For me Strava lacks community. In the past 2 years, the number of run clubs has shot up from 2 to more than 10, but although they are all on Strava, all of them advertise on other social media (mainly instagram). As you said, a lot of athletes use Strava already, so shouldn't Strava be the home for these clubs?
First of all they need to have a 'find events' feature. Looking for a club to see if they have an event is janky. If I am visiting a new place and I want to run with a club, I can't go through a bunch of clubs with no activity only to maybe find one which has an event going on. This also works for shake-out runs around big events like UTMB etc. Also, if Strava knows that you always run on Wednesdays at 6pm, maybe it can suggest t you events around that time.
Additionally, I think Strava misses some fun features. For example, a lot of my friends and I use Squadrats. We use it to discover new places, even in our own backyard, and it kind of forces us to discover new places. Why doesn't Strava have something similar with its route feature? Maybe some auto-route creation which explicitly chooses areas which you haven't run before?
I've been on Strava for around 8 years now and the big issue I see that in 8 years I have not changed the way I interact with the app. I upload my activities (and maybe some photos), see what my friends did and send kudos, and that is it. The route finder is neat, but that's it. I see Strava as my activity log, nothing more, and my friends do too, and I think that is 'wrong'. How is it possible that so many people use an app but most people see it just as a training log?
All great points. I definitely think the experience on Strava is wildly different for someone with 10 followers vs say 1,000 followers. The bigger community you have on the app, the more beneficial it becomes, in my opinion.
I also like the idea of suggesting more routes based on your location and the types of activities you’ve logged. I’d especially love to be able to put in parameters (e.g. X miles, Y feet of vert, etc) and have it suggest potential routes nearby.
I think Strava tries to balance having you use and engage with the app, but also get outside and get active. That’s why I think so much of the experience is built on activities, kudos, etc.
Hi, nice to discover your newsletter. I've been in the sport of trail/ultra for 20+ years (before that, a road runner for a decade), and a coach for some eight years, and was a late adopter to Strava because I didn't want it to be a time suck or to affect my training by comparing myself to others or self-consciously worrying how my performance looked to others. (Silly, but true.) I instead have used TrainingPeaks for over a decade to self-coach and, when I coached, to write training plans and work with athletes. I am a huge fan of TrainingPeaks' functionality and layout and wouldn't use anything else. I also like that it's a private dashboard for communication between the coach and athlete. I use my personal TrainingPeaks not only as a training log but as a full health/mood diary with metrics and short journal entries. Meanwhile, I got on Strava about three years ago because I thought, why not? Now, I enjoy it primarily as a social media platform with other runner friends, and to see and explore routes. I'm choosy about whom I allow to follow—only people I actually know—and I keep my settings private so only followers see my runs, and therefore it feels like a tight-knit group of fellow running buddies. Long way of saying, I'm fairly happy with Strava as is but would not seek to use it as a substitute for a coaching platform like Training Peaks.
Thanks for reading! I appreciate the nuance and wish Strava had a bit more of an analytics dashboard or 'command center' of sorts. I also think the experience on Strava can be wildly different depending on how many followers you have that are engaging with your activities.
For example, when I worked at Strava, it felt much more like an active social network with all the kudos and comments and grouped runs I would get. Now, even with the same number of followers, I usually get a handful of kudos per activity and use it much more as a training log of record for all my activities.
Is Strava's inherent lack of direct monetisation through subscriptions an issue from a business perspective though? Most of the big businesses in social media (Meta, Bytedance, Alphabet etc) provide largely free services, lock their users in and monetise their data for the purpose of advertising. e.g. if strava knows you're running in a location outside of your home location and are near location x they could show you ads for accommodation, attractions, running routes etc in that location bundled together. A critical mass of users and a long funding runway to lose money in the short run in order to gain critical mass and build an array of revenue streams has proved much more important than upfront revenue.
(1) As you mention, there are other ways to monetize the activity and engagement on the platform, whether through data or more targeted user experiences (e.g. I logged five runs in HOKAs in a week, so clearly I'm a HOKA customer)
(2) The freemium model assumes only a small percentage of users will opt into paid, especially upfront. Over time, as they start to see more value on the platform, some of them convert to paying subscribers. However, the retention rates of these users are quite high (especially annual subscribers on a lower per month subscription and only one renewal event per year), so once they subscribe they stick around for awhile. Others will always stay free, but they contribute to the platform in other ways.
My understanding, at least as of 6 years ago, was that Strava doesn't want to flood a user's feed with Ads, so even if/when they go down this route, I would expect it to look different than advertising does on Facebook, Instagram, or Google.
