In this episode of The Next Next, host Jason Jacobs interviews Ryan Durkin, VP of AI at Whoop. They discuss Ryan's extensive career, which includes stints at Wayfair, Drizly, and founding a profitable talent business. The conversation delves into his new role at Whoop, focusing on integrating AI to make it the most AI-forward workplace. Ryan highlights the importance of AI in enhancing efficiency, employee training, and tool utilization across departments. They also touch on the future of education, universal basic income, and discuss Jason's emerging interest in building a youth sports platform. The episode provides insights into both professional and personal development through AI.
Unlocking Human Performance: A Deep Dive with Whoop's VP of AI, Ryan Durkin In this episode of The Next Next, host Jason Jacobs sits down with Ryan Durkin, VP of AI at Whoop, to discuss his journey from founding Campus Live to his innovative role at Whoop. They delve into Whoop's mission to become an AI-forward workplace, the strategic importance of AI in organizational roles, and the future of employee engagement in AI-driven environments. The conversation also touches on the broader implications of AI in the workplace, potential educational paradigms, and Jason's exploration into building an AI-driven platform for youth sports development.
00:00 Introduction to Today's Guest: Ryan Durkin
00:27 Ryan Durkin's Career Journey
01:05 Whoop's New AI Initiative
02:03 The Next Next: Show Overview
02:48 Big Announcements from Whoop
03:35 Whoop's Mission and Product Evolution
04:18 Jason's Personal Connection to Whoop
05:22 Ryan's Role and Journey to Whoop
06:50 AI at Work Initiative at Whoop
09:50 Building an AI-Forward Workplace
18:04 Implementing AI Tools and Strategies
28:27 Future of Work and AI Integration
30:03 Unlocking Human Potential in the Workplace
31:30 Reimagining Job Roles and Descriptions
32:36 The Future of Work and Automation
37:33 Balancing Work and Personal Life
38:56 The Role of Credentials in Career Success
42:04 Building a Youth Sports Platform
49:12 Prototyping and Entrepreneurship
53:49 Final Thoughts and Call to Action
Jason Jacobs: On today's episode of The Next Next, our guest is Ryan Durkin, VP of AI at work at Whoop. Whoop, of course is the health and fitness band that I've got on my wrist here for anyone that is watching this on video. And I saw so, um, I've known Ryan A. Long time, uh, since he co-founded a company called Campus Live back in the day, back in 2008, which was the same time that I founded Runkeeper.
And at any rate, Ryan's done a bunch of interesting things. He worked at Wayfair for several years. He worked at. Drizly before they were acquired by Uber for 1.1 billion. Uh, he was the founder and CEO of the operators, which was an interesting talent business that he bootstrapped to a million dollar profitable company.
And then, uh, he joined Ed Baker, uh, f from, uh, Facebook and Uber Fame, uh, at any question as COO, which was then acquired by Whoop. At any rate, Ryan uh, announced [00:01:00] recently in the last few months that he took on this new role at Whoop Whoop VP of AI at work. And the mission of the role is helping whoop become the number one most AI forward workplace.
Now, that certainly got my attention in terms of why a health and fitness company like Whoop would be going so deep down that path and also what that means. What he's trying to do with the role, why it came about, how they got started with it, uh, how it's structured internally, and how much collaboration and input he gets from other departments throughout the organization, where they've been finding success, what some surprises have been, and where Ryan thinks that all of this is going since he's obviously got an interesting perch from which to form an opinion on that.
At any rate, I won't share too much more because we should just get into it. But before we get [00:02:00] started.
I'm Jason Jacobs, and this is The Next Next. It's not really a show, it's more of a learning journey to explore how founders can build ambitious companies while being present for family and not compromising flexibility and control, and also how emerging AI tools can assist with that. Each week we bring on guests who are at the tip of the spear on redefining how ambitious companies get built, and selfishly the goal is for this to help me better understand how to do that myself.
While bringing all of you along for the ride, not sure where this is gonna go, but it's gonna be fun.
Okay, Ryan Durkin, welcome to the show.
Ryan Durkin: Thanks, Jason. Thanks for having me.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming. Especially the, I'm not sure exactly the date this is gonna publish, but the date we're recording is the, is May 9th, which is the day after the big announcements from Whoops. I feel a [00:03:00] little bit like I'm talking to Craig Federighi or Eddie Cue or something. The day after the day after the Apple's ww DC
Ryan Durkin: It was a big day. It was a big day. It was a long day, I think.
Jason Jacobs: Guys are like, Boston's, Boston and health and fitness' apple. So
Ryan Durkin: Totally.
Jason Jacobs: don't know if that's a, that Yeah, I'm, I, yeah, I don't know if that's a complicated compliment or an insult because it's like, what do you mean Boston's and health and fitness we're just apple's apple.
Ryan Durkin: no. We'll take it. We'll take it. Yeah. The team was here yesterday, I think at 4:00 AM Everybody started and with the rollout, getting everything out the door. So big day move 5.0. Launch. We can talk a little bit about that as we get into it, but day for us to really pivot from this kind of focus on human performance and the athlete focus to health. And so we've redefined our mission. Our mission is now unlocking human performance in health span. I'm super excited about that. When I first joined the company about two years ago, this was like my main [00:04:00] thing I was really hoping we would push towards. Obviously it's a big space that can help a ton of people.
And thing here is everybody who comes into work, I think has their own personal story as to why they're here. And oftentimes it spans that health realm. So monster day for us yesterday for sure.
Jason Jacobs: I told you by email before we started recording today but if you look at my wrist I'm yeah. But I, yeah, let me frame up why I invited you on the show and then we can get into it. The show is just, I purposely left it vague with the next because it's basically anything I want it to be.
And it started out with like, how do I build different and 'cause as a founder I'm setting out to build again, but can't do it in the way I used to because I have a lot more going on and I'm getting older and all that. But but then it felt reckless to just anchor and build another tech company without, especially given that I was in this intermission taking the time to understand.
What's happening with ai? Because while there's a lot of hyp and grift and noise in the short term, it seems like the implications in the longer term will be profound. And [00:05:00] understanding how it will affect how we work and live how startups get built and funded, and specifically how I might be able to leverage it to build difference.
That's where the journey started. And then more recently I've been, looking at, all right what category do I love and what problem do I wanna solve? And then working backwards to the tool sets. And I've spent a lot of time back in sports. So revisiting the Runkeeper days and specifically youth sports because that's where I'm neck deep in spending so much time outside of work with my kids.
But I invited you on the show one you are an entrepreneur that, at least from. My perception, like operates to the beat of your own drummer. So it's just interesting to learn from and talk to as a founder. Two, you're in this role at whoop as of, VP of ai and your mission says on your LinkedIn says number one, helping whoop become the number one AI forward workplace.
