Welcome to The Growth Spurt, a fortnightly newsletter with curated insights that will challenge your thinking as an aspiring creator, marketer or tech-enthusiast.

Read time: 6-7 mins

Today at a Glance:

• 🤖Storytime: In the current phase of AI hype, people fall into two categories: AI embracers and AI skeptics.
  👏WHICH ONE ARE YOU?👏

• ⌚️Case Study: The Story behind WHOOP and how A Harvard Student Transformed His Thesis into a 3.6 Billion Tech Unicorn

• ✨Self-development:Words of Wisdom from Melanie Perkins, founder of Canva

  Share The Growth Spurt

Storytime: Are you AI curious or an AI skeptic?

I have always been amazed at the different conversations I have about AI: from AI builders to people who are terrified of AI.

In this AI hype phase, people are segregating into 2 categories:

(1) AI curious

(2) AI skeptics

Recently,Hilary Gridley, the head of the core app product at WHOOP revealed an important insight the into the product adoption of AI.

Unlike previous trends, the product adoption of AI is largely driven by consumer‘s attitudes toward AI technology.

Speaking of innovative technologies, let’s delve into the case study of WHOOP.

Case Study of WHOOP: How A Harvard Student Transformed His Thesis into a 3.6Billion Company, WHOOP

💣️ WTF is WHOOP?

WHOOP is an advanced wearable that monitors key health metrics such as sleep, strain, recovery, and health.

Traditional fitness trackers were bulky gadgets that track biometric data without clear recommendations.

💡The beginnings of WHOOP

Will Ahmed (Founder of WHOOP), while writing his undergrad Harvard thesis on human performance, realized he had to take a step further to shake up the industry.

He wanted WHOOP to translate the biometric data and provide health recommendations.

In short, he envisioned WHOOP to be a high-tech wearable that is a 24/7 health coach.

This vision materialized into a 3B tech empire.

Icons from Prince Williams to LeBron James are OBSESSED.

It has a wireless battery, so you never have to take WHOOP off your wrist.

The core metrics WHOOP tracks are:

• Recovery

• Strain

• Stress

• Sleep

The competitive edge: It doesn’t only track data.

It translates these insights so that a user knows if they need to see a doctor for an undiagnosed condition

Isn’t that so COOL?

And wohoo, WHOOP is whooping its way to Aussie 🦘

Now WHOOP is globally expanding to 56 different markets including Australia, with several exciting partnerships with our local AFL celebrities.

💡How did WHOOP Get Its First Customers?

Few companies can say they got LeBron James within their first 100 customers.

But WHOOP did the unimaginable.

❓️Question:

How did a startup convince influential sport athletes like LeBron to jump on ship?

💡Answer:

The personal trainer to LeBron James.

By connecting with personal trainers who were pivotal yet under the radar, Whoop positioned their product directly into the routines of these top athletes.

Just like Doordash (covered in the previous edition), it tapped into influential but overlooked entry points to set the ball rolling.

⚡️Building a Lifestyle, not a product.

Nike is not just shoes. It is a movement.

WHOOP is not just a wearable. It is a movement.

Ultimately, WHOOP wanted to make human performance a lifestyle, similar to Nike‘s playbook.

By aligning with top athletes through their trusted trainers, Whoop didn't just sell a product; they built a compelling narrative of elite performance and recovery, setting the stage for widespread consumer adoption.

🤖How Is WHOOP embracing AI to step up its game as a 24/7 health coach?

What is the WHOOP AI coach?

‘‘ With OpenAI’s latest technology, WHOOP Coach generates highly individualized, conversational responses to your health, fitness, and wellness questions – all within seconds.”

⚡️How did WHOOP know it hit PMF?

WHOOP’s Initial Users = The Best Athletes In The World

Will Ahmed:

“Our origins are really in professional sports. We started working with the best athletes in the world when the first product came out.’’

👊What is the evidence of PMF?

Two of our first 100 were LeBron James and Michael Phelps.

WHOOP became partners with the NFL Players Association, so the wearable was distributed to every player in the NFL.

And it became the first[wearable] approved in Major League Baseball.

🧑‍🦰From LeBron James to the consumer market

‘‘If something is good enough for LeBron it’s going to work for me right?’’

Humans are after all mimetic and WHOOP leveraged it.

Once the brand had built value amongst the greatest athletes on the planet, it gave the brand the credibility to win over your average consumer.

🚀Scaling Strategy: How WHOOP scale its user base?

Superstar ambassador programme

Similar to Nike, WHOOP managed to sign an epic global ambassador deal with some of the biggest names in sports and business.

🥳On the consumer side, WHOOP is taking over the international market!

By focusing on a niche market of professional athletes, WHOOP has expanded to over 125 million consumers.

This market growth and the launch of Spanish and Italian in the WHOOP app is just the start of WHOOP‘s international expansion into the Europe region.

And it has recently launched into Australia, embracing the nuances of Aussie sports culture from Bondi Runs to AFL.

Network effects. Period.

Check out Will Ahmed’s featured episode on the Work Hard, Hardly Working podcast if you want to fall into the rabbit hole of WHOOP‘s exponential growth. It is my favorite episode so far on ‘Work Hard, Hardly working’!

✨Words of Wisdom from Melanie Perkins, founder of Canva

Melanie Perkins is a trailblazer and a true legend!

I revisit this Medium read from Melanie Perkins every time I need a little pep talk.

Here are my Top 3 favorite insights from Melanie Perkins 🌟

1. Find people who like you and believe in you

   • Be your UNIQUE you, especially in the field of innovation- this will be your competitive edge.

   • Melanie Perkins: ‘‘There’s a kind of beautiful self-selection process that happens when you are trying to pursue something when you don’t tick many of the typical boxes. The only people who invest in you, do so because they believe in you.’’
     

2. Don’t care about the stats

   • E.g. ‘Only 2% of VC funding go to female founders’

   • If you are a female founder, this will be disappointing. But you are not a statistic. The stats are in the past. The future is in your hands.

3. Don’t worry about people who don’t like you

   • Your vibe attracts your tribe.

   • Melanie Perkins: ‘‘If they can’t see past your (whatever factor they don’t like about you) they are probably too short-sighted to have long-term success anyway — at least that’s my optimistic view. There are more than seven billion people on this planet, which means there are a lot of really great people out there. Focus on finding the nice ones, and don’t worry about those that aren’t’’

Refer Friends & Help Us Grow the Tribe🥳

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