Multiple revenue streams is key, especially for a growing business, but the subscription provides a solid floor of recurring revenue that helps fund (either directly or via attracting invetor money) the other more nascent revenue streams.
I think subscription is a good model but I don't think it will be the bulk of their long-term revenue. I also wonder whether maybe they should also be applying it to brands if they want to setup club's and activations like you were alluding to with sponsored segments or sponsored events in the maps or calendar somehow.
Not sure the fact that you've worn Hokas is that valuable (now if they were Merrell's that might be a different story 😉) unless they create better incentives for athletes to track their gear more closely over time, almost everyone I know logs one maybe two pairs of shoes then kind of forgets about it, it's especially difficult to track all that if you have multi shoe rotation.
I don't think anyone wants to go down the route of blanket advertising, but I feel as companies become more profit driven either through stockmarket listing or generally through growth it seems they almost always get sucked in.
In my circles I'm seeing more people use Strava as a full social media platform, centered around the run but including pictures, storytelling, and opinion sharing.
An idea I've seen bounced around on podcasts (notably Second Nature) and articles is a concept of athlete monetization. I think it would be interesting if we made it the running OnlyFans.
So, I keep my spreadsheet of training for my ultras (like on your last article, this is my self-coaching), which includes my target pace spreadsheet for aid station splits on race day.
Similar for event recaps. Lots of folks write their post-run blog post story for subscribers. Could be a private post for my fans on Strava.
If Strava could contain these, then I could paywall them (Strava gets a cut) and share my story and my insights with others for a few bucks.
That kinda gets at the community coaching concept too -- as a consumer I can buy into folks that I like and learn from them and take what I want for my own plan.
Love this idea. Everything is already happening on Strava, so why not let athletes use the platform to share more thoughts, reflections, recaps, etc?
I do think Substack has kind of become that for a lot of athletes, especially anyone who charges a subscription fee for more exclusive content. Even a more seamless integration between the two apps might make sense.
So much happens within the Strava app, given the activity being the atomic unit that usage and engagement is centered around, that I hope they continue to find ways to deepen the experience.
For me Strava lacks community. In the past 2 years, the number of run clubs has shot up from 2 to more than 10, but although they are all on Strava, all of them advertise on other social media (mainly instagram). As you said, a lot of athletes use Strava already, so shouldn't Strava be the home for these clubs?
First of all they need to have a 'find events' feature. Looking for a club to see if they have an event is janky. If I am visiting a new place and I want to run with a club, I can't go through a bunch of clubs with no activity only to maybe find one which has an event going on. This also works for shake-out runs around big events like UTMB etc. Also, if Strava knows that you always run on Wednesdays at 6pm, maybe it can suggest t you events around that time.
Additionally, I think Strava misses some fun features. For example, a lot of my friends and I use Squadrats. We use it to discover new places, even in our own backyard, and it kind of forces us to discover new places. Why doesn't Strava have something similar with its route feature? Maybe some auto-route creation which explicitly chooses areas which you haven't run before?
I've been on Strava for around 8 years now and the big issue I see that in 8 years I have not changed the way I interact with the app. I upload my activities (and maybe some photos), see what my friends did and send kudos, and that is it. The route finder is neat, but that's it. I see Strava as my activity log, nothing more, and my friends do too, and I think that is 'wrong'. How is it possible that so many people use an app but most people see it just as a training log?
All great points. I definitely think the experience on Strava is wildly different for someone with 10 followers vs say 1,000 followers. The bigger community you have on the app, the more beneficial it becomes, in my opinion.
I also like the idea of suggesting more routes based on your location and the types of activities you’ve logged. I’d especially love to be able to put in parameters (e.g. X miles, Y feet of vert, etc) and have it suggest potential routes nearby.
I think Strava tries to balance having you use and engage with the app, but also get outside and get active. That’s why I think so much of the experience is built on activities, kudos, etc.
That is true...Strava's goal should always be to encourage you to go outside more rather than have you hooked to it doom scrolling!
Hi, nice to discover your newsletter. I've been in the sport of trail/ultra for 20+ years (before that, a road runner for a decade), and a coach for some eight years, and was a late adopter to Strava because I didn't want it to be a time suck or to affect my training by comparing myself to others or self-consciously worrying how my performance looked to others. (Silly, but true.) I instead have used TrainingPeaks for over a decade to self-coach and, when I coached, to write training plans and work with athletes. I am a huge fan of TrainingPeaks' functionality and layout and wouldn't use anything else. I also like that it's a private dashboard for communication between the coach and athlete. I use my personal TrainingPeaks not only as a training log but as a full health/mood diary with metrics and short journal entries. Meanwhile, I got on Strava about three years ago because I thought, why not? Now, I enjoy it primarily as a social media platform with other runner friends, and to see and explore routes. I'm choosy about whom I allow to follow—only people I actually know—and I keep my settings private so only followers see my runs, and therefore it feels like a tight-knit group of fellow running buddies. Long way of saying, I'm fairly happy with Strava as is but would not seek to use it as a substitute for a coaching platform like Training Peaks.