Right? And and you see these announcements of, like Duolingo, like we're, we're morphing into AI first, and there's all these companies making these big, bold proclamations, but it's like. What does that mean and where does that come from and why? And like how does that help the bottom line and Right.
So there's a lot to cover there. [00:06:00] And then also just selfishly I mean as a big whoop user and someone who cares a lot about my own health and fitness and longevity and quality of life and quality of sleep and all that, I'm just interested to talk shop on that and where Whoop is going since since an, it's an area I care about a lot and I've got a vested interest as someone who's already upgraded to, to the new stuff that you just announced yesterday.
Ryan Durkin: Awesome. No, I appreciate you doing that. Yeah I remember when I sent you, I said, Hey, we're ready to rock for tomorrow morning, and you sent me the receipt of the purchase, which I loved, but yeah.
Jason Jacobs: I should have waited to see if you could have gotten me some friends and family discount or something, but I was too eager. I had to get my hands on the blood pressure stuff. Amongst other things. But the blood pressure stuff in particular I mean I, and maybe it's not an official reading or, we can talk about that, but it's the fact that it's, even the, that the stepping stones are starting to come is really exciting to me.
No,
Ryan Durkin: I'll get you some bands for sure. I'll hook you up. Where would you like to start? Do you want we could talk a little bit about the kind of AI at Work initiative at Whoop. We could start there. And I
Jason Jacobs: Why don't you talk, just give the whoop overview and [00:07:00] then and then give an overview of the role. And then before we get too deep, then we can look backwards to how. How you got the whoop and how the role came about. But yeah, for starters, just frame the discussion for listeners if you don't mind,
Ryan Durkin: So we, is to unlock human performance and health span new mission as of last week, like I mentioned, I. Looks like this goes on your wrist or body. Most people wear it on the wrist, but we do have a whoop body product line where you can wear it in,
Jason Jacobs: but not yet compatible with the 5.0.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah correct.
Jason Jacobs: I looked today, I was like, oh, they have apparel. But it, it said not compatible with my new, but anyways, I'm sure it's coming. Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: that, that we launch, which we can get into. But yeah, the main value is like 24 7 tracking on your body, right? Especially now with 5.0 and a 14 day battery life compared to on average five. This thing previously never really came off my body, but like now it really won't. We've got different types of bands. There's a sport flex band that you can wear in the [00:08:00] shower, so if it gets wet, it's,
Jason Jacobs: just got that's, is that new? The the one that's like a su super high intensity band. I didn't see that before.
Ryan Durkin: that one for a bit, but it is, it's all available still on 5.0 and mg. It's one of these things where it's like, why do I care about the 24 7 wearability and if I were to flash forward, right?
I'm 38 years old right now, almost 39. you flash forward decades down the road. My gut
Jason Jacobs: Flash forward to me. 48, almost 49.
Ryan Durkin: you go.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: My gut says the more data that you have on yourself is gonna be better than less, especially in the age of ai. And like my personal story as to why I care about this company is and we may have talked about this back in the day when I popped over to your office, but my dad passed away from cancer when I was a kid.
And if you look at cancer survival rates today compared to 35 years ago of what it was, I. They're like, they're not that much better. There might be 10 percentage points better. Some specific types [00:09:00] of cancers are significantly better skin cancer survivors have gotten better. But it's one of these things where of something like the cure for cancer as like a big puzzle, like a thousand piece puzzle. we might already have 563 pieces to the puzzle already put in, but there's another, 337 pieces out there that we gotta go and collect. And my gut says that a lot of those puzzle pieces are like in the data, in the human biometric data. And so for me, that's what motivates me to be here.
I think there's a ton of other employees internally that have their own kind of similar stories of friends and family or their own personal journeys that they've gone through as to why that matters. But this 24 7 wearability piece is a big deal. The battery life extension of 14 days a big deal. And we can get into some of the other features as well. In terms of my role, joined through an acquisition, so we were running a company called Any Question. We're a small team of 10. Founded by a guy named Ed Baker, who I've known for about [00:10:00] like 15 years.
Jason Jacobs: Who's a serious amateur athlete in his own right.
Ryan Durkin: Serious. Yeah. He was a distance runner back at Harvard back in the day, and, would go on to do Ironman's and win them. He called me up, I don't know, probably would've been maybe four years ago at this point, and just said I've got this idea. it question and answer platform where you can go and ask professional athletes, mostly Olympians and Olympic coaches questions, record the questions, put them up on a page, and distribute that around the world for other people to benefit in hearing their answers. Kind of like a substack almost, but instead of it being blog posts, it was just question and answer. the company. Evolved into an AI company about six months into building it ChatGPT we knew was launching in November of whatever it was, 2022. And we said, okay, why don't we use that tool to generate new questions from the answers? story short, built a an consumer tech company, but we [00:11:00] got an offer to join Whoop. And we're excited about it. And so we joined, this was about two years ago. My role for the first year was a bit of a hodgepodge of mix special projects, but about six to eight months ago myself.
Jason Jacobs: Can just one question before we get into the six to eight, 18 months ago. The was that a strategic fit in terms of what you were building or was it really just the team and the skills and how the skills could be transferrable?
Ryan Durkin: It Ed had historically been on the board of Whoop. So he knew the company very well. I.
Conversations as to like where this thing could go and the opportunity discussions around that, quite frankly, like pretty easy 'cause he had a good visibility into the past five years of how the business was doing and where it was headed. And it got all of us excited. We didn't integrate the tech. It is funny, right now I'm building out this little community page with a handful of people on a discourse. So we're getting back into the q and a world for our members. But it was the team and at the time split off into different parts of the org.
We had some individuals go to [00:12:00] engineering and rad research and development. We had some go to marketing, some go to growth. And I just worked with Ed and a woman on our team named Liv a handful of different projects. And then this brought us to about the six to eight months ago where, I'd been here about a year and I was thinking to myself like, what's the big opportunity here that could really leverage my skills?
And I. As much as I love building product, like my core skill set is building teams and really like partly coaching in their careers. This is what I did with the operators and we built a big team at Drizly back in the day and recruit a lot of people away for it back in the day. But I've always had this like special place in my heart for just helping people navigate life and employees in particular.
And the opportunity I saw was like, let's just level up the entire employee base here with regards to AI first and foremost. And then also just raise the bar as to new people coming in the door and making sure that they're not just AI enabled, but almost like what would like an AI superhuman [00:13:00] look like at a, in a whoop 12 months from now.
So that was back in November. created the department one sec and put together the mission that you described earlier around, building the best. AI enabled team in Boston, hopefully the East coast. I oftentimes talk about this union between Boston and New York. I think New York has great talent down there, and I just like the kind of mix of talent going between both cities.
