The CRG team sat down with Tom Hale, CEO of Oura, to discuss preventative care, the importance of sleep and the growing trend of individuals leveraging personal data to take charge of their own health and wellness.
Oura, headquartered in Oulu, Finland, makes the Oura Ring, a cutting-edge health biometric tracker best known for sleep applications. The company focuses on empowering individuals to maximize their health potential using its advanced wearable and insightful health application. Oura is an investment out of CRG’s Fund IV, which was completed in February 2022. Since CRG’s investment, Oura has significantly grown its revenue and subscriber base, launched an updated version of its ring (Gen 3 Horizon), and announced several transformative partnerships. The company is headquartered in Finland, with U.S. offices in San Francisco, CA.
CRG: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today, Tom. For starters, could you share a bit about your professional background prior to Oura and what attracted you to joining as the CEO of Oura?
Tom: I started my career working in software, first at a company called Macromedia, later at Adobe, then at a marketplace company called HomeAway, which you probably know as VRBO, and then SurveyMonkey. All primarily around software. But I've always been a person who was interested in wearables from the very first wearable I ever had, which was called the Nike Fuel Band, some of you may remember that, or the Nike Plus, which I wore in my shoe and had Lance Armstrong on my iPod Nano telling me that I'd ran the best mile time that I’ve ever run. I've always been interested in wearables.
And so come to fall of 2021, I was actually for once in my life losing sleep. I'm generally a championship sleeper, but I had a number of things going on in my life that made it difficult to sleep. And I bumped into Oura. And I started following some of the advice that Oura gave; very basic stuff like sleep in a colder room or don't stare at screens before you go to bed, don't watch Netflix until 2:00 AM, don't drink alcohol, don't drink coffee, try to get to bed at the same time every night.
And the transformation that it wrought on my life was amazing. I liken it to walking out of a black and white movie into technicolor world. I realized that for most of my adult life, I'd been sleep deprived, and by suddenly improving not just the quality but the quantity of sleep, I was incredibly transformed. And I was so impressed by this product, I said, "I have to be involved."
And the company was doing a CEO search at the time. And I did something that was entirely uncharacteristic, which is I basically leaned into the search and said, "You guys need to consider me." And they said, "No, we're looking for somebody with a consumer products background." I said, "Well, I've worked in software to consumer products my entire life. You need to consider me." They're like, "Well, we really want somebody from Nike or something like that." And I said, "Well, I wear Nike shoes. You guys should consider me." And I just kept on pressing them, and I made my case in an impassioned letter and the board decided to hear me out and then ultimately gave me the job. And that's how I got here.
“We might really almost become like the doctor in your pocket that knows so much about you… and what your objectives are from a health perspective.”
CRG: On the importance of sleep, I think that's something that we're all seeing. And I think the world is catching up to where Oura has been for a while. And you highlighted how improving sleep in your life made some dramatic changes in your overall health and wellbeing. But can you just emphasize how important sleep is for general health and wellbeing?
Tom: Well, sleep is like a universal solvent. It's good for everything in your health. You can look at it in the short term where sleep will make a huge impact on your cognition, on your mood, on your energy levels, on your ability to collaborate, the resilience that you have to stress. All these things are well documented, that a good night's sleep prepares your body and brain to face the day with the best of strength and intention.
The reality is that sleep has also implicated in a number of really long-term and medium-term health concerns. For example, diet is actually in many ways regulated by sleep. Turns out if you don't sleep well, your brain produces less of a hormone, which is the hormone that tells you when you've had enough to eat. If you think about actually not getting enough sleep and the midnight snack phenomenon, it's actually a hormone that your brain is secreting to go out and ask you to eat. It's an evolutionary adaptation to when your body's resource starved to try and find and gather food to you, in particular sugary foods that will give you energy. It's an adaptive thing. The two hormones we're talking about are leptin and ghrelin. And leptin is a hormone that regulates your appetite and ghrelin is the hormone that regulates your sense of being full. And so both of these are actually tied to sleep. Your appetite and your satiety are tied to sleep.
Sleep Quality Crisis
- More than $400 billion: Annual cost to U.S. GDP from lack of sleep
- 4.8 in 10: American workers say they are regularly tired during the day
- 10–15%: American people experience chronic insomnia
Another one that's really interesting is if you think about getting good sleep, it plays a tremendous role in immunity. If you get good sleep, you're going to be more resistant to getting sick. I think we've all probably experienced when you don't get enough sleep and you fall ill, you get the sniffles or the cold from not getting enough sleep. And then if you look even longer term, you think about things like heart health or type two diabetes or cognitive issues like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, all these are linked to shortages of sleep. Not only does sleep make you more effective, but also it can help you have a healthier life.
If you think about all of this put together, sleep is this kind of drug that if you were to find it on the open market, it would do all these wonderful things for you. And you would obviously take this drug because it would help you perform and be healthy, live longer, live healthier. But it's not a drug, it's free. You can just do it by sleeping better and sleeping more effectively, getting higher quality sleep as well as just more sleep as well.