Thanks for reading! I appreciate the nuance and wish Strava had a bit more of an analytics dashboard or 'command center' of sorts. I also think the experience on Strava can be wildly different depending on how many followers you have that are engaging with your activities.
For example, when I worked at Strava, it felt much more like an active social network with all the kudos and comments and grouped runs I would get. Now, even with the same number of followers, I usually get a handful of kudos per activity and use it much more as a training log of record for all my activities.
Is Strava's inherent lack of direct monetisation through subscriptions an issue from a business perspective though? Most of the big businesses in social media (Meta, Bytedance, Alphabet etc) provide largely free services, lock their users in and monetise their data for the purpose of advertising. e.g. if strava knows you're running in a location outside of your home location and are near location x they could show you ads for accommodation, attractions, running routes etc in that location bundled together. A critical mass of users and a long funding runway to lose money in the short run in order to gain critical mass and build an array of revenue streams has proved much more important than upfront revenue.
I don't think it's an issue for two reasons:
(1) As you mention, there are other ways to monetize the activity and engagement on the platform, whether through data or more targeted user experiences (e.g. I logged five runs in HOKAs in a week, so clearly I'm a HOKA customer)
(2) The freemium model assumes only a small percentage of users will opt into paid, especially upfront. Over time, as they start to see more value on the platform, some of them convert to paying subscribers. However, the retention rates of these users are quite high (especially annual subscribers on a lower per month subscription and only one renewal event per year), so once they subscribe they stick around for awhile. Others will always stay free, but they contribute to the platform in other ways.
My understanding, at least as of 6 years ago, was that Strava doesn't want to flood a user's feed with Ads, so even if/when they go down this route, I would expect it to look different than advertising does on Facebook, Instagram, or Google.
Multiple revenue streams is key, especially for a growing business, but the subscription provides a solid floor of recurring revenue that helps fund (either directly or via attracting invetor money) the other more nascent revenue streams.
I think subscription is a good model but I don't think it will be the bulk of their long-term revenue. I also wonder whether maybe they should also be applying it to brands if they want to setup club's and activations like you were alluding to with sponsored segments or sponsored events in the maps or calendar somehow.
Not sure the fact that you've worn Hokas is that valuable (now if they were Merrell's that might be a different story 😉) unless they create better incentives for athletes to track their gear more closely over time, almost everyone I know logs one maybe two pairs of shoes then kind of forgets about it, it's especially difficult to track all that if you have multi shoe rotation.
I don't think anyone wants to go down the route of blanket advertising, but I feel as companies become more profit driven either through stockmarket listing or generally through growth it seems they almost always get sucked in.
I actually really like the gear tracking features. Maybe I’m in the minority of people who use them and log specific shoes for specific activities.
It will be interesting to see how their strategy continues to evolve as they continue to grow, especially if they end up going public at some point.
In my circles I'm seeing more people use Strava as a full social media platform, centered around the run but including pictures, storytelling, and opinion sharing.
An idea I've seen bounced around on podcasts (notably Second Nature) and articles is a concept of athlete monetization. I think it would be interesting if we made it the running OnlyFans.
So, I keep my spreadsheet of training for my ultras (like on your last article, this is my self-coaching), which includes my target pace spreadsheet for aid station splits on race day.
Similar for event recaps. Lots of folks write their post-run blog post story for subscribers. Could be a private post for my fans on Strava.
If Strava could contain these, then I could paywall them (Strava gets a cut) and share my story and my insights with others for a few bucks.
That kinda gets at the community coaching concept too -- as a consumer I can buy into folks that I like and learn from them and take what I want for my own plan.
Love this idea. Everything is already happening on Strava, so why not let athletes use the platform to share more thoughts, reflections, recaps, etc?
I do think Substack has kind of become that for a lot of athletes, especially anyone who charges a subscription fee for more exclusive content. Even a more seamless integration between the two apps might make sense.
So much happens within the Strava app, given the activity being the atomic unit that usage and engagement is centered around, that I hope they continue to find ways to deepen the experience.
Super good read, thanks for sharing all this. Strava has done a lot of things right already and I see them even further on the rise in the future.