And we also have a ton of employees down in New York as well, and whoop, then started to set off and say, okay, what does that actually mean? Like, how do we get there? And that kind of gets to, I can talk a bit about the roadmap and the strategy around it, but we've got a set number of objectives that we're trying to hit and guidepost to guide the entire company. You want me to touch more on that right now, or?
Jason Jacobs: What was the business case for getting this established and also what gave you the co [00:14:00] Like I think about heads of sustainability, for example, because that's the world that I'm, that I spent the last almost seven years in. And and there's a big difference between a company that's just going about their.
Day to day as they were. But then they have this sustainability team and it's just oh we'll take like a point or two of our marketing budget and we'll give it to them and that'll, make us a green place to work or whatever. But we're not actually gonna change anything.
And but it feels like in order for this type of role to be impactful, it really needs to start at the top and be empowered and pervasive throughout the organization in a more fundamental way. So I guess, yeah. What was the business case and also what gave you the confidence that this wasn't just gonna be window dressing?
Ryan Durkin: Yeah, totally. Yeah. The business case really started with Will, our CEO saying, that Tobi email, the Shopify email that went viral.
Jason Jacobs: Oh, that was another one. Yeah. I mentioned Duolingo. I didn't mention Shopify. Thanks.
Ryan Durkin: while there wasn't a tweet or an email six to eight months ago, there was certainly the tone that coming from Will, coming [00:15:00] from Rob Case, our head of people coming from Ed, who we worked with that Any question who's our chief Product officer, chief Growth Officer, former who Uber Growth, former Facebook International growth, smart guys saying we really need to lean in here and success of the business, I think is predicated in today's world on adapting and changing quickly, right?
Like you and I were building companies back in 2008, you was Runkeeper and me with a, with campus life. you guys were mobile first. We had a campus life was more desktop based. We did not adapt to mobile. We did not adapt to that time, and company ultimately fizzled out. And I don't wanna live through one of those moments again, right?
Like when I saw that tech shift happen, when ChatGPT came out several years ago, I was like, okay, this thing is clearly monstrous, but. What does that mean in terms of adapting your employee base to get everyone up to speed on usage of the tools eventually pushing into this s agentic world? How do their role shift over time?
How do [00:16:00] responsibilities shift? Are there even job descriptions the way they're written today, or do they completely transform these are all the things that I like working on the problem space around org design, of team design, role design, this concept of the full stack builder and someone who can do engineering and design and prototyping altogether, shipping stuff own, to me was an interesting space.
So coming at it from the angle that it was important to will our CEO, it was important to the exec team. And we kinda looked around the room and was doing a handful of special projects, but really not utilizing my core strength. and then I just sat down and had an honest conversation with Rob Case, our head of people, and he said Durkin, I think you're, you'd be great for this, so let's do it. So Rob, me and Liv kicked it off, got the little department stood up. And by the way, I think this is an important point. Like we've been spending a lot of time to a handful of other companies in town. We hold AI events at whoop every single quarter at the intersection of AI in, in some topic.
The first one was [00:17:00] on product the second one was on recruiting in the people space, and the next one was on health on June 5th. And there's a ton of companies that don't have dedicated headcount or resources dedicated to this. Some clearly are due to size, right? If you're a company of 10 people, you're not gonna reserve a full-time employee to do this necessarily.
But if you're a hundred person plus company at this point, the alternative is what's happening in town is like every employee is spending time on this, like one to 10%. But most companies that I've talked to, they're not really digging in, including some like really big consumer tech companies in Boston that I've spoken to.
And, they've got several thousands of employees and there's no. People focused internally on their people team, trying to help tools, number one, and get them in the hands of the people and then coach people on them beyond LLMs, beyond ChatGPT and basic LLMs coach people up on these tools and then really start projecting a vision for the future.
So we took the stance, okay, we're gonna dedicate head headcount to it we're gonna keep it on our minds 24 [00:18:00] 7, 365. And that's where we're at right now, working through our roadmap.
Jason Jacobs: So when you first anchored and started to gear up to head out on the journey where did you start? What did those first few steps look like and how did you balance learning with doing?
Ryan Durkin: Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Yeah, there's like the first three buckets of focus. I would say the first one was. Alright, let's get some champions across the org. That was number one. So most companies do this at this point, right? Six, eight months ago. This would've been like more unique I guess.
But now I think every company's replicating this, whether you call it a steering committee or a guild, whatever, finding a representative from each department within your org to serve as the AI of their domain. Who's interested in having conversations about this type of stuff and getting in the room at least once a month, if not once a week. That was mission point number one. So we assembled this team of about eight of us Flores from engineering and Emily from Rad and Amit from finance. And we went around the [00:19:00] org, Lexi from products, and said, we want to have at least one person from each core department represented here to have these conversations. we started to identify the power users. So like we were CHATT Enterprise client, you get analytics from that. You're quickly able to go and figure out like who are the power users within the org? And you tap 'em on the shoulder and you say are you willing to help lean in, not just in terms of conversations we're having as to where we're going with our program, but also coaching people and raising your hand to do like self-guided teaching even as to whether it's group sessions or one-on-ones, which is a lot of the phase that we're in right now is a lot of like kind of one-on-one training group sessions up on eight on new tools, prototyping tools, everything else coming out right now. So that was the first bucket is just like providing some structure, providing some space time in the calendar and focus. Here was around the tool sets themselves. So we, everyone did like a quick survey at the land. We said okay, we gotta get catch BT enterprise over the door so that everyone here can be using it instead of shadow usage.
That every company is [00:20:00] experiencing some degree of that with different tools. So that was first we got into, okay, yeah, let's get the zoom note. Recording tools going to make meetings more efficient. Great. Unlocking tools like Gemini, within Google Workspace. Cool. then we started getting into the second layer around like more team specific tooling.
So for engineers, every engineer in the house here has cursor which is great. We're doing a pilot with another company, Jeff and Juni, which another agentic coding tool. So engineering is in a good place there. Then you're thinking about, okay, with design and products, let's get these prototyping tools approved.
So this is the whole, this is the rept, the lovable bolt and v zeros of the world UX pilot. I know Figma, we watch their keynote at config on Wednesday and we have a call with them this afternoon to talk about their maker tool. And those sites, one where you can take a design and put it in and it creates a website. A lot of stuff around the prototyping tools for product and product design. And then for teams like marketing and industrial design, there's some cool tools out there [00:21:00] Viscom, which can create. 3D rendered, new types of hardware that you might wanna play around with or cling with.
