May 2, 2022 · 1h 19m · how-i-built-this
Strava: Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
On How I Built This, Strava co-founders Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath share how collegiate crew camaraderie inspired their virtual locker room concept, navigating an enterprise software detour with Kana Communications before scaling Strava into a profitable global athletic social network.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 31.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.6 Guest teaching 2.0 Guest disagreement 0.3 Guy pushing back 0.7
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 58:44 Passionate vs elite athlete distinction
Mark Gainey directly pushes back against Guy's framing that Strava targeted elite or professional athletes, clarifying it was about passion rather than skill level.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 1:14:50 Guy Raz presses on co-founder frictionGuy Raz openly challenges the founders' harmonious narrative, pressing them directly on whether they genuinely never experience conflict.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 29:45 VCs misunderstanding customer service emailMichael Horvath educates Guy on early internet venture capital blindness, explaining how top Silicon Valley investors initially dismissed email support systems as mere Outlook features.
Guy holds their own ▶ 0:49 Guy Raz maps out the subculture playbookGuy Raz exhibits authoritative pattern recognition, comparing Strava's launch playbook to successful subculture-led companies like CrossFit, WordPress, and Discord.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Friction and Sourcing Garmins for Strava | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy Raz opens the show with an extensive contextual monologue connecting Strava's niche community strategy to broader startup playbooks like Discord, Crossfit, and WordPress. | |
| Serendipitous Meeting on the Harvard University Crew Team | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy prompts both founders on their Harvard athletic backgrounds, eliciting lighthearted backstory about how both accidentally joined crew. | |
| Rowing Lessons and the Philosophical Value of Teamwork | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Guy touches on the preppy stereotype of crew, prompting Mark to explain the grueling reality and an early team heart rate monitor lesson. | |
| Cold Road Trip to Princeton Solidifies Lifelong Friendship | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Michael recounts the freezing road trip in an unheated Jeep to Princeton that solidified their lifelong bond. | |
| College Concessions Venture and Leaving TA Associates Job | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Mark outlines his post-grad cold calling venture job at TA Associates and earlier college concessions arbitrage, which Guy frames as a practical business school education. | |
| The 1995 Kana Sports Concept and Virtual Locker Rooms | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Guy questions how Michael balanced tenure track at Stanford while Mark pitched starting a company, leading to the early virtual locker room concept Kana Sports. | |
| Pitching Kana Sports and Discovering the Customer Email Problem | 5 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Guy and the founders explore how technical limits of 1995 web architecture led them to pitch sporting goods companies, who instead complained about unmanaged customer email. | |
| Identifying an Unsolved Customer Email Crisis Across Tech Giants | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Guy probes how web inquiries were handled in the nineties, and Mark explains that even tech giants lacked tools for inbound email support. | |
| Mid-Interview Sponsor Break and Upcoming Episode Teaser | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Mid-interview sponsor break and promotional teaser. | |
| Venture Backing from DFJ and Rapid Dot-Com Adoption | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Michael explains how VCs initially dismissed customer support software as a Microsoft Outlook feature before DFJ funded their enterprise model. | |
| Kana's Public Offering, Massive Market Cap, and Michael's Departure | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Guy reacts to Kana reaching an eleven billion dollar valuation and asks why Michael chose to step back into academia right before the IPO. | |
| Glycafi Biotech Success and Dissatisfaction with Passive Advisory | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Mark and Michael detail their dissatisfaction with passive advisory roles and teaching, comparing board service to unfulfilling junk food. | |
| Studying Iconic Consumer Brands and Revisiting the Virtual Locker Room | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The founders describe benchmarking timeless consumer brands like Patagonia before deciding to build a motivating fitness platform. | |
| Davey Kitchell and Inventing the Strava Segment Leaderboard | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Michael introduces Davey Kitchell and the breakthrough creation of the GPS-tracked Strava Segment Leaderboard. | |
| Testing the Green Machine Prototype During the Tour de France | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Mark shares how a 2008 Tour de France test between East and West Coast cyclists proved the infectious competitive appeal of the prototype. | |
| Mid-Show Break: Scaling Strava and Navigating Leadership Changes | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Mid-show commercial break and preview of Strava's mobile transition. | |
| Hardware Friction, Garmin Obstacles, and the Belated Mobile Shift | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Guy questions the hardware hurdle of early GPS cycling units, leading Mark to describe buying Garmins from Costco to manually seed users. | |
| Establishing Subscription Freemium Monetization and Rejecting Digital Advertisements | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks if ad models or data brokerage were considered, prompting Mark to clarify subscription was there from year one and Michael to firmly reject selling attention. | |
| Navigating User Data Privacy and Rebuilding the Mobile Application | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks about targeting elite athletes; Mark gently pushes back, clarifying they targeted passionate rather than elite users, emphasizing single-player utility. | |
| Launching Strava Run and Overcoming Cycling Community Backlash | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Guy touches on community backlash to Strava Run, and Michael explains how family health crises forced leadership role-swapping between the founders. | |
| Organic Word-of-Mouth Flywheel and Hitting One Million Daily Actives | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Guy asks whether the free tier was made intentionally less attractive to drive subscriptions; Michael reframes the decision around long-term sustainability. | |
| Pandemic Workout Boom, Doubling Headcount, and Achieving Corporate Profitability | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | Guy challenges the founders on whether they ever experience real conflict, prompting thoughtful reflections on complementary work styles. | |
| Learned Optimism, Serendipity, and a Lifelong Entrepreneurial Bond | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy closes by asking about the role of luck versus grind, with Mark discussing learned optimism and Michael reflecting on their lifelong partnership. |
Statements from this episode (39)
Individual overexertion disrupts collective team rhythm and speed
“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…”
Successful businesses share identical principles while failing businesses fail uniquely
“The good businesses were Had a set of principles that were almost identical. It was really fascinating, but the bad businesses, there were a million reasons why they were in trouble.”
