Today we bring you the interview with Will Ahmed, founder & CEO of Boston-based WHOOP, which has developed the performance optimization system for elite athletes and teams. Will wrote “The Feedback Tool: Measuring Fitness, Intensity, and Recovery,” which sparked the underlying physiology and engineering for his work today. Previously, he worked at Lindsay Goldberg and Allen Company. Will received a BA at Harvard in Government & Economics, a Harvard College Scholar for finishing in the top 10% of his class; and for what it matters, he was elected Captain of the Harvard Men’s Varsity Squash Team. Here’s how our interview went…

How would you pitch your company? What’s your elevator pitch?

WHOOP is the performance optimization system that helps elite athletes and teams win. WHOOP provides athletes, their coaches, and trainers with a continuous understanding of strain and recovery to balance training, reduce injuries, and predict performance. The system is currently being used by professional and collegiate athletes, Olympians, and the United States military.

What sets you apart from competitors?

WHOOP provides the most data-driven sports technology on the market. It captures a massive amount of data on a user’s body and cultivates that data with analytics and algorithms that give athletes an unprecedented understanding of their body’s ability to take on strain. It is more than just a wearable or device – it is an overall system that optimizes and predicts athletic performance.

The only device capable of capturing as much data as WHOOP is a chest strap, which is cumbersome, uncomfortable and cannot be worn continuously. The WHOOP Strap is also the first on the market that users can charge either on-the-go or during a night’s rest without having to be removed, ensuring it is always on.

According to ESPN, “there hasn’t been a product sold to all teams that offers the array of technical data that WHOOP does.” With an advisory board that includes the longtime trainers to LeBron James and Michael Phelps, UCSF cardiology chief Dr. Jeffrey Olgin and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte – WHOOP is poised to revolutionize how athletes, coaches and trainers make data-driven decisions that will affect training plans, game day line ups, practice, travel schedules and more.

What’s your business model?

WHOOP targets professional and collegiate athletes, Olympians, and the military, as well as coaches and trainers of these markets to use WHOOP to prevent injuries, balance training plans, and win more. By using WHOOP, teams can make decisions like when a player should sit out and what the most optimal time is to schedule practices for better and safer athletic performance.

Can you share some numbers? How many users do you have?

As a private company, WHOOP does not disclose this data. WHOOP is working with teams across the NFL, NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the English Premier League, along with several Olympic teams and trainers for some of the world’s most elite athletes, such as LeBron James and Michael Phelps. At the collegiate level, WHOOP is being used in all major conferences, including the SEC, Big 10, Pac 10, ACC, Big 12 and the Ivy League.

Where do you see the company going from here?

The current focus is exclusively on professional, collegiate and Olympic athletes. Down the road, we envision expanding that market to include elite amateur athletes as well. WHOOP will ultimately own this concept of a performance lifestyle: what you can change about your lifestyle or your behavior to ultimately perform at a higher level. That’s a platform that marries the best athletes in the world with amateurs and enthusiasts.

Where do you see the mHealth industry going?

We believe there will be a huge movement towards predictive and actionable insights. While today people only see a doctor once a year for a check-up, mobile health and its ecosystems of wearables will one day be able to tell someone to see a doctor before a severe illness hits. We believe that you won’t have to go to the doctor when you don’t feel well, but be told immediately of your illness, such as, “You have Strep Throat. Your medication is waiting for you at the pharmacy.”

How long are we from seeing modern mHealth technologies going mainstream?

A better question is how soon will mHealth technologies be able to tell you what to do? That’s the issue with mobile health today; it’s not telling you what to do; it’s not intelligent. Today’s smartwatches are “solutions” in search of a problem; should a smartwatch send you notifications from your phone or should it tell you to see a doctor? Many mobile apps are data collectors but don’t provide actionable insight on what to do with this information. Do you need an app that lets you input your water intake today or do you need an app that tells you that you’re dehydrated?

When mobile health technologies provide more actionable insight, they will quickly go mainstream. From what we’re seeing at WHOOP and our ability to provide actionable insight to athletes, we’re of the belief that meaningful mobile technology will be mainstream in just a few years.