Everything. What they're doing with video right now is like super impressive. So we've been playing with that. I think one unique thing that we did that I would recommend other companies do if you don't do this already, is we created this little personal beta program for tooling. So if you wanted to use a tool, we're at a stage at whoops, life where we need to actually get these tools approved by our GRC team, right?
You can't just willy-nilly sign on and use any tool that you want, but we created an outlet for it. So we said, okay, we know everyone here is using tools outside of work on weekends and nights. That's great. Go and do that. We encourage you to do that and we'll reimburse you for it. So if you want to use Rept, great.
Go use it. We'll reimburse you. Come back with a little one pager report on where the benefit is here. Do you think we should approve this as a tool? If so, for who? What's the rollout plan and just putting the power. [00:22:00] Into the people's hands is like my main mo. I don't want this to be a department that survives for years on end, right?
To me, this is a project, this is like a, I dunno how long the project will last, but it's one of these things where I think we had to centralize it first to then decentralize it to everyone else. So that's the big second bucket. The third is really around the employee life cycle. So like when you think about, okay, the attraction stage, the hiring stage, onboarding, developing your people, retention, or even off-boarding, there's little things that you can do in every single one of those stages to have AI be like part of the culture rather than an add-on. So at the attraction stage, like we, we do, we throw these great big events in town now once a quarter, and I'm trying to push others in Boston to do the same. it's not a ton dough to be able to get something like that stood up, you're paying for, and beer and pizza for people, but they've been pretty impactful events.
We'll have like little panels of three to four people. on the floor. First one was around product and ai, intersection demoing [00:23:00] products, which is a lot of fun. We're doing a robotics one in the fall, which is gonna be a blast. We're trying to figure out who we want to have come and speak at those, but just trying to out to the market.
The fact that like AI is not a afterthought here. It is something that we interview for. There are questions in the interview around ai. It's part of the calibration meetings afterwards. In terms of whether we make the hire or not onboarding, there's a, full blown session around AI where we introduce you to the tooling, encourage you to use it, if you don't start using it out of the gate, we know that we can go and spend more time with that individual to help them get ramped up. We're taking a really heavy hand in this to try to make sure that everyone gets up to speed. Obviously, like at the end of the day, it's up to the other it's up to the person whether or not they're gonna embrace this AI age. But I really want to give everyone like. biggest chance of success in AI is humanly possible.
That's like where my head is at right now.
Jason Jacobs: Given that there's so many different tools out [00:24:00] there and that different tools work better for different people and their way of learning, their way of engaging, and some of it is oh, it needs to have this feature, it needs to have that. And some of it just comes down to just, preference the same way that, coming from the fitness app world, for example, like some people prefer Runkeepers, some people preferred Strava and it isn't necessarily that one's better and one's worse.
It's that, it's preference, right? Consumer preference. And so how do you manage I. Honoring that preference with with standardization. And also same question about individual productivity versus team productivity. Given that in order for processes to change, it needs to change in a more unified way.
When a lot of the exploration is happening at the individual level.
Ryan Durkin: Yep. Good. Good question. The on the tooling side, we do for the, for on the LLM side of things, like we do strongly encourage everyone here to use ChatGPT as the main LLM. I think what you've probably seen a good amount now about what, what's happening in the agent [00:25:00] space now, like having all of your chat convos as well as your centralized document hubs now in one place is becoming I think increasingly important. We're partnered with box and snowflake and, having. Data sets in one place that these agents that we're gonna be starting to build actually very soon can go and access that information and all the permission controlling around that. That right now is like a major focus in terms of prototyping tools, specifically, like you said, there are people that, okay, I like rep lit when I'm building outside of work on things, I'm using rept.
We're right now at final stages with all these companies and trying to figure out, okay, how many seats do we get, monthly contract versus annual, all of that. But I also love lovable because the design for livable is as of right now, I think, better than rep lit. So we're probably gonna do a bifurcation where we're gonna allow a handful of people to pick their tool in the prototyping space specifically because I think outside of. A lot of that work could end up being throwaway work, like purposely throwaway work. I am excited about the Figma AI stuff that came out this week. Like we're all on [00:26:00] Figma here internally. So if that is what it looked like on, I think it was Wednesday or Tuesday, that will most likely be the one that we would lean in with the most just 'cause we've had like legacy with that over the past several years. But I look at something like a Repli and I say, okay, if you're gonna stand up a new business line from scratch rep's pretty easy for a non-engineer to plug in immediately and get going on that cursor. As there's a ramp up curve to get, just get programming cursor. Once you're over the curve, like I think that tool for us is gonna be monstrously powerful.
Especially for all the engineers. But the long story short is I do want to give people some optionality. I. And at the same time, I wanna make sure that I, we don't overspend in duplicating tool sets across people. This the sec, what was the second question you had around?
Jason Jacobs: Process. Yeah. Yeah. It was around. How do you adapt process given that process? Is [00:27:00] it's almost like a conductor where all the pieces need to fit together when much of the exploration is happening at the individual level. So different people are in different places across all the places that the process touches.
Ryan Durkin: sense.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: one thing we did about two months ago, which I think was a good idea, is we created little subcommittees on each team. So there's now a group of six people on product and product design who are really responsible for leveling up that entire. knowledge around AI and beyond like a GRC process and everything around security, which we do follow like a very standard process for that.
That's very, purposely done in a way that we wanna make sure that we're very buttoned up. Outside of that, in terms of training, we rely on these little subcommittees. We've got one for marketing, we've got one for engineering. The engineering team right now is trying to figure out, okay, in this world of MCP, like how does work change on a daily basis?
They're responsible for that as much as I would want to dive in there [00:28:00] and say, we should do this, we should do that. I look at myself as more of the, like the Jiminy Cricket, like the conscious on the shoulder trying to help provide advice. But I don't want to be heavy handed in terms of all should use these tools and here's why. hope that answers the question.
Jason Jacobs: It, it does. So I listened this morning to to, to Will's keynote, I think it was half an hour or so, rolling out the new everything. And one of the things he was talking about is that this is not just a hardware upgrade, like this is a rethinking of. Everything. And I wanna take that back to org design and construct, because it sounds like the way you're doing it is far ahead of your peers in that you're pushing on it and incrementing in each place and then also incrementing on it across places.
Do you think that's enough? Or at some point will you need to take a step back and do the equivalent of what Will was talking about yesterday on the product side, but for the org
Ryan Durkin: Yep. Good [00:29:00] question. do think there will be a moment for most orgs where. They will want and need to bring leadership around the table to say, let's re-envision how this thing looks over the next 12 to 24 months. I was gonna say five years, but as right now, it's like I can't even predict 12
Jason Jacobs: it's like dog years. Yeah. Like 12 to 24 months is five to 10 years. Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: How I think about a lot of this and let's be real here. There is a ton of fear at the individual. I see level in tech, even outside of tech, but in tech as to what happens to my job? What does my job look like? I quite frankly am like, like super optimistic and not pessimistic on that front.
