Strava

“I think there should be a Strava for CGMs. Now that more people are using it, even during just that trial period of a month of learning, like, I think being able to kind of socialize what you're learning, but also compete in a way that's what Strava is. Like, …”

“Runner, the running app, and they just did fantastically well. That's my first exit. They just sold to Strava.”

“And also that's really screenshot worthy, right? Like I want to share that on other platforms. I think that's brilliant. Cause that's going to generate, that's going to basically get my K factor, AKA you know, my virality up. People are going to be sharing the…”

“I think there's a future here. I think you can become something like a Strava or a Peloton.”

“I think there's a future here. I think you can become something like a Strava or a Peloton.”

“You know, I had conversations with the founders there a couple of times not in that context, but just getting to know them and, you know, our brands partnering. And, you know, I know for them, they had really, I don't think they had any ambitions of being acqu…”

“Strava largely beat their competition through great customer analytics experience.”

“Strava's been a Snowplow customer for some time, and they generate four billion events per day with Snowplow, and that drives into Snowflake, and then they build all sorts of cool data apps on the other side of it, including a lot of the Strava UI and a lot of…”

“But just the fact that he was actually working harder than everybody else completely threw off our entire system and the sort of the rhythm that we had. And as soon as we got him to just actually relax and calm down, that boat took off like a rocket. And to me…”

“The honest answer is the first business plan was written in late 1995. It just wasn't called Strava. It was called Kana Sports.”

“Turns out it wasn't. That's what we found out when we went out to talk to some people who actually knew how to build things on the internet or build things out of software.”

“I also learned that just because you're set financially doesn't mean you shouldn't keep working. When I don't work, I tend to have problems arise in my life. So I like to stay busy professionally as well as personally.”

“We made a list of if we had been founders of XYZ company, what would it have been? And it was telling because It wasn't a bunch of Silicon Valley companies. I don't think there was, I mean, maybe, maybe we put Apple on there. I can't remember, but otherwise it…”

“What he comes up with by the summer of 2008, spring of 2008, is what we now know as the Strava Segment Leaderboard.”

“Well, we were committed to the distributed model but as soon as we began the process of hiring folks, we also believed in the power of face-to-face and, you know, being in person. So, so we opened a small office in Palo Alto.”

“Summer of 2008. We had a group of individuals. I think maybe no more than a half a dozen cyclists on the east coast out in Hanover and another half dozen cyclists that we recruited on the west coast. And Davey had built a very basic website and we used to call…”

“I always remind people, don't get confused between vision and go to market.”

“And some of the biggest chant, you know, say the discussions we had was when do we start expanding into other sports? And we didn't really do it in earnest until 2012.”

“You had to have a Garmin GPS device. That was the only device that would work with Strava in those early days.”

“There was a whole period of time where Michael and I were negotiating with the likes of Costco and others, just literally trying to buy Garmins so that we could Either sell them or give them away to friends so that we could get people onto the platform.”

“It wasn't until the, 2012, until we really had a viable mobile app into the market. We launched something in 2011 that, that didn't work, but it took us a while to shift off of that.”

“We launched the subscription within that first year. So it was always there.”

“I do remember the earliest business plans had the concept of sponsorship, but We said no advertising.”

“And if we're going to use data for any purpose, it's got to be anonymized and aggregated and not, we never sell anyone's private information. We never give away anyone as the product.”

“And we used to have a phrase, you know, let's make sure we build it for the best in the world and meet their needs. Because if we do, they're the ones who inspire so many others to then join the platform.”

“As people have joined Strava historically, they often don't join because they're trying to join the community. They join because they're looking for a way to track their own personal activities. And I often refer to it as single player mode versus multiplayer …”

“They were jealous that we were spending any time devoted to a sport that they didn't love.”

“And so by early 2010, it was, hey, Michael, I really need you to run this.”

“So he steps in in December because in September of that year, a few months prior, my wife, Anna, had been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.”

“Now we add two million every month”

“So I believe we hit a million daily actives in 2015.”

“Would we rebalance the equation between the free and the paid by moving some things from the free side to the paid side? Yes. We would do that in the name of building Strava to be sustainable, building it so that we can be here for the next hundred years.”

“However, during that period from 17 to 19, we were experimenting across a lot of monetization models. We were looking at, frankly, we were looking at ads in the feed for the first time in Strava's history. We were looking at data insights.”

“Our free members are not just a marketing channel. Our free members are contributing their activities to Strava every day, which enhances the experience. For everybody else.”

“We're close to 350. We entered the pandemic with about a 180. So we've almost doubled since then.”

“We've reached profitability at this point.”

“Strava is a social fitness platform for athletes at every level, and it's got more than seventy-six million users in nearly every country worldwide.”

“We watched Social Dilemma recently, Guy, and, you know, this notion of if you're not buying the product, you are the product. And I really, we believe deeply in that thesis at Strava. We're convinced that there is a capacity within this FIT community to contin…”

“And that's why, for example, making flybys something that you have to opt into was really important to us so that someone who joined, who may not even understand what that feature means, wouldn't inadvertently be sharing information that they didn't want to.”

“We went from adding about a million new athletes to the platform every month to, at some points, three million a month, and it's settled down to about two million a month now.”

“We added 70 new features throughout 2020”

“We're building a capability for you to challenge a few of your friends, and it could be collaborate with a few of your friends to accomplish a goal together. But that we can bring this so that you can decide what you want, what you find would be motivating for…”

“I was lucky enough to be employee number seven there, the first sort of design and product hire, and built out those teams over the years at Strava, and helped grow that company from 1500 users to over ten million”

“And so there were definitely a few years there at Strava where we were running around trying to build so many things at once. Whether it be nutrition or finding a route to ride or things like that.”

“And at some moments in the company's history, we were probably a little too exclusive. We should have talked to more of the weekend warriors versus the folks already riding 200 miles a week.”

“Michael Horvath, the founder of Strava, was our first check, but it was a smaller check, and then the next check was Charles Hudson at Precursor”