Gainey funded Harvard living expenses by selling nine-cent hot dogs for $2
“And we figured out that, you know, for nine cents, which was the cost of a bun and a hot dog, we could turn around and sell that for two dollars at these local sporting events. And that was great. I mean, that's how I paid for all my meals and spending while I…”
Strava's first business plan was written in 1995 as Kana Sports
“The honest answer is the first business plan was written in late 1995. It just wasn't called Strava. It was called Kana Sports.”
Building an interactive virtual locker room was technically impossible in 1995
“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.”
Founders do not need upfront answers to start building products
“You don't have to figure out all the answers to how you're going to build something. You have to start with something that gets you to the next challenge to solve.”
Major 1990s tech companies had no solution for incoming customer emails
“When we made those calls out to these other companies, nobody had a solution. Nobody was, they all had a huge problem.”
Kana Communications built its first prototype using FileMaker Pro templates
“We took an off-the-shelf software called FileMaker Pro, found a, someone who knew how to create custom templates for it, and asked them to basically build what Mark just described, that, that placemat sketch from the sixteen-year-old turned into a FileMaker Pr…”
DFJ led Kana Communications' $700,000 Series A round in 1996
“Our series A led by Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson, DFJ. We closed that round in, I believe it was 1996, and 700,000 dollars.”
Kana Communications signed million-dollar contracts within a year of launch
“And within a year, we were doing million dollar contracts.”
Kana Communications grew to over 1,200 employees by summer 2000
“I mean, it went from two guys and a dog hanging out in an office to, I know when I left in the summer of 2000, we had just over 1200 employees, so.”
Kana Communications peaked at an $11 billion market cap
“I believe it was just under eleven billion was the market confidence peak.”
Founders should separate cleanly once they lack an active operational role
“It's almost like you're, you do have a, you have a better quality, and the company has a better quality of existence if you really separate as much as possible at some level when you don't have a role to play anymore.”
Financial independence does not mean one should stop working entirely
“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.”
Gainey: Board service is like junk food because advisors cannot execute
“I love to equate being on boards to eating junk food and I'll be the first to attest. I like junk food. Like I will occasionally have it. And so in the moment being at a board, Can feel really good. You're contributing, you're having interesting intellectual c…”
Strava was modeled on Patagonia and Virgin rather than tech peers
“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…”
Davey Kitchell prototyped the Strava segment leaderboard by summer 2008
“What he comes up with by the summer of 2008, spring of 2008, is what we now know as the Strava Segment Leaderboard.”
Strava abandoned its purely distributed model to open a Palo Alto office
“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.”
Strava's 2008 prototype was beta-tested by roughly twelve cyclists
“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…”
Founders should not confuse company vision with go-to-market strategy
“I always remind people, don't get confused between vision and go to market.”
Strava did not expand beyond cycling in earnest until 2012
“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.”
Garmin GPS devices were the only compatible hardware at Strava's launch
“You had to have a Garmin GPS device. That was the only device that would work with Strava in those early days.”
Strava founders negotiated with Costco to source Garmins for early users
“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.”
Strava did not have a viable mobile app until 2012
“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.”
Strava launched its paid subscription option within its first year
“We launched the subscription within that first year. So it was always there.”
Strava's earliest business plans explicitly rejected advertising models
“I do remember the earliest business plans had the concept of sponsorship, but We said no advertising.”
Strava never sells user data or treats users as the product
“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.”
Building for the best athletes in the world inspires broader adoption
“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.”
Users join Strava for single-player tracking before engaging with the community
“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 …”
Early cyclists resented Strava for allocating product resources to running
“They were jealous that we were spending any time devoted to a sport that they didn't love.”
Gainey handed the Strava CEO role to Horvath in 2010
“And so by early 2010, it was, hey, Michael, I really need you to run this.”
Horvath stepped down as CEO in 2013 after his wife's cancer diagnosis
“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.”
Strava adds two million new members to its platform every month
“Now we add two million every month”
Strava reached one million daily active users in 2015
“So I believe we hit a million daily actives in 2015.”
Strava moved free features to a paywall to ensure long-term sustainability
“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.”
Strava experimented with in-feed ads and data insights between 2017 and 2019
“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.”
Free users provide core product value by sharing their daily activities
“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.”