Like obviously that's like my nature. Your nature's kinda the same way, but first thing I think will happen is like the rules will change, right? Like 30 to 50% of the stuff that you're doing on a daily basis, the agents are gonna automate that away and you're gonna have that time [00:30:00] back. the question is okay, what do you do at that time?
And you were, how I like to think about this is okay, whoop. Today, especially pushing more into this health space and our focus around unlocking human forms and health span, that opens up a lot of doors for employees to play in, right? you could picture a world where our company has individual employees like me or you who say, I wanna start a full blown product line and I wanna do it with myself and two other people in here and go for it. Versus typically at a company of this stage like that would take a lot of buy-in from the top, 10 to 20 people to organize around, if not more. I think we are gonna see a lot of inception ideas that turn into full-blown product lines, where you have these like mini GMs, mini founders within a company. around building the [00:31:00] future of new verticals. that's a vision I like to think about, right? If you think about Alphabet, they've got Google and they've got YouTube and the way most spin out, and there's just so many different opportunities that are all aligned to their mission. And I would think that most companies, us included, would think about how to leverage their employee base and the agentic workforces to do that and bring our mission to more people, or more machines. so that's where I'm spending some time right now is just, okay, take one role at a time. Like instead of trying to boil the ocean and try to do this for every single role in the entire company, pick one role and start to reimagine it. Let's bring new vernacular around the J job itself and the job description to the point where if you were posting a job description for the role, it wouldn't look like what it looked like yesterday. And then, do we encourage people to become these full stack builders where they can go from idea to [00:32:00] prototype, to deploy code to AB testing iterations on that all themselves. Like that. That's where I wanna push us. Probably 'cause that's the type of personality I am. Like, you're the same way.
Like you could start a million things right now. The real question is like, what do you wanna start that you're actually gonna be fulfilled by? And so I think there's also a bit of that like push for meaning. How do you take people who may not historically be founder profiles and go and start companies, but how do you encourage them to focus on one of those things that they really care a lot about within a company like whoop? And then go build it. Second piece I would say too is like internal tools, right? Ev everyone's talking about this. Now we can automate away hopefully a lot of our third par party spend just overall get. and orgs and workflows talking to one another better through tools that we can probably build in cursor on our own rather than buy.
Those are the two things that come to mind.
Jason Jacobs: As the future [00:33:00] unfolds, and obviously neither of us and nobody has a crystal ball, but there's one world where the playing field gets leveled and barriers to entry are smaller and more and more companies start up and the the, it becomes harder and harder to be a monopoly.
Right? And and so it almost shrinks everything down closer together, right? And there's another world where it goes the opposite way, where there's more and more power concentrated and fewer hands, and it becomes less and less, possible just from a mathematics standpoint to be a founder.
Which future do you think we're gonna see? And also, that could be a nuance answer well over here it'll be this way, and over here it'll be that way. Like, how do you think about that? I.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah, question. The multi-year out view, it's tough, man. I think for a whoop, I want to see us help more people in the world. And so in my head, what it would look like here is more of that kind of alphabet esque approach where we're launching companies within the company and growing. [00:34:00] companies in and around our stage are like us, if they do the same thing, I think they'll be successful doing that. On the other side, I do this kind of like hyper personalized consumer experience world like. You meet both like consumer stuff. And when I know that I can go and, build new features whoop on my own, that could potentially someday go into the app.
You could picture a world where you start to open up the protocol to other people, other creators, other companies, other builders, and every consumer experience could get super hyper-personalized. And there's gotta be, in that world a way for people to monetize and build a nice little living for themselves. I do let you know, I've listened to your podcast a number of times and I know
Jason Jacobs: Oh, cool. I didn't know that.
Ryan Durkin: yeah. And I know you're, I know you and me share one thing in common, which is in a future world post, whoop I don't want to go down the VC path again with the company, and I wanna spend a lot of time with my future family.
Those to me are very important things and. I want to build a world where more people can do that, and think that probably does look like people may be making less dollars on an annual basis, but being like truly happy. That's the world that I want to build towards, which would just be like millions and millions of people doing their own thing, probably making a little bit less dough than they're making today.
Maybe not. Who knows? With everything in ai, like GDP could go exponential too, and there'd be so much productivity that everyone would have more money than they have today. But want to build this world where people can be happy with their family doing something that they dig. At the same time, these other companies like us are gonna want to continue to grow and help more people themselves.
So I guess it's a both.
Jason Jacobs: A couple threads to pull on there. What one is like I had Scott Weller on the show who you probably know or at least know of. And he one of the things he was talking about was how the people on his team have two jobs. One job is all the daily stuff that they would've already had to do as a startup, and then the other job is nice and weak and staying on top of how quickly the landscape is changing under their feet.
And [00:35:00] so on the one hand it's oh, with these changes it will free up time and give us time back and automate the mundane and, but the reality is that's not what's happening, right? In order to keep up with how quickly everything's changing, you end up having to work double, right?
So that's one thread. And then the other is in a world where it's automated and get your time back, like people talk about, oh, so that means you can do more of what you love and less of what you don't, and you can get the same job done in less time, and then you'll have more free time to do this and that, right?
But in a world where the companies that are powering the automation are capturing the lion's share of that value, then the people whose jobs ultimately get automated away, how do they provide, right? Do they just rely on handouts? Where does their purpose come from? And so I'm an optimist like you, but there are some pessimistic scenarios that I at least want to push on and think about because we don't know which way it's gonna go.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah, it is hard to think about a world where you, the whole universal basic income thing does not happen. Like [00:36:00] every time I try to extrapolate down years and years down the road, keep coming back to Sam Altman wrote about this however many years ago in a paper. I forget what it was called, but and I know that they did that study ar around universal basic income to try to put in real world today's terms. But I don't think it's particularly relevant given that like we gotta experience it and see it a few years from now for it to be real. But I do think we probably had more and more in that direction. We were, sometimes me and Rob case talk a bit about these questions and I think this just concept of money over time, I don't know, it starts to degrade in a world where these larger companies do start to gobble up more and more of the value. I just, I do like this world picturing where people are spending more time and doing the things that they wanna do.
For me, like on my daily basis, I am, I'm just building more stuff, it's like my ideal list of my 20 or 30 things that I. I've always had in a Google Doc, on weekends, I'm putting around building all of those now instead of just trying to pick off the one or two. seems what you're doing right now with the pod and just like this exploration path, but I'm building probably 20 times more with 20 times more ideas, trying to see where the spark might be for a future company down the road.
