directions are just some of the features included in their product.

They offer three types of watches. The models are called the Series 8, the SE, and the Ultra. Setting you back $399, $249, and $799 respectively. The Series 8 is their base model which includes many features regarding health tracking. It tracks heart rate, blood oxygen level, ECG, irregular rhythm, cardio, and more. It is also water resistant up to 50 meters. The Apple Watch SE is their cheapest model with the bare bones in terms of health tracking features.

Apple just released the Apple Watch Ultra which is being targeted toward athletic users. This product has the goal of stealing market share and competing directly with Whoop 4.0. Along with the health tracking metrics listed for the Series 8, the Ultra includes precision GPS, 36 to 60-hour battery life, a cellular connection, waterproofing up to 100 meters, and wristbands specialized for “athletes and adventures of all kinds” (A really simple breakdown of the three types here).

All watches connect to your iPhone where you have software to track your data through the health and fitness app. Apple also charges $9.99 a month for its Fitness+ app. All watches must get charged at a minimum every 18 hours and can track your sleep by wearing your watch while you sleep. A positive for a user is if they have an Apple Watch and iPhone while charging their watch their phone can gather data (not as accurate but still better than no data).

Apple is the largest tech company in the world, they have thousands of employees and over $200bn in cash reserves. They can hire the best engineers and design state-of-the-art facilities. Apple also has the world’s largest and most powerful user base and brand recognition. Anytime they release a new product or iterations they have an enormous amount of press and free marketing from customers who must own the latest Apple products immediately. It is estimated that Apple sells around 40 million watches per year and controls 46% of the smartwatch market.

Their design is elite and their ability to produce great products every year is almost unmatched. This makes Apple a powerhouse as most people enjoy the design and brand recognition of Apple products, making them a very tough competitor for Whoop.

Fitbit

Fitbit first launched in 2007 and was considered a pioneer of the consumer fitness tracking market, quickly becoming the market leader. Since then they have created and iterated over ten products to achieve their current designs. Fitbit’s goal is to help transform the lives of its customers through health and fitness. They believe you should be encouraged through your journey and feel empowered along the way.

For smartwatches, they have three product lines, the Sense, the Versa, and the Google Pixel Watch. Costing each $299, $149, and $349 respectively. The list of features is extensive for their smartwatches. They all track heart rate, steps, stairs climbed, blood oxygen level, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, and so much more. The products also track your sleep, have a GPS connection, are water resistant, and can calculate your Daily Readiness Sorce to find out if your body is ready to work out.

For trackers, Fitbit offers the Charge, the Luxe, the Inspire, and the Ace. These will cost you $99, $129, $99, and $49 respectively. The main difference between trackers and smartwatches is the functionality on the screen. The smartwatches are built to compete with the Apple Watch, so you can make calls and send texts on the smartwatches. Whereas the tracker’s main functionality is tracking your exercise and collecting data like heart rate, breathing rate, sleep score, and more.

With an extensive product line, Fitbit offers a three-question quiz to help narrow down their choices. The questions relate to what you are looking for in a product, how much you exercise, and what features would you like your Fitbit to track. Quick and easy, takes about 3 minutes to complete and then Fitbit will offer a few choices for what product they think best fits your needs.

Fitbit also offers a smart scale, some basic apparel, and a premium membership that costs $9.99 a month. The membership is in addition to their Fitbit app. The membership provides additional information like data trends and stress score breakdowns. The big kicker for the premium is the access to over 200 workouts and 200 mindful sessions, these are video-recorded and audio guided.

In addition, back in early 2021 Google bought Fitbit for $2.1 billion. This partnership was solidified with the mission to make health and wellness more accessible to more people. Fitbit adding Google as a partner allowed them to expand their product line, innovate faster, and reduce overhead.

In terms of the strength of their core product team. Between 2008 and 2013 Fitbit only did 4 funding rounds raising $66MM. This is extremely impressive when you account for being bought at $2.1 billion eight years later. They now have over 1,200 employees with offices all over the world and in 2020, Fitbit generated $1.13 billion in annual revenue and sold 10.6 million units.

