\n<\/p>\n
Dorothy Kilroy has seen her company\u2019s smart ring on some very famous fingers. Mark Zuckerberg wears one. So does Jack Dorsey. Prince Harry, too. But when Oura<\/a>\u2018s chief commercial officer sat down at Toronto\u2019s Elevate<\/a> conference with this editor last week, she surprised me, saying the company\u2019s fastest-growing user segment isn\u2019t tech billionaires or wellness-obsessed execs. It\u2019s women in their early twenties.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, Ultrahuman<\/a> with its no-subscription pitch, and Whoop <\/a>with its athletic performance mystique. Each one promises to take a bite out of Oura\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n The question isn\u2019t whether Oura is winning right now \u2013 with 80% of the smart ring market, clearly, it is<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n Kilroy spent eight years at Airbnb before joining Oura three years ago, and she has watched both companies expand the same way \u2013 through word of mouth. At Airbnb, 90% of the company\u2019s revenue ties directly to people raving about their vacations, she suggested; at Oura, it\u2019s people raving about their sleep scores.<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve realized that running on fumes isn\u2019t actually a sustainable career strategy or, as Kilroy described them on stage, \u201cpeople 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.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a demographic \u2013 largely millennials and Gen Xers with disposable income \u2013 that has made Oura wildly successful. The company has said it doubled its revenue last year and is on track to double it again this year. More impressive, says Kilroy, Oura\u2019s retention at the 12-month mark hits the high 80s, while other wearables languish in the low 30s. People actually keep wearing the thing.<\/p>\n There is a new wrinkle, however. While Oura has captured the professional class, younger consumers, particularly young men obsessed with gains and recovery, are gravitating elsewhere. The Whoop fitness band, for example, has seemingly become the unofficial uniform of serious athletes and gym bros.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> The competition got a little spicy a couple of weeks ago. Whoop, founded in Boston 13 years ago,\u00a0announced<\/a> a new blood-testing service just one day before Oura announced<\/a> its own blood testing partnership with Quest Diagnostics. When asked about the timing, Kilroy focused instead on the value that Oura brings to members. But the near-simultaneous rollout suggests both companies see the same future: integrating wearable data with actual clinical biomarkers.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Ultrahuman, playing the scrappy underdog. At $349 (often $299 on sale), it costs the same upfront as an Oura but ditches the $5.99 monthly subscription that Oura charges its users. Though very similar looking, reviewers generally prefer Oura\u2019s polish and design. Still, that \u201cno subscription\u201d pitch resonates with some younger buyers who already have subscription fatigue because of their Netflix, Spotify, and other monthly charges.<\/p>\n Kilroy shrugs off the concern that Oura will lose customers to price-sensitive buyers. \u201cWhen you\u2019re introducing a new pricing model, there\u2019s always risk,\u201d she said on stage, then she pointed back to those retention numbers. \u201cOur members are getting a lot of value from [our product] and [are] happy to continue to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Kilroy doesn\u2019t seem particularly worried about capturing every demographic. Instead, she\u2019s focused on keeping Oura\u2019s core users happy while organically attracting new segments. And young women are becoming part of that core market \u2013 a trend that she credits to a broader shift, though Oura is also mindful of the opportunity it presents.\u00a0\u201cWe see that they\u2019re drinking less alcohol,\u201d said Kilroy. \u201cThey\u2019re really focused on their mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n That momentum has pushed Oura to double down on features like cycle tracking and fertility insights. \u201cBecause of our accuracy of temperature, we have a very high degree of accuracy in detecting ovulation, almost 97%,\u201d Kilroy explained. The company also recently rolled out perimenopause features and expanded pregnancy capabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Put another way, Oura is \u2013 for now, at least \u2013 more focused on serving its growing female base rather than chasing young male athletes counting their VO2 max. As Kilroy told me:\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re not a fitness tracker only. We\u2019re a health platform . . . Where we\u2019re really focused on is preventative health so that we avoid burnout, that we avoid illness, [and] we\u2019re getting early detection on really important clinical and health-related diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n As Kilroy learned at Airbnb, she said, \u201cYou keep your eyes focused on your own race and the features and the products that you ship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a smart play. The market for people wanting to optimize sleep, manage stress, and generally not feel terrible is arguably a lot bigger than the market for athletes obsessing over training load.<\/p>\n The numbers support the strategy, too. Oura now sells through 4,000 retail stores and has 1,000 partners tapped into its API. Kilroy says it also employs over 30 PhDs and MDs and that it partners with research heavyweights like UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. That level of clinical validation creates a moat that competitors can\u2019t easily replicate.<\/p>\n Blood testing is just one vector. Late last year, Oura partnered<\/a> with a maker of wearables that track blood-sugar levels \u2014 Dexcom \u2014 on metabolic health monitoring, letting users overlay continuous glucose data with their ring metrics. Kilroy tested it herself for nine months. \u201cI could not believe how much stress was impacting it,\u201d she said, describing glucose spikes during particularly brutal meetings. \u201cAll I want to do is run and grab a pound of chocolate when I\u2019m stressed,\u201d she added, smiling. \u201cAnd that\u2019s almost like putting a bomb on top of your already high blood glucose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n