Jason Jacobs: And by the way, all that is only gonna make you more effective at helping evangelize and educate within Whoop for your charter. Which is how I think about the stuff I'm heading out to build now. It's what's [00:37:00] the worst case? The worst case of that become a lot more AI native, which helps inform my perspective on where the world is going and how to get there.
And so it's even if it's not a business, it's like the best education I could possibly get. Like the speaking education like this is awesome, but it can't just be that, like there's a certain education you can only get from building.
Ryan Durkin: totally, yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: hope internally is that by us working with all employees here. On a daily basis, if we can level up everybody's knowledge around this domain, then we're having conversations like this, like every day with hundreds of people internally here. So that's my main goal.
Jason Jacobs: One confusing thing for me is that I know I've been feeling the desire to be present for my family and be able to do fitness whenever I want and take care of myself and sleep enough and all that. So it's like, how can I, put work above everything, across all the things like, no.
And then what people say back to me is that's just your life stage. Like you're almost 49. And then you see, the tweets from like the VC bros [00:38:00] that are like. What I'm seeing, the best startups are now working six to eight weeks officially. And they even say in the interview process, if you don't sign on to that don't, because they know this is a moment in time and if you don't go all in, you're gonna miss the wave.
And and it's it's like bifurcated, right? It's on the one hand there's people like me that are advocating for more of a, more balance and a life portfolio approach. And then on the other hand you have people that are like going the other way where it's like it's gonna be all consuming for a period of time.
Because when these big transitions come, that's what you need to do to get up on the wave.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: yeah. My view on that, I definitely go through spurts where I will work aggressively. Like my life is very spiky and, I've, I feel like I will work aggressively and then I'll chill out for a while and decompress and think and figure out what I want to do next. So that's how I operate.
But yeah I like the approach I. I want to have a family. I wanna spend a lot of time with my kids. I'm at the point now where I I wanna build a school for my kids. And I'm probably going to, I've been
Jason Jacobs: You should talk to Derek Haswell is doing that from from the for former 10% happier guy. He's doing some, he's doing some coaching of entrepreneurs and then he is building, he's building a school with his wife, so yeah.
Ryan Durkin: like the future of micro schooling to me is a super interesting space. I've wanted to build a school for 20 years where the goal is in college, basically, where the goal is like to make a living, whatever that means to someone. But it would also be like unapologetically capitalistic like when I was a kid, I had a great childhood I was always trying to make a buck.
I was always starting businesses. I was can picking caddying, selling t-shirts, whatever I had to do to make dollars. But I was learning about business and I was learning about consumers, and it's no surprise that I ended up working in consumer tech longer term. And. I don't want to, I don't wanna build a school that forces kids to do things.
I wanna force, I wanna build a school that would force 'em to explore and be able to find out what the heck they care about and then make a living off of it. I think that's like the key point here. I don't want people to like graduate from the school and then go get a hundred thousand dollars in loans when they turn 18 Instead, it's want people who are interested much in their whatever passion that they have, that they can monetize it at a young age. so yeah, and I love what Alpha School is doing and all the more exploratory schools in that space. It's super interesting to me, one that you can also travel around the world at the same time, or at least the United States. I don't I have a hard time picturing my life with my fiance moving to the suburbs for 18 years.
It's just a hard thing for me to comprehend. Maybe I'll be like everybody else and end up doing that, but I'm gonna fight it a bit, because I think I've got an interesting idea in that space. But
Jason Jacobs: I think you're gonna follow it and end up doing that. I, you might not, but I sounded, no, I don't wanna be the guy that's I, when I was your age, I sounded just like you. Yeah. Oh. I think about this a lot. This whole concept of pedigree and credentials [00:39:00] because of, for me, in the path that I've chosen as a founder professionally I feel like I wasn't actually, although I grew up very fortunate I don't think I was particularly credentialed from a tradition from what credentials Silicon Valley valued in its founders.
And it hasn't mattered a lick. And at the same time I find that with my kids, for example credentials seem to matter. Everywhere we look, it's like they matter at each phase of schooling. They matter in athletics, like what club you pay play for and what tournaments you get invited to and stuff like that.
What do you think the future is of. Pedigrees and credentials.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah, I'm definitely not a big credential guy. I,
Jason Jacobs: it wasn't for me. And all of a sudden like my kids are on this credentialed path, and it's it's confusing, right? Is that good? Is that bad? Is that right? 'Cause it'll open up so many doors to them. If they gr graduate into the world that I, which is, the world's gonna look different anyway, so it's [00:40:00] will it really open up those doors?
What does the future look like? Like I chase my own tail around about it. I don't have answers.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: around a bit. I think if you remove college as the goal for a kid and you just think about how do you help expose them to a ton of different things that they can get excited about things, but then also try to monetize those things and make a living,
That's where my entire, like if I had like a kernel of something I was gonna really dig into, it would be around that and my, yes, like credentials have historically helped in terms of like status games.
But I don't know, man. I feel like it's pretty obvious at this point that a lot of this stuff right now happening in the collegiate education space is. crumbling. It's been that way for a long time, and I think people are now like, okay, talking about it publicly, especially being in, in Boston, right?
Like we're surrounded by like some of the best colleges in the world. I do think there is a space for the MITs of the world at like that, that PhD level, even though even PhDs will be consumed by the machines, but as research institutions where they focus on science. I heard this on a podcast recently and I was like that, [00:41:00] I like that view of it.
I think that's what this ends up. college ends up being is like a combination of research in institutions rather than the study. Going to go to school to learn when you can be doing that for your first 18 years of life and making a living. And then the second thing I think it'll evolve into is almost like clubs.
It's, it would almost evolve into what the Quinn House is and in downtown Boston, right? Or I know New
Jason Jacobs: That's a reference that only Bostonians will know, but, or, and maybe it's just Boston Tech people. I don't know.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah, I know New York.
Jason Jacobs: It's like the battery of Boston, basically.
Ryan Durkin: The
Jason Jacobs: yeah.
Ryan Durkin: houses of the world.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: feel like colleges are gonna evolve into that, but yeah, I don't know. I'm not a big credential guy.
I don't really care When someone says I went to x, y, Z school, I don't give a shit. Like I went to UMass. I don't care. It's more just what problem are you solving right now? What do you give a shit about? Why do you care like that? The big thing I would be pushing myself to think through and whatever I do down the road and start be really around making sure that alignment with why I'm building it is fully there, which is partly why I like the school.
It's look like I, I was raised without a dad. Like my mom is phenomenal. She's the best mom in the world. But also I wanna spend a lot of time with my kids and I like this kind of idea of being able [00:42:00] to, show them the world and be almost like these explorer navigators of the future. So that's, yeah, that's where I'd be spending time.
