威尔·艾哈迈德如何将他在哈佛大学当学生运动员时的一个想法变成了一个价值 36 亿美元的健身科技品牌
【中美创新时报2024 年 6 月 26 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）可穿戴技术公司Whoop旨在帮助人们了解自己的身体。《波士顿环球报》记者珍妮尔·纳诺斯（Janelle Nanos）与波士顿商界领袖威尔·艾哈迈德（Will Ahmed）坐下来谈论他们的职业道路、工作和成就，以及他们对波士顿未来的愿景，并作了下述详细报道。
威尔·艾哈迈德（Will Ahmed）的使命是释放人类的表现。
这位 34 岁的健身技术公司 Whoop 的首席执行官兼创始人将这家总部位于波士顿的公司打造为一个价值 36 亿美元的品牌，其中包括迈克尔·菲尔普斯、勒布朗·詹姆斯和克里斯蒂亚诺·罗纳尔多等名人投资者。该公司去年在肯莫尔广场开设了一个华丽的新总部，其巨大的标志现在就悬停在 Citgo 标志下方。对于一款无法测量步数甚至无法显示时间的健身追踪器而言，这是一个非凡的成功。
但对于艾哈迈德来说，这就是重点。
“你可以测量身体内部的生理指标，从而真正了解身体状况，”他说。“这就是 Whoop 不断浮出水面的东西。”
在《波士顿环球报》 Bold Types 视频系列的最新一期中，艾哈迈德与商业记者 Janelle Nanos 坐下来讨论 Whoop 对精英运动员的吸引力、Whoop 与其他健身追踪器的不同之处，以及该公司为何特别适合利用波士顿的医疗保健和技术专长，更不用说其狂热的体育狂热。
艾哈迈德说，Whoop 与其他健身追踪器不同，因为它被设计为“帮助消费者了解自己身体的复杂工具”，而他表示竞争对手并没有这样做。
该设备通常可以戴在手腕上或塞进 Whoop 设计的运动装备中，它可以测量心率变异性、压力水平和呼吸频率等输入，帮助用户了解他们持续的压力、恢复和睡眠情况。这些指标每天都会组合成一个个性化的每日分数，帮助用户了解他们的身体表现如何，以及在努力达到最佳健身状态时，当天应该锻炼多少。
Ahmed 说，结合其应用程序中的一款新的人工智能工具，Whoop 成为一个系统，可以为用户的健康和健身目标提供更精准的洞察。通过该公司的订阅模式，用户每月只需支付约 30 美元即可访问这些数据。
Ahmed 说：“当我们创办这家公司时，我们打算取代许多医疗技术，而不是成为计步器。因此，当你从 Whoop 获得洞察时，它们非常准确，非常精确，因此它们更有洞察力。…它测量的是身体内部你无法感觉到的东西。”
艾哈迈德在哈佛大学开始开发 Whoop，当时他是壁球队的队长，他很难理解自己的日常锻炼如何影响他的整体表现。
“我是一名大学生运动员，在哈佛大学每天训练三四个小时，但不知道这意味着什么。解决方案变成了研究和调查的过程。” 2012 年，他开始阅读医学期刊，并在哈佛创新实验室工作。
自那时起，艾哈迈德已从软银的 Vision Fund 2、Accomplice 和 NextView Ventures 等公司筹集了近 4.05 亿美元的风险投资。去年，他加倍履行 Whoop 对波士顿的承诺，在芬威球场和波士顿马拉松路线上开设了一家新的 121,000 平方英尺的办公室。现在，每当球飞向绿色怪物时，红袜队的球迷都可以看到 Whoop 标志和 Citgo 标志。
“我们喜欢 Whoop 成为天际线地标的想法，”Ahmed 说道，而波士顿也为公司的业绩带来了好处。“我们处在令人惊叹的医院系统、令人难以置信的体育生态系统、世界上最好的学校和令人敬畏的科技市场的交汇处。这个办公室的地理位置和波士顿的社区使其成为 Whoop 真正成功的家园。”
有人谈论 Whoop 是否会进行 IPO，但目前，Ahmed 表示他专注于将业务范围扩大到东南亚和中东市场。他打算继续为腕带增加功能，更多地关注女性健康、压力和其他医疗问题的指标。
“Whoop 的优势在于，性能就是健康，健康就是性能，”他说。“当今社会存在这样的问题，只关注疾病护理，而不是真正了解身体并让人类能够帮助预防疾病。”
题图：《波士顿环球报》记者 Janelle Nanos 与波士顿商界领袖坐下来谈论他们的职业道路、工作和成就，以及他们对波士顿未来的愿景。
附原英文报道：
How Will Ahmed turned an idea he had as a student athlete at Harvard into a $3.6 billion fitness-tech brand
Whoop, a wearable-tech firm, aims to help people understand their bodies
By Janelle Nanos Globe Staff,Updated June 25, 2024
Wearable-tech firm aims to help people understand their bodies. Globe reporter Janelle Nanos sits down with leaders in the city’s business community to talk about their career paths, work and accomplishments, as well as their vision for Boston’s future.