An interesting issue product teams look into is the difference between total users to active users. Fitbit’s active user base in 2021 was 31 million and its total user base was 111 million. So there are 80 million Fitbit accounts that aren’t actively using their product. This is a metric a product manager would be focusing on and working to get users back, called the resurrection rate. Fitbit also gets about two million searches a day worldwide and has over 700,000 followers on Instagram.

On Amazon, the Fitbit Charge boasts a whopping 4.5 stars with over 30,000 reviews. Some features that stick out in reviews about the Fitbit Charge are how lightweight the Fitbit is and how the battery will last 7 days. A feature missing from this product that is a must for users is the ECG, as a product manager, I would be looking into the pros and cons of adding the ECG within the product line.

Also on Amazon the Fitbit Inspire 2 has 4.5 stars and almost 70,000 reviews. The size, battery life, and simple functionality are positives for the Inspire 2. Customers can also change settings to have the product operate more to their liking. Almost all reviews mention that some data can be inaccurate at times. Depending on your level of focus on data will determine your opinion about this inaccuracy. A complaint that is extremely worrying is regarding the product failing after 8 months of using it.

Possibly with so many products and such little difference between them, Fitbit would benefit from reducing the size of its product line. There are two smartwatches and four trackers. The step trackers seem to get poor reviews because of the inaccuracy of data collection and product failure over time. Fitbit could cut its step tracker line in half, consolidate its resources, and just focus on two products instead of four. The product team would want to be asking themselves how much benefit are they really getting from running four different step-tracking models.

Oura Ring

Oura is a relatively new company based in Finland taking an innovative approach to wearable health technology. Oura markets itself as a device to boost your immune system through sleep while adding the benefits of tracking your activity levels throughout the day. Our offers two different products. The Heritage model ($299) and the Horizon model ($349). With your purchase of the ring, you get the first month of membership free, and then it is $5.99/month afterward.

Each model is Generation 3 and has identical technical and hardware capabilities. First, Oura will send you a free sizing kit to measure your finger. Then after ordering and receiving the correct size there is a two-week period for the software to calculate the baseline of your health data and make accurate assumptions. The models are water resistant up to 100m, lighter than a conventional ring, made from titanium, and come with a size-specific charger. The Oura Ring boasts a battery life of 7 days and gets fully charged in just 20-80 minutes.

At Oura, we know that you are the source of your truth. Health starts from understanding you. And great health starts with good sleep.

The Oura Ring is mainly known for its sleep-tracking abilities by monitoring REM sleep, heart rate variability, and blood oxygen levels. Oura Ring even recommends when to start winding down to maximize each night’s sleep. On the fitness side, the Oura Ring tracks your heart rate, activity level, workouts, step count, calories burned, and more. You can also connect your ring to Apple Health, Google Fit, Strava, and Natural Cycles.

On the technology side, they have engineered the ring very efficiently. Within the ring, there are green and red LEDs (for heart rate and blood oxygen sensors), infrared photoplethysmography sensors (PPG), skin temperature sensors, photodiodes, and a 3D accelerometer.

The membership adds the added benefit of in-depth sleep analysis every morning, personalized health insights, live heart rate monitoring, and skin temperature readings as a tool for detecting early sickness. Oura Ring without the membership only provides three basic data points, your sleep, readiness, and activity score. You are basically pigeon-hold into getting the membership to get all the juicy data.

Oura Ring is in the growth phase of a product lifespan. They launched in 2015 and have completed 8 rounds of funding raising $148.3MM and in their last funding in April 2022 they were valued at $2.5bn. Oura has three offices with over 500 employees containing about 200 engineers and 60 product managers. They started gaining traction in early 2019 and got great exposure during the pandemic in 2021.

According to an article on TechCrunch, Oura sold its millionth ring back in March 2022. Using this metric and a $300 price point with 24 months’ worth of $6/month membership for every ring sold would equate to $444MM in total revenue since launch, which is a far stretch to be valued at $2.5bn. Tack on multiple rounds of funding plus a large employee base, and you start to wonder how strong their product team really is. The shape of the ring isn’t going to change, only what is inside it, so do you really need 200 engineers to manage two products and an app?