Jason Jacobs: I'd love to do a little role play here and I'm, and this is for selfish reasons, but I'm just in the early stages of. Yeah, essentially you're, when you were talking about employees taking tiny teams or even just themselves and going and spinning up a new thing that could grow into a line of business, right?
And your role within the company as like the Jiminy Cricket or like the coach or the, the per the person on their shoulder trying to help 'em see around corners and things like that. Pretend I'm that, because actually where I am with my thing actually aligns pretty well with what that potential hypothetical whoop employee might be.
So can I tell you what I'm thinking about and get some feedback? I'd value your opinion. Yeah. Cool. Now, the real reason why I do this show get free consulting. But yeah so I've been thinking about U Sports and essentially, I built Runkeeper for eight or nine years, and so I ha have experience in consumer fitness and know how hard it is and how much it sucks, but I as a business, but I love the category and I know it really well since I'm all wrapped up into it with my kids and see a lot of value in sports and but at [00:43:00] any rate the landscape when it comes to skill development, you, you cart the kids around all this formal stuff in person, but if you try to do stuff on your own at home, there's a sea of crap online and it's hard to sort through to find the quality.
It's not personalized in any way. And and there's also just no one thinking about kind of the holistic you. And so my thought, and it's also really fragmented, it's, each sport has its own kind of tools. There's no. Trusted brand across sports. Even though under the hood there's a lot of economies of scale that would come from the, like the pulling together, the, the content machine, the expertise, the analysis, the whatever, right?
And so since that I think I want to, I'm thinking about building that platform of record that kids and families come to rely on to get better, right? At their sport of choice, right? Probably starting in one sport and expanding to more sports over time. But it's kind of part like getting to know you, what age you are, what ability level you are, where you're trying to get to, what you wanna work on and helping you tease out some goals and a game plan that are age inability [00:44:00] appropriate.
And then it's what do I do? And then it's how do I do each of these things? And then it's how am I doing against myself? How am I doing against others like me? Maybe there's a, an accountability element. So maybe it's like you and your teammates and your coach has access to it.
I don't know. And and the and there's also potential that, for example, if you take videos of yourself for accountability, that that then the mach, it can train the model over time to get better and better at the, at what the form should look like and how it compare how yours compares to others and making recommendations to get better EE et cetera.
And the thought is if it can be the, platform of record that kids and families rely on to get better, then there'll be a lot of leverage and responsibility that comes with that position. Much like with Runkeeper, like why did the category consolidate with the Runkeepers of the world? It wasn't because of the recurring revenue streams, right?
It was because one, it was a channel to sell. And two it was a channel to understand what was happening with the consumers that these big shoe and apparel companies were building for how to talk to [00:45:00] them what kind of products they want, how they're using these products, when they're using these products.
Are they doing it alone? Are they doing it with others? Are they listening to music? Are they not what's motivating to them? What's not right? And so I just see this kind of big gap in youth sports for someone to build an enduring platform of record to help young competitive athletes get better.
Ryan Durkin: Very
Jason Jacobs: So there, yeah.
Ryan Durkin: Is the, is the thesis behind it that like I was a three sport athlete growing up, soccer, basketball, baseball, then was became a distance runner. But was the con, is the concept based around the fact that children getting better in a specific sport or multiple sports helps them later in life adapt to the world? it more around Okay, with if you built a platform that, let's say did aggregate all their biometric data across different devices, had journaling and kind of [00:46:00] goal tracking and the gamification layer of all of that put into an experience that would help someone just get better in, in their domain.
Is this more, I guess my question is this more around excelling in the specific sport or is it more of a holistic kind of Like by doing sport and competitive sport, you become a better human over time.
Jason Jacobs: The, this is the question of the day, right? Because youth sports is completely off the rails, right? It is there's a whole economy around it. The the way the kids and families get pushed is oftentimes more about dollars than it is about the best interest of kids. And and then it's all kind of ties together with, if you look at like prep school for example, right?
There's a whole business around prep school and then, and the two are interrelated. Like it's getting more and more competitive, harder and harder for, for anyone to rise above. The noise leads to earlier specialization overscheduled kids, right? So all of that is real. I think the flip side is [00:47:00] that, I just look with my own kids.
It breeds good habits. It breeds confidence. It teaches them how to set a goal and then break it down into sub goals and work towards achieving it. And also how to pick off different areas to work on to achieve mastery and how you can, achieve sub mastery in each of these different areas.
And then when they come together, it makes the overall machine hum faster. And it's just like fun memories, friendships, experiences. And it's like experiences that are in a more productive way than just like taking a trip. But your questions are more around the philosophical.
So I think, which I think that is a very valid discussion. Have, I think the assumption I'm making is in today's world there are kids and families who are at, so probably not the youngest kids, right? These are kids that are like either in high school or.
Approaching high school, I would say who are starting towards specialization, who are doing a lot, who are in a hyper competitive world, who are getting dragged around by their parents to all this different stuff that is a big tax [00:48:00] on the kid and the parent. In terms of just the actual time of the stuff is great, but then in between it's like there's a lot of time riding in the car.
It's expensive, right? It's a tax on the employment of that parent because they have a harder and harder time fitting in. And then there's a whole wave of parents that would want access to this, like specialized instruction that can't because it's just too expensive or they don't have jobs that are flexible enough.
And then when the kid's at home, a lot of this stuff, you don't need a ton of equipment, right? And the kids have been carting around for years. They know what to do, right? But when they're home, they're not doing it. And it's why aren't they doing it right? It's be because it's like, why do they like it when it's in person?
They like it because there's accountability. They like it because their friends are there. They like it because they get competitive. They like it because it's like a game. They like it because they like seeing their progress over time. They like it 'cause someone's telling, telling 'em what to do, and they don't have to go brain dead trying to figure out what they should do that day.
And so it's and then at home there's evidence of it. It's they get that way about the video game in the house. Like they, and they're playing with their friends and their competitive or the fantasy sports. And so it's can you tap into that like video game or fantasy sports [00:49:00] energy, but in a way that gets 'em to eat the skills training equivalent of eating their vegetables.
Can you package vegetables in a way that are delicious? That, that's what I'm thinking.
Ryan Durkin: I am already, I'm already picturing the experience right now. Just from you even talking about it. I feel like you're already well on your way. Have you tried prototyping it yet with any of the tools?
Jason Jacobs: It's funny so I'm doing a draft, right? Every Friday I send out my weekly updates, right? And and so this is, I think it's gonna be week 23. And if you look back, they're all posted online, probably nobody reads them, right? But but if you look back online what you'll see is that in each one it's like how to build different, how to build different, and then it's like youth sports, off to the side.
