Stuff Meets…WHOOP’s Jaime Waydo on looking to the future of wearable tech

One of the most accurate and certainly most wearable health trackers you can buy today, WHOOP measures metrics that make a significant impact on your physical and mental health. Here we chat to the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Jaime Waydo, about her role at WHOOP and how the wearable has benefitted her personally. 

The first half of my career was spent working at NASA

In 1999 I started my career as an intern and then gradually worked my way up. By the time I left NASA I had become the Chief Mechanical Engineer for the Curiosity Rover.

I spent about a decade working in the self-driving cars sphere

I worked at Google – I was the launch lead for two exciting milestones on the Firefly vehicles, the first fully driverless drive that we did in Austin, Texas; and the first 1000 miles of fully driverless operations in Phoenix, Arizona.

I’m personally going to an electric vehicle as my next car

I’m currently on the last legs of my Volvo XC90 – I’ve had it for about ten years. But I’m eyeing the Rivian, the new Porsche electric vehicle and Mercedes has a nice electric vehicle that I’m looking at as well.

I have THE best job

My title is CTO of WHOOP but it’s not a traditional CTO role. It’s so much more dynamic than only looking over all of hardware, software, and AI engineering, which is what you would expect. I get to run science and research, and then I also have product and design, which is really tapping into that creative side. It’s engaging to me because I have the unique privilege to oversee all of the elements that bring our product to life for members both on their wrists and in their app and I get to be a part of weaving this really integrated strategy for the best possible member experience. Of course, all of that wouldn’t be possible without the incredibly talented leaders on the team. I get to wear all the hats, but I am very lucky to be partnered with the exceptional humans at WHOOP.

WHOOP is the first 24/7 wearable

You slide the battery pack on the strap to charge it, so you never take it off your wrist. No other device has that, whether you’re wearing a ring or a watch – all of those come off your body to charge and then you have to remember to put it back on and you’ve lost all of the information while you were charging it. WHOOP is really the first product that captures every single heartbeat, every single day.

I’ve lost 20lb using WHOOP and I’m still going

I travel a ton for work and having access to my data in a super simple, consumable and actionable way has revolutionized how I think about my behaviours and actions. I have now been educated by WHOOP so that as an example, when I’m out at a restaurant at night and I’m trying to decide if I am going to eat dessert and have that late night sugar, or if I going to have alcohol with dinner, I can weigh that decision against what I know it could do to my body at a biometric level. I now know exactly how these behaviours impact my metrics because of how easily WHOOP makes understanding these impacts to my sleep, stress, and recovery. I know what those choices do to my quality of sleep, how it will impact how I feel the next day and how much stress my body will undergo while I’m sleeping. It really helps me pause with that voice that says “Are you sure you want to do this?”  I really appreciate that.

I’m fascinated by AI and where that’s going

I spend a lot of time playing with all kinds of AI tools from being able to create images to movies to conversations.

I really love cycling on my Peloton 

And then I walk the dog a lot because he needs to go out, rain or shine! And then I really love paddleboarding and scuba diving when we get to summer months. Then in the winter, skiing – we do a lot of downhill skiing as a family.

NB – since chatting to us Jaime has left her position at WHOOP.