WHOOP 5.0 and WHOOP MG launch with biological age tracking and upcoming blood test integration

Um, we had him on around the last product release and we will invite him back to the stream. There he is. How you doing? Well, good to see you. What's up, guys? Good to see you. What's up? Great to see you. Uh, where are you right now? What's in the background? This is Whoop HQ.

I'm in my office and if you look right here, that's Fenway Park. Oh, that's right. We're in Boston. Yeah, Boston. Very nice. Oh, we got some claps from the team in the background. Uh, someone's happy about Boston. Anyway, give us the update. What's What's new in your world? Well, we recently launched the Whoop 5.

0 and the Whoop MG. So, two new hardwares, three membership tiers, bunch of new bands and accessories. Uh, the market seems to be loving the product. business has been uh has been really good. Great. And uh yeah, we've launched a lot of new features.

We just came out with a with a health span feature that will tell you your Whoop age. We worked with uh the Buck Institute, which is the leading institute in the country for longevity. So, we found that, you know, the top nine biometrics that correlate with all cause mortality.

I'm sure you guys have very low whoop ages. And uh and yeah, how do you think about when when just sorry to interrupt, but but a lot of anybody that uh anybody that does any type of like health testing, diagnostics, a lot of people are adding an age uh or or or this kind of like age score.

And it feels like there's incentive to for some players to just put the age as low as possible so that people share it. That's obviously not great for the user. They're like, "I'm 35, but this score says I'm 25, so I'm going to share it, you know, on on social media.

" I took one of these biological age tests, and it said that I had the mind of a four-year-old. The mind specifically, the body of an elderly man, but the mind of a It said I was sharp as a compliment. Okay. But it is You have the mind people have said, "I have the mind of a golden retriever. " Yes. Yes.

It said It says you're as smart as a four-year-old. Uh it was impressive. Um but my question is yeah, it is kind of like a little bit of an optimistic flip because you could flip this around and just say uh your your life expectancy like the average life expectancy is is 75 and you're at 85 based on how you're aging.

So that's much darker that does like the death. Yeah, I remember those apps and those are much darker and spookier and weird and uh and macob. Um but this feels this feels uh much more optimistic, much more tractable. something you can work towards. But what are the pitfalls?

What do you what did you make sure were you without naming competitors like like what what did you want to avoid in the in the in how you designed your product? Yeah. It felt like I it feels like some are just a random number generator. Yeah. And you're doing it with the Buck Institute. Yeah. Sounds sounds Yeah.

Look, we we worked with Dr. Eric Verden, who's literally one of the best doctors when it comes to longevity and the research institute there, we found nine biometrics that most closely correlate with all cause mortality. Yeah.

and uh and they were all things that that we measure and uh and so we're able to show in great detail how Whoop members stack up to other people their age uh in a bunch of different factors like sleep consistency, hours of sleep, steps, uh you know, time spent in heart rate zones, your V2 max, your weight, uh a number of you know kind of obvious uh metrics that we can we can qualify and uh we also show all the research that we used in developing the feature and uh and look it's not everyone wins at soccer.

This is not a participation trophy type product. Uh you know I think like people generally associate Whoop members as being pretty fit and healthy and I think it's like 55% of people on Whoop are younger.

I was about to ask that means like 45% you know are are seeing that they've got some work to do and uh and that's how we think it should be. You know it's it's designed to be really transparent and honest. Yeah.

But that's a good balance because if it was like 99% of Whoop customers just happen to be, you know, half their biological age, you'd be raising some eyebrows, but it seems like you dialed it in appropriately. Uh anyway, uh is that is that a health claim? Do you need to get that approved by the FDA?

Are there other things that you that where the technology has progressed but maybe the the legislative framework or the the government regulation framework hasn't advanced as fast as you'd like and you feel like the consumer might be getting left behind because of some some uh some croft in DC.

It's a good question because we've had some challenges with the FDA recently. I think it's worth just stating that the the role of the FDA is to regulate products that have a medical diagnosis. Sure.

And uh and the 21st century cures act makes it pretty clear that if a product is intended for wellness, it's not designed to be regulated. Mhm.

And the you know the structure of this exists for heart rate, sleep, so on and so forth where let's take heart rate for example that's existed heart rate monitoring has existed since the 80s with chest straps and other tools obviously Whoop does it today Apple watch so on and so forth and so you can show heart rate in the context of sleep or exercise or whatever and that is wellness and therefore it's not regulated.

If you want to tell someone that they have AIB, uh, that all of a sudden is a diagnosis and so that would need to be regulated by the FDA.

Now, just to say it, we also spent the last two and a half years getting regulated with the FDA doing clinical trials and so now we have a medically cleared product by the FDA to do ECG monitoring from the wrist and also to do a detection. So that's just one example of the difference between wellness and medical.

You know, with sleep, you can say hours of sleep, you can do staging, that's wellness. If you want to tell someone they have sleep apnea, that's medical. And where the FDA is inconsistent on this is with blood pressure.