And then it's ai, where's the world going? How's it gonna change how we work and live? How's it gonna change how startups serve? Built in Florida? And then it's like youth sports. Youth sports, right? It's like youth sports is off to the side, but it like, is quietly sitting there, like in every freaking update.
And then I keep coming and oh, and by the way, another cool thing is that I spend so much of my time with my older boy in youth sports now, his little sister's coming up, so she was just asked, invited to the more, to the top team in her club or whatever for next year.
And I'm very proud of her. But now she's like begging me [00:50:00] can, can I do the daily drills? Like my brother, right? And my and her brother's shoot, we have pre school coming up I gotta hunker down. Now's the time. Okay, let's dial it up at home. And I'm like, dude, don't say it if you don't mean it.
Yeah. And and then I tell 'em about when I'm thinking of building and they're like, oh, can we help? And it's I wanted to expose 'em to entrepreneurship anyway. It's wow. This is like the driving range for entrepreneurship in a way that's like directly relevant to their day to day and my day to day.
Wow, this could this could be threading like the perfect needle. So just in the last week, right? I, I've started like I spent most of the week this week not recording like this. And and thinking about, all right, where do I start? Do I start by assembling a library of drills and categorizing them by by which area you're working on?
And then identifying what are the key areas that matter? And then and then cross-referencing that with age and ability level. And then. Maybe have some type of onboarding flow and play Matchmaker. Does it start text only where it's just like you enter something about yourself and then it tells you what to do each day?
Does it start by providing a library and then enabling you to search and find your own answers? Is it, does [00:51:00] it in an that form out of the gate, how important is natural language? Should it just be an onboarding survey like we grew up with or should it actually have natural language like what Colin Rainey's doing with Ray, where it's like you just talk to it like chat GPT and it's just and it just learns without having to, without you having to fill out any forms.
And it's I don't know. And then it's should I be spending my time wrestling with these tools or should I just go get a co-founder? So I am living it, but I'm at the beginning of the journey and I said that it's I'm gonna depressurize it. Like worst case I just get a lot more AI native.
But then it slipped out today in an email for the first time that it's like I'm in the early stages of start of starting a new company in this area. So it's I don't know yet if I am, I haven't officially declared, but gosh, I, i, there's just a lot of parallels to what I did with Runkeeper, and it's so relevant to the stage of my life and my kids' life that it's like I'm just, I'm feeling ready to go.
Yeah.
Ryan Durkin: you clear, you clearly care a lot about it. So that, that would be, that's where it all starts, man. That yeah. Dude, should go and you should go and build this. Take the crack at the bat on those prototypes and just get some things out there. I'm happy to shoot the shit with you about 'em too and just react.
[00:52:00] But
Jason Jacobs: I am doing it. I think that what I'm working through now is the how, right? But it's like I am, I just crossed the threshold of serious enough to actually like, fight through the frustration and just wrestle the tool, wrestle with the tools until I like get through the other side. And that's actually I haven't been in this mode in a long, probably since the.
With two A labs in between Runkeeper and MCJ but really I haven't sat down to build a product in as long as I can remember. It feels really exciting.
Ryan Durkin: That's great, man. I love it. Yeah the macro point that I like about what you were just talking about is and to bring it back to the education piece is the future of education, I don't think is gonna start from evolving the book side of it. I feel like it's more in the play realm and the sport realm. And I like the combination of that and trying to think about how to bring that entrepreneurial piece together with it. That's where I would spike on that. But yeah, man.
Jason Jacobs: You know what's weird is that I was a terrible student and [00:53:00] I had real trouble start sitting in a lecture, even if it's a cat topic I cared about. It's just the speaking one to many where you just sit there passively and you're supposed to listen, absorb and take notes. Like I, it's just my a DD brain.
Like I just can't, I can't do it. But like these one-on-one discussions, I listen intently and I learn so much. And it's if somehow my education could have been packaged in the way I've been learning with these podcasts, like I would've been a straight A student, and like I, that's not saying that's how education should be, it's more about the personalization.
It's figure out your, like the weird hacks to get you to kind dial in and get serious, and then just feed that all day long. So instead of trying to get people to adapt to the system, right?
Ryan Durkin: Right.
Jason Jacobs: I feel like increasingly we don't need to do that. And also it's it's just that's not a, like they may able to do it for some period of time, but then they're gonna fall right back on their old habits over time because you're wired how you're wired.
Ryan Durkin: I am gonna figure out all this soon. I got no kids right now, but hopefully soon.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming on. I guess I'll ask you a couple questions. One, just from a big picture standpoint. In terms of these macro topics we were [00:54:00] wrestling on, is there anything I didn't ask that you wish I did? Or any parting words in that regard?
Ryan Durkin: I don't think so. Let me think. I, no, I don't think so.
Jason Jacobs: And then with your Woo hat on, just if there's any calls to action, any key hires you're trying to make, if there's other companies you wanna hear from that are doing XY like just anything
Might be helpful to what you're trying to do. Yeah,
Ryan Durkin: is go get a whoop go to whoop.com. You can go on there and pick out the right membership for you. There's different tiers. One peak life, life is more focused on MD and the more
Jason Jacobs: but it also has, it has everything p has plus.
Ryan Durkin: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Okay. Yeah. 'cause I went straight for the life. 'cause I, I'm, old enough that my doctor tells me to monitor my blood pressure, so
Ryan Durkin: And
Jason Jacobs: yeah.
Ryan Durkin: is 199 bucks, so you can't really beat that. But that's my plug. whoop.com. Go there start taking your health seriously, everybody.
Jason Jacobs: Wait. And to I heard you refer to yourself as [00:55:00] Durkin. I called you Ryan at the beginning of the show. What should I call you?
Ryan Durkin: I feel like it's like a baseball thing. Like everyone called me Durkin as a kid playing sports, and so it just stuck. But yeah, no, Ryan's fine.
Jason Jacobs: Okay Ryan or Durkin this was an awesome discussion. I really enjoyed it. I definitely wanna keep the dialogue going both with your Woo Hat on and as you're, banging on side projects using some of the same tools as me. And yeah I learned a ton. Hopefully that means listeners do as well.
And thank you so much for making the time to do this.
Ryan Durkin: me on, man. I appreciate it. Good seeing you After all these years.
Jason Jacobs: Thank you for tuning into The Next Next. If you enjoyed it, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast player in addition to the podcast. Which typically publishes weekly. There's also a weekly newsletter on Substack at the next next.substack.com. That's essentially for weekly accountability of the ground I'm covering, areas I'm tackling next, and where I could use some help as well.
And it's a great area to foster discussion and dialogue around the topics that we cover on the show. Thanks for tuning in. See you next [00:56:00] week.