For a team considered a “startup within a startup,” Wow‘s growth team is no small thing in size and impact.
The company’s CEO, Will Ahmed, gave the team the nickname, according to Business Analyst II. Carolyn ChambersThis statement rings true given the “clear, aggressive goals” that have driven the team over the past few months.
When the wearable device company acquired question-and-answer platform AnyQuestion late last year, it wasn’t just the product that changed. As a result of the acquisition, former AnyQuestion CEO Ed Baker joined the company as chief growth officer and the company’s entire growth team expanded, according to Chambers. Now, she and the rest of the growth team will be spearheading a pivotal stage in the company’s growth journey.
Vice President, Growth Products Nate Giacalone He said that over the past few months, the company has launched its products in 20 additional markets, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and South Korea. The endeavor wasn’t easy, but thanks to the unique nature of WHOOP’s growth team, he and his colleagues managed to pull it off.
“This team is different than other product teams I’ve worked on and led,” Giacalone said. “We’re more agile, short-term oriented and cross-functional in nature.”
International expansion is a top priority for WHOOP’s growth team, and this is just one of several exciting developments underway. Senior Software Engineer Caleb Kussmaul He and his fellow developers have been busy tweaking the company’s mobile apps to ensure consumers have as seamless an experience as possible.
He believes the success of the growth team’s engineering efforts doesn’t just depend on its technical acumen, but its culture as well.
“For us, there will always be times when the pressure is on and we need to iterate quickly, but we handle those situations with a great attitude and a great sense of humour,” he said.
About Whoop
WHOOP’s wearable devices allow individuals to track health and fitness metrics, and through the company’s mobile app, individuals can track daily performance scores, real-time stress levels, menstrual cycles, physical strain, and more.
Combining expansion and optimization
And launching a product in three or five countries is hard enough, but what happens when 20 regions are involved?
According to Giacalone, one of the biggest hurdles his team faced during the international expansion was making sure everyone was organized around a unified strategy and game plan, so he and his colleagues established a clear strategy early on in the process and clearly defined the goals and responsibilities of each team involved.
“Through this process, we learned the importance of clear communication, careful planning, and the ability to quickly adapt to unexpected problems,” Giacalone said. “This experience highlighted the value of teamwork and the need for a solid framework for coordinating large-scale efforts.”
Efficiency is at the heart of WHOOP’s current transformation, and that includes its online shopping experience. Chambers says her team recently decided to redesign the onboarding flow on the company’s website, the part of the site where consumers make their purchases. Led by the product team, the cross-functional effort recreated multiple site pages and flows to optimize the checkout process.
“This effort required many hours of QA work, and it was inspiring to see the entire growth team, from the lowest-ranking team member to the VP, come together to ensure every step was working correctly,” Chambers said.
Although Chambers and his colleagues encountered some obstacles along the way, they found flow by creating a new way of working called “task forces,” with stakeholders from each subteam accountable for specific elements of the project. Chambers noted that effective communication underpinned this process, allowing them to work more quickly and effectively than ever before.
Chambers said the effort has not only resulted in an improved consumer experience, like faster load times and improved design, but it’s also helped pave the way for future advancements.
“More than anything, the team was most excited about how much easier the new back-end infrastructure would make it to set up future tests,” she says. “This project was just the beginning.”
A smoother, more streamlined experience
While the rest of the growth team focused on new markets and better shopping experiences, Kussmaul and his colleagues were trained on improving one key element: customer membership.
Kussmaul said he and his teammates launched a native extension to allow customers to add months to their membership, leveraging an in-app flow that includes selecting the extension, confirming the checkout, and a success screen once complete.
“This is important because having a smoother, more streamlined checkout experience here could go a long way in helping us retain members,” he said.
Kussmaul decided to turn the customer checkout flow into a reusable component, but to do so, he needed a new pattern for navigation: the server can determine where to go in the app and what parameters to provide, so the screens don’t have to explicitly support each action the user might take, he explained.
Of course, his team had to take certain measures to properly implement these changes. Kussmaul said that because the project affects code shared by all teams, they had to bring their plans to iOS Guild meetings to ensure no security issues were introduced and to get buy-in from stakeholders.
“It was clear that adding this navigation would add some serious dimension to a pretty standard project, so I had to convince my manager and product manager that it was worth the investment,” he says. “Granted, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to break even in terms of time savings, but I was confident that this was a direction worth pursuing, and thankfully, my team believed in me.”
Kussmaul was right: He explained that the solution brings great value to other parts of the software organization and reflects the engineering discipline that characterizes his team.
“It means a lot to me that we implemented a solution that solved our own problem and then helped support the other features that make WHOOP WHOOP,” Kussmaul says.
According to Kussmaul, the work doesn’t stop there.
“We continue to work on developing features to reduce churn and have an exciting roadmap ahead,” he said.
Characteristics of Top Performers
Giacalone believes there are various characteristics that define top performers on a growth team. One of them is a strong focus on metrics. “We believe that PMs who can also function as analysts have a huge advantage,” he says. “This analytical approach helps with data-driven decision-making and continually optimizing strategies.” For Giacalone, it’s also important that team members are versatile and creative in solving a variety of problems, as this helps the team remain dynamic, adaptable, and effective in driving WHOOP’s growth.
Why people keep riding
Kussmaul has seen popular Reddit posts and TikTok videos about “quietly quitting” and boring team-building activities, but he’s not a fan.
“In some cases I am sympathetic to their views, but I still think they are misguided,” he said.
Kussmaul believes that a great work environment should encourage employee retention, and that’s exactly what he’s experienced at WHOOP.
“I really love the team culture, and that’s helped me continue on this journey with a few of my peers who have been with me since I joined,” he said. “I think we counter the opinions that we see on social media.”
“I’d like to think we’re speaking out against what we’re seeing on social media.”
This pushback can take many concrete forms, including the fact that the team has embraced various traditions, such as giving each other “kudos” at the end of their quarterly all-hands meetings, Chambers added.
“Because of our cross-functional work culture, people were thanking and acknowledging those outside of their direct team who had worked with them throughout the project,” she said. “It was a great way to close out the quarter and acknowledge all the hard work that had gone into getting to where we are today.”
Crossing the finish line isn’t always easy, especially as companies go global, but for those looking for the thrill of the challenge, Kussmaul says there’s no better place to do it than WHOOP.
Kussmaul has worked for a variety of employers that touted flashy office perks and great coworkers, but WHOOP offered him something much more valuable: a product and mission to be passionate about. As the company continues to define this pivotal moment in its growth journey, Kussmaul believes those joining him on this journey can expect many things, but accepting the status quo shouldn’t be one of them.
“My advice here would be to be as actively involved in your work as you reasonably can and encourage others to do the same,” he said.