Will Ahmed is on a mission to unlock human performance.
The 34-year-old chief executive and founder of fitness technology firm Whoop has built the Boston-based company into a $3.6 billion brand, with celebrity investors like Michael Phelps, LeBron James, and Cristiano Ronaldo. The company opened a flashy new headquarters last year in Kenmore Square, where its massive logo now hovers just under the Citgo sign. It’s a remarkable degree of success for a fitness tracker that doesn’t measure steps or even tell you the time.
But for Ahmed, that’s the point.
“There are physiological metrics inside your body that you can measure to really know what the status of your body is,” he said. “That’s what Whoop is constantly surfacing.”
In the latest installment of the Globe’s Bold Types video series, Ahmed sat down with business reporter Janelle Nanos to discuss Whoop’s appeal with elite athletes, what sets Whoop apart from other fitness trackers, and why the company is particularly well-situated to take advantage of Boston’s health care and technology expertise, not to mention its rabid sports fanaticism.
Whoop is not like other fitness trackers, Ahmed says, because it’s designed as a “sophisticated tool to help consumers understand their bodies,” in ways he says the competition does not.
The device, which can typically be worn on a wrist or tucked into Whoop-designed athletic gear, measures inputs like heart rate variability, stress levels, and respiratory rate to help users get a sense of their ongoing strain, recovery, and sleep. These metrics are combined each day into an individualized daily score, which helps a user understand how well their body is performing, and how hard they should work out that day as they push toward peak fitness.
Coupled with a new AI-enabled tool within its app, the Whoop becomes a system, Ahmed says, that offers more calibrated insights into a users’ health and fitness goals. And with the company’s subscription model, users pay about $30 a month to access that data.
“When we started the company we set out to replace a lot of medical technology, not become a pedometer,” Ahmed said. “And so when you’re getting insights from Whoop they’re very accurate, they’re very precise, and as a consequence they’re more insightful. … It’s measuring things inside your body that you can’t feel.”
Ahmed began developing Whoop while at Harvard, where, as the captain of the squash team, he struggled to understand how his daily workouts were impacting his overall performance.
“I was a college athlete, training three or four hours a day at Harvard, and having no idea what that meant. The solution to that became a process of research and investigation.” He began reading medical journals and working on the company out of the Harvard Innovation Labs in 2012.
Since that start, Ahmed has raised nearly $405 million in venture capital from the likes of Softbanks’s Vision Fund 2, Accomplice, and NextView Ventures. Last year, he doubled down on Whoop’s commitment to Boston by opening a new 121,000-square-foot office steps from Fenway Park and on the Boston Marathon route. Now, every time a ball heads toward the Green Monster, Red Sox fans get a view of the Whoop logo alongside the Citgo sign.
“We like the idea of Whoop being a landmark in the skyline,” Ahmed says, and being in Boston has been a benefit to the company’s performance too. “We’re at the intersection of an amazing hospital system, an unbelievable sports ecosystem, some of the best schools in the world, and an awesome tech market. The location of this office physically and also the community of Boston makes it a really successful place for Whoop to call home.”
There’s been talk about whether Whoop might position itself for an IPO, but for now, Ahmed says he’s focused on expanding his reach globally into markets in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. And he intends to keep adding functionality to the bands, with more emphasis on metrics for women’s health, stress, and other medical issues.
“The Whoop vantage point is performance is health, health is performance,” he said. “There’s such a problem in society today to just focus on sick care, versus really understanding the body and putting humans in a position to help prevent something from going wrong.”
