WHOOP’s Will Ahmed on the power of simplicity and restraint

Not so long ago the biggest feature in wearables was counting steps. Since then, we’ve made big strides, pun intended.

Wearables now offer the promise of being always-on, on the go, devices that are not only early warning systems for health issues, but personal trainers with goals. But that promise depends on the quality of data, as well as, on features which are still in beta mode. Since wearables serve a wide range of needs for many consumers, there’s a constant debate as to which device is best. 

That’s why I was excited to talk with Will Ahmed , the founder and CEO of WHOOP . WHOOP stands out in the wearable fitness tracker space in part because of its narrow and deep focus as a product. Originally geared towards professional athletes, WHOOP captures a lot of valuable data, but avoids overwhelming users with it. It's designed to be invisible — it doesn’t even have a screen. It just looks like a simple band on your wrist. 

Will and I covered a lot of territory, including how building for pro athletes is different from building for the mainstream consumer, and why he was determined to build his own hardware despite the preferences of dozens of potential investors.

Here are some of my top takeaways:

Product scope creep is a silent killer for builders

"I watched a lot of products go down this rabbit hole of product scope creep, where you keep adding these things and you dilute everything else in the process."

There are always compelling reasons to add more features, but they can often dilute the original vision. WHOOP is proof that focusing on a narrow purpose — almost religiously — can be a superpower. WHOOP isn’t a smartwatch. No screen. No push notifications. No phone calls. It simply and accurately tracks your body’s data. This radical separation of the physical and digital experiences is key. The physical device is just a band — simple and lightweight. The digital experience is where the richness of insights and data lives. By intentionally managing down feature creep, WHOOP perfected its hardware for one job: health and fitness monitoring. It’s a case study in why doing fewer things exceptionally well beats doing many things just okay.

Building your own hardware can be one of your biggest competitive advantages

"If you can control every piece of the member experience and there's a certain quality bar at every level, the intersection points can be where a lot of magic happens."

It was extremely important for Will to control the product experience, end to end. More than 70% of potential investors told Will that building hardware was a mistake. They pushed him to use off-the-shelf solutions instead. But Will saw building hardware as key. It enables him to control every layer — from sensors, to signal processing, to the WHOOP app — and therefore optimize accuracy, reliability, and user experience better than anyone else. Many wearables suffer from inconsistencies at the intersection points between hardware and software. WHOOP solved this by owning the entire stack. While it is expensive and time-consuming, this approach made WHOOP a category leader in health tracking…instead of just another fitness gadget.

Collecting data is easy; making it useful is the hard part 

A challenge that a lot of companies in the space have had is, because they collect a lot of data, they wanna show you a lot of data. But it takes some restraint. You have to really try to figure out, well, what's the big thing. And then what are the two or three sub things? And then what are the 10, third order of business sort of things.

Many products overwhelm users with too much information, assuming that showing more data equals providing more value. WHOOP takes a different approach: restraint. Hiding complexity and only revealing deeper insights when users actually need them. Instead of flooding users with numbers, it layers insights. This philosophy isn’t just for casual users — everyone, even pro athletes, want simplicity. They need quick, actionable takeaways, not raw data dumps. 

Check out the full episode for many more great insights.

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