So, Whoop spent the last three years and tens of millions of dollars innovating to uh develop blood pressure insights. And this is a really cutting edge feature that allows us to measure blood pressure from your wrist and give you a daily estimate which just to say it is a pretty big innovation in the wearable space.

And we brought this to market in in May and the FDA has come out saying that they think that it should be a regulated product. Now again back to this distinction between wellness and medical. We built the feature for wellness intended use.

So, it has a lot of disclaimers around it that it's not designed to diagnose hypertension. It's not a medical device. And it shows you how your blood pressure uh impacts sleep and stress, how it's impacted by nutrition.

Uh I had a woman in my office last week and she uh was seeing low readings on her blood pressure insights page. Turned out she was dehydrated. She drinks more water. It goes back to, you know, a more normal reading. That's like a classic wellness use case.

So, we built this wellness feature and now we're we're in a debate with the FDA over it. But we're fighting uh to keep this product in market because uh at the end of the day, it's it's the right thing to do. Consumers are loving it. It's innovative.

And by the way, it's the law because the 21st Century Cures Act says that you can't regulate wellness intended features. What are what are some of the break points for uh amount of money to really uh have a good relationship with the FDA?

Like I imagine like a seedfunded startup has no chance of getting cleared as a medical device for you know $300,000 investment. I imagine Apple should have no problem because they probably have an office in Washington DC. But you know you're like a pretty big company. I feel like you should be able to afford it.

But um like how how tricky is it to and how expensive is it to actually just go for the other designation with any of the the wellness features and just kind of shift them over into the medical feature and would there actually be a a product or consumer benefit if you did that? Well, it's a good question.

There there are a lot of costs associated with being uh a medical device. you know, you have to go through a clinical trial process. You have to work with the FDA. Depending on the functionality, you you might need to hire a lot of consultants to support that. So, it's a it's a hard thing for uh smaller companies to do.

The other thing just to say it though is it's time consuming. So, you know, it'll delay your time to market by two, three, four years depending on the type of FDA approval that you're seeking. Yeah. And uh and then I think the real main question is what's the intended use?

Is the intended use around describing wellness or is the intended use around diagnosis? And uh and so our intended use today is using blood pressure insights to help people understand their wellness.

And in the long run, of course, we can imagine having uh a more diagnostic product, but that's not what we've we've shipped yet today, nor is it what we're claiming to have. Yeah. Yeah.

And I imagine that even even if you have unlimited money, you still uh will be delayed by a couple years while the FDA reviews these claims. And then the problem is is that you're shipping new hardware like every year.

So you have millions of people that are dehydrated and yeah blood pressure because of it and aren't even able to be aware. Very rough. Well, what's next? What is the plan?

Is there is there is there anything on the horizon that you want to get through or uh or move over or is it just kind of like sort this debate out and then move on? Oh, we're going to keep working with the FDA. I mean, like I said, we've been working with the FDA for years and and I have a lot of respect for the FDA.

I think they they have an important governing function in this country. Uh I I just think they've missed the mark on this on this particular case. And so we're going to fight for that and we're going to fight for health data for Americans.

Uh in terms of where Whoop is going right now, we just announced a bunch of new features that are coming out before the end of the year. And one of which I'm very excited about is advanced labs. So Whoop is going to be coming out with our own uh blood testing.

You're going to be able to upload all of your past blood tests. doesn't matter if it was through a doctor or another product or what. Um that's all going to be able to live inside Whoop. It'll be grafted over time. It'll become part of uh your Whoop data.

And then on a go forwards basis, you'll also be able to uh take blood tests. And this is a real new capability for the company, but it's going to help bring more and more of this data under one umbrella, one roof, so to speak. You know, we're trying all HIPPA compliant, I assume.

Is that what is that the compliance framework that matters here? Yeah, you have to work with the right partners in order to enable it and obviously the testing is pretty sophisticated. Sure. Uh we've got you know some great partners in the space but a lot of it's also explaining what the data means. Yep.

And I think that's where Whoop historically has been quite good is is you know presenting information and trying to coach on it. Yep. What's powerful about the blood testing is we'll now be able to pair it with your 247 physiological data.

So, you know, maybe if you're not sleeping well, it has something to do with a biioarker or a blood test. You know, maybe your exercise is improving improving something here. You want to be able to have all this data under one umbrella so you can understand it. Makes sense. Uh well, thank you so much for stopping by.

Good luck with everything at the FDA and good luck with the rest. Have fun with your friends over there. I'm sure you guys are spending a lot of time. Enjoy the frequent flyer miles as you go to Washington DC regularly or maybe you take the train. Who knows? Anyway, thank you so much for stopping by.

We'll talk soon, dude. Thanks, progress. Have a good one. Bye. Up next, we have a niche from NIT coming into the studio. We are talking about them and I think we got some good news. I think we might be hitting the gong. I'll let you do the honors, Sean.