Oura’s social media presence consists of 420,000 followers on Instagram, 38,600 followers on Twitter, and gets about 580,000 searches a day worldwide. Oura Ring has also been seen on Jimmy Kimmel’s show with Jennifer Aniston. Kim Kardashian and Jack Dorsey are also fans of the product.

In terms of design, the Oura hardware and app are well-liked, especially how the data for sleep is displayed on the app and the inconspicuous ring design. Unfortunately, there are not too many positive reviews out there. The most common issue with the Oura Ring is how useless the activity tracking is. One user proclaimed the ring tracked his motorcycle ride while another user said the ring missed half their workout. Most users take the ring off during the day and only wear it at night to gather sleep data. A slight positive is that Oura prioritizes itself as a sleep-tracking product.

Oura is the most recent product that is reviewed in the report so it makes sense it has the most obstacles to navigate. The first issue Oura needs to focus on is upgrading its activity tracking capabilities. People want consistent data on steps, heart rate, and exercise. Second, Oura needs to continue its marketing strategy and be careful to not pigeonhole itself as a sleep-tracking product. Once a brand image is established it could be more difficult to launch other products. Lastly, with such a large employee base and one product, Oura needs to continue pushing to either increase sales of the ring, create a secondary product to complement the ring or find ways of reducing overhead.

Competitor Summary

Although Whoop has support from athletes like LeBron James, Michael Phelps, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Mahomes, and Kevin Durant. You can see in the image below that the brand recognition of Apple and Fitbit is extremely dominant. The graph shown is a simple comparison of buzzwords involving the four products covered in this report.

You can infer that Apple and Fitbit have a much larger public image and make significantly more revenue than Whoop and Oura. Making it way easier to grab their target groups’ attention and sell their products. In defense of Whoop and Oura, they are dealing with the tech giants Apple and Google as competitors. Whoop is also targeting a smaller demographic as pointed out earlier. They are looking to strictly appeal to athletes and individuals who hold a high physical standard for themselves. Let us review the target groups of Whoop’s competitors.

Fitbit Target Group

Fitbit partnered with Google is an indirect competitor of Whoop. Customers are interested in the Fitbit Charge when it comes to wearable health-tracking devices. Their target user is your average person looking to be aware of their health. People who are looking to get back into shape are ideal for Fitbit. Simple and encouraging tracking of your progress is what Fitbit is trying to achieve.

An example user persona the Fitbit marketing team most likely has created is someone like Miranda. She is 38 years old with 2 kids living just outside Raliegh, North Carolina. The new year has just started and Miranda wants to lose 15-20lbs by summer. She plans to do so by doing 15,000 steps a day and doing more outdoor activities. Miranda is looking for encouraging nudges from a product to remind her of her goals. The Fitbit marketing team would put a video like this together.

Apple Watch Target Group

The Apple Watch Ultra falls into the category of a direct competitor of Whoop. Athletic individuals can now choose between the Whoop 4.0 and the Apple Watch Ultra. In Apple’s initial release of the Ultra, they showed clips of hardcore running, swimming, biking, and even mountain climbing snow peaks as the perfect location to use the Ultra. The main edge Whoop has on Apple here is that athletes cannot wear an Apple Watch in-game, but the everyday high-performance individual can use the Ultra like a Whoop 4.0

The built user persona of the Apple Watch marketing team would closely resemble Dale from earlier in the report. Dale is 26 years old and a retired college baseball player. Dale lives just outside Boston, Massachusetts. He regularly workouts 3-5 days a week, commutes 30 minutes to work every day, loves watching sports, likes to compete in a spartan race or bike race once every six months, enjoys skiing in the winter, and is interested in tracking his physical abilities.

The base Apple Watch is an indirect competitor to Whoop 4.0. This product would directly compete with the likes of Fitbit and Google’s Pixel Watch. Both function as a phone for the wrist with the added benefit of tracking health metrics.

