The Unknown Gatekeeper Play
Reach unreachable people by routing through the influential person in their life that nobody else has thought to contact.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
Will Ahmed wanted the world's best athletes wearing WHOOP so the brand could later scale to consumers the way Nike and Jordan did. Rather than pitching agents, managers, or spouses, who he says get inundated with this stuff, he mapped each athlete's inner circle for the person with real influence who nobody else had identified. In 2014-2015 that role turned out to be the personal trainer, at the time an underrated and largely unknown figure in a pro athlete's life, and also the person most naturally interested in recovery technology. He got to know Mike Mancias for LeBron James and Keenan Robinson for Michael Phelps, put the trainers on WHOOP first, and the trainers put their athletes on it. LeBron and Phelps ended up among WHOOP's first hundred users.
Origin
Ahmed devised it while trying to seed WHOOP's V1 with elite athletes around 2014-2015, after concluding the standard routes into a famous athlete were already flooded.
Core principles
- 01Marquee early users buy you a brand, not just revenue.
- 02The obvious gatekeeper is the saturated gatekeeper.
- 03Look for the influential role that the market has not yet priced in.
- 04Convert the intermediary into a genuine user before asking for the introduction.
- 05Pick the intermediary whose own job your product already makes easier.
How to run it
- 1
Define the brand you are trying to earn
Decide which category of user, if they adopted organically, would let you build a whole brand on top of them. Ahmed wanted performance credibility, so professional athletes were the answer, and that decision drove every targeting choice afterwards.
Pro tip Write down what the logo on the product should make people feel, then work backwards to who confers that feeling.
- 2
Map the target's full inner circle
List everyone with real influence over the target's daily decisions: agent, manager, spouse, trainer, chef, physio, longtime friend. The goal is a complete map rather than the two or three names a search engine surfaces.
Watch out Do not stop at the names published in press coverage; those are exactly the saturated channels.
- 3
Eliminate the inundated nodes
Cross off anyone whose job is to field pitches. Ahmed explicitly ruled out the agent, the manager, and the wife because everyone else already goes there and the message drowns.
Pro tip If you can find a public contact form for that role, it is almost certainly the wrong door.
- 4
Pick the underrated node with natural product fit
From what remains, choose the person who both has genuine influence and whose own work your product improves. The personal trainer was undervalued as an access point in 2014 and was also the person who most wanted sleep and recovery data.
Watch out Influence without product fit produces a polite introduction that goes nowhere.
- 5
Make that person a user first, then let the chain run
Build a real relationship, get the intermediary wearing and relying on the product, and let them bring the athlete in. Ahmed got Mancias and Robinson on WHOOP and they put LeBron and Phelps on it themselves.
Pro tip Adoption travels faster as a recommendation from a trusted insider than as a pitch from a founder.
In the wild
Around 2014-2015, with WHOOP's V1 roughly two to three years in the making, Ahmed skipped the agents and managers and instead built relationships with Mike Mancias, LeBron James's personal trainer, and Keenan Robinson, Michael Phelps's personal trainer. Both trainers started using WHOOP, and both then put their athletes on it.
→ Two of the most recognisable athletes in the world were among WHOOP's first hundred users, giving the company the performance brand it later scaled to a mass consumer subscription business.
Common mistakes
Pitching the agent, manager, or spouse
These are the roles everyone thinks of first, which is exactly why they are flooded. Ahmed's point is that they get inundated with this stuff, so even a great product reads as one more message in a queue.
Treating the intermediary as a mailbox instead of a user
The play only works because the trainers genuinely wanted recovery data and used the product themselves. If you route a cold pitch through a new contact without them adopting it, you have just added a step to the same cold pitch.
Chasing marquee users with no brand thesis behind it
Ahmed had two explicit reasons for targeting athletes: they genuinely needed recovery data, and their organic use would build a performance brand that scaled to consumers. Landing a famous name with neither of those in place buys a logo and no compounding advantage.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders selling a new product to high-status, heavily-inundated people such as pro athletes, celebrities, or executives.
Not ideal for
Businesses selling commodity products at volume where a single marquee user changes nothing about the brand.
From the transcript
“I think the key Insight was finding people in their lives who had a big influence on them who a bunch of people didn't already…”
“it also turned out back then that the personal trainer was a somewhat under rated or unknown person in a professional athlete's life and that…”
“if we could get the world's best athletes to wear whoop and organically like it then we could build a whole brand around performance that…”
From the episode
WHOOP Founder Will Ahmed: How I Built A $3.6 BILLION Company
WHOOP Founder Will Ahmed