Oura is winning young women and losing gym rats, and it’s fine with that

Summary

Dorothy Kilroy has seen her company’s smart ring on some very famous fingers. Mark Zuckerberg wears one. So does Jack Dorsey. Prince Harry, too. But when Oura‘s chief commercial officer sat down at Toronto’s Elevate conference with this editor last week, she surprised me, saying the company’s fastest-growing user segment isn’t tech billionaires or wellness-obsessed execs. It’s women in their early twenties. It highlighted what an interesting moment this is for Oura. The 13-year-old Finnish health tech company essentially invented the smart ring category and turned it into a billion-dollar business. But now competitors are circling, including Samsung with its Galaxy Ring, Ultrahuman with its no-subscription pitch, and Whoop with its athletic performance mystique. Each one promises to take a bite out of Oura’s lead. The question isn’t whether Oura is winning right now – with 80% of the smart ring market, clearly, it is. The question is whether it can maintain that lead as the wearables market splinters across demographics and use cases, and behind that, whether Oura even needs to capture every demographic to succeed. Kilroy spent eight years at Airbnb before joining Oura three years ago, and she has watched both companies expand the same way – through word of mouth. At Airbnb, 90% of the company’s revenue ties directly to people raving about their vacations, she suggested; at Oura, it’s people raving about their sleep scores. That organic enthusiasm is particularly strong among so-called corporate athletes, or high-performing professionals trying to optimize their health to stay sharp. These are people who’ve realized that running on fumes isn’t actually a sustainable career strategy or, as Kilroy described them on stage, “people who are trying to be the best at their game. They want to make sure their sleep is dialed in. They want to know how to exercise. They want to look after their metabolic health.” It’s a demographic – largely millennials and Gen Xers with dispo...