Oura Ring Target Group

Lastly, Oura Ring is currently a potential competitor of Whoop. Their product is attempting to solve the same problems of wearable health-tracking devices but they fall short on some features and have a completely different design. What gives Oura an advantage is that individuals who find a Whoop, Apple Watch, or Fitbit too bulky or unflattering can opt for an Oura Ring. This could also be a disadvantage as some people may not want to wear a ring.

Again, the user persona the Oura Ring marketing team most likely built is someone very similar to Dale. Dale has a friend named Jennifer who prefers to wear analog watches and finds the Whoop 4.0 distasteful. She also workouts out multiple times a week, works a 9-5 job, enjoys surfing, and wants to feel more energetic and healthy throughout the day. Well, the marketing team would put together a video, like this, to target this user group.

Future of Whoop

Back in 2021 when Whoop secured $200 million in funding they released an article detailing the next phase for Whoop. Most of the funding will go into developing new technology and features, hiring great talent, growing internationally, and expanding their reach.

Their main goal is about enhancing the membership program and supporting their customers. Whoop mentions a pipeline of new futures and products that were in the queue for the future. Immediately after the funding raising Whoop launched the skin temperature feature, clothing brand, and sleep coach with haptic alerts.

In an effort to create more awareness of the Whoop and its capabilities, Whoop launched Whoop Live which is their live broadcast initiative. Through Whoop data you will have access to real-time physiological metrics of athletes using Whoop during sporting events. Whether it’s golf championships, playoff football, or the Tour de France you can follow along biometrically.

Very cool to see the debut of #WhoopLive on the broadcast this week with my heart rate data in real time while I play.

My friend @willahmed and the entire team continue to do amazing things at @whoop. pic.twitter.com/HNvBS8aOF9
— Rory McIlroy (@McIlroyRory) May 7, 2021

Another new feature added to the Whoop is Menstrual Cycle Coaching. Whoop is rolling out this feature to give its female user base insights into how the phases of their menstrual cycle affect their sleep and strain from one day to the next.

Whoop also recently released a new API feature that allows two different apps to share data with each. This is called the Whoop Developer Platform which enables third-party apps to create meaningful integrations via the Whoop API. This is huge for the company because now other apps can leverage the data Whoop collects and bring more attention to the brand.

Whoop’s Product Management & Strategy Summary

Using the four KPIs we viewed earlier we can state that the CEO and products teams are cohesive and have a clear image of where they want to end up in the future. The team capitalizes on its opportunities and has set a strong path for its future growth. They are well funded, have growing brand recognition in their target group, and have acquired strong partnerships.

Engagement for Whoop is hard to grasp from the outside. What we can see is the growing use of their products by athletes in professional sports. Whoop has penetrated the audience of sports by getting athletes in golf, racing, biking, baseball, and football to wear and display their data. This generates great buzz throughout social media. Whoop needs to keep this growth in steady state and continue to leverage its athletes and partnerships to market its product.

There is not much a company can do once the product is out into the world. Getting reviews on the product from outside the target group could be detrimental to Whoop’s brand. Whoop needs to determine if prioritizing its target group’s happiness is more important than expanding its target group and creating additional features similar to the Apple Watch and Fitbit’s Google Pixel Watch. Personally, Whoop should continue its marketing campaign to focus on an athlete target group. In this demographic, they are dominant and have serious potential for growth.

Again, from the outside, it is hard to determine exactly how well Whoop is generating revenue. Although, raising $300 million or 75% of their total funding within the last two years and getting a $3.6 billion valuation is not a bad sign. Also, being able to double its employee base and launch additional products show that Whoop has the additional revenue, time, and resources to continue its success and push for growth.

Overall, Whoop is leading the front into athletic biometric tracking. They are utilizing new technology and discovering new market trends for the industry. Just like Whoop encourages the use of data to push its users, they are also pushing themselves to achieve their maximum potential. The future for Whoop looks strong and bright.