CRG: Another major trend that us at CRG have been observing that Oura fits into well is this convergence between healthcare and consumer and technology… Is this a trend that you're seeing as well? If so, how do you think Oura fits into that dynamic?
Tom: I think there's two dimensions to what you're talking about. Dimension number one is this notion that the healthcare system is really oriented around people being sick. You seek healthcare when you've got an illness or an injury, or maybe you've got a chronic condition that you're trying to manage. It's all about interventions on the back of being sick, and so in many ways, the actual interventions come after the fact. They give you the bypass after you've had the heart attack, they give you the surgery after you've had the injury.
"Another one that's really interesting is if you think about getting good sleep, it plays a tremendous role in immunity. If you get good sleep, you're going to be more resistant to getting sick."
And the incentives are also aligned behind this, which is that in a fee for service model, obviously you're looking for the diagnosis and the intervention. And those motivations really work against what I think Oura really stands for, which is preventative care… the best illness and the best treatment is one that you don't have to have at all because you completely avoid it. If we can help you live a healthier life, form healthy habits, and understand how behaviors affect your physiology, that's what we want to get behind.
The second point is that consumers today have access to more information than ever about healthcare—WebMD, Dr. Google, and scientific studies. However, there's always been a gap in understanding what's actually going on with their bodies because they don't have access to medical equipment. This is where Oura comes in—giving your body a voice with data and measurement.
One way we do this is by monitoring you overnight. You're in a state of relative quiet, generally in the same place, so night-over-night comparisons are meaningful. Empowering people with their own health data is changing healthcare—people are becoming active participants in their health journey.
There's a growing inversion where patients arrive informed about their own trends (respiration, temperature, etc.) and collaborate more effectively with care providers.
CRG: How important is the social aspect in individuals taking charge of their health and wellness? Oura’s Circles feature seems to tap into that.
Tom: We live in the age of social media where influencers can be scientists or physicians (e.g., Huberman, Sinclair, Attia). People compare notes—“What’s your HRV? How did you sleep?”—and light gamification encourages adherence to healthy behaviors. Importantly, people are realizing that not everyone is the same; averages don’t fit every individual. Baselines differ by person, sex, age, health status, and more.
Access to your own data lets you learn your baseline and detect deviations. People experiment, observe results, and reinforce behaviors. Small care groups—partners, families, and friends—use Oura to share and support health. Examples include detecting illness earlier via spikes in temperature/respiration and HRV drops, pregnancy detection through temperature patterns, and using cycle tracking for daughters.
CRG: You’ve leaned into partnerships (e.g., Natural Cycles, Gucci, Best Buy, Headspace). How do you think about partnerships and what makes a good partner?
Tom: We’re building an ecosystem around Oura, and it’s really taken root in the last 12–18 months. Natural Cycles is a prime example: many women prefer non-hormonal birth control and were using the rhythm method with manual temperature entry. With Oura, temperature is captured passively during sleep and sent to the app, which then indicates fertile windows (“red” vs. “green” days). This unlocked a highly motivated use case and adoption took off.
We’re exploring similar integrations—continuous glucose monitoring (interplay of sleep/exercise and glucose), other women’s health apps, meal tracking, recovery after surgery/chemotherapy using HRV, and more. Sharing data enhances partner apps and gives Oura access to new customer pools across stress/mental health, sleep/exercise/metabolic health, heart health, and care plans.
CRG: The ring seems uniquely suited for overnight wear versus wrist devices. How much of an advantage is the ring form factor?
Tom: We’re at the beginning of consumers understanding the benefits. Comfort and simplicity matter—the ring has no UI demanding attention and lasts about seven days per charge. Many wrist wearables live on the bedside charger overnight due to shorter battery life (e.g., Apple Watch’s 1–2 days vs. Oura’s efficiency with a battery ~20× smaller than Apple Watch’s).
Measurement site matters: we recommend the index finger—on the leading edge of the pulse waveform, over an artery 2–3 mm under the skin. Skin on the finger pad is lighter with uniform tissue, improving optical readings. Compared to the wrist (bone/sinew/hair/darker skin/variable fit), signal strength on the finger can be 50–100× stronger. Medical sensors (heart rate and SpO2) are likewise placed on the fingertip. Coupled with comfort and battery life, you get high-quality, passive data with little effort. We sync to the phone and provide insights—e.g., “take it easy today” or “push yourself” based on your biometrics.
“I have to say I'm really fascinated by the idea that we can start to actually provide you advice and interventions based on who you are and what journey you're on.”
CRG: What are you most excited about now?
Tom: Personalizing advice based on goals and health status—marathon training vs. managing chronic illness—so guidance differs appropriately. Imagine a “doctor in your pocket” that understands your context and physiology to deliver targeted, meaningful advice. With machine learning, LLMs, and wearable data, we could see a compelling shift in health, wellness, and fitness coaching. In time, this may even approach medical advice.
CRG: Thanks so much, Tom. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.
Tom: Thanks very much. Appreciate it. And thanks for supporting us. We're big fans of CRG and the whole team there, so thank you.
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