Strava preparing for IPO - valued at $2.2 billion

Yeah, I thought the idea of posting training sessions for others to view seemed very odd. During my peak years, when the most advanced technology for runners seemed to be a simple stopwatch, I usually didn't even bother to record my training sessions for myself, if only because my running schedule was largely dictated by my other activities and obligations.

In case you were wondering, the person who responded to your post ("okieppa") was simply being an ass.

I find the strava desktop site much better than the app. In the free version I don't think I can even view my workout splits on the app.

Yes, but Garmin sells an actual product. They don't need to destroy theirs with ads/junk.

Nikki ?

Just responded

Should I tell you now or later that Garmin is going into to subscription based enshi.tification of services AFTER you've spent over $1,000 (even up to $2,000) on a watch?

Both G and S will tell you a banal "hey - your run was exactly as you titled it! way to go!".

It's really surprising that the popular sentiment here is so at odds with the running community at large. I don't think Strava is going downhill or overvalued, and I think it plays a big role in the running community.

1. Strava premium is very popular. I'd say almost half the people I run with regularly have it. That's gonna skew towards more dedicated runners, but still it's a lot of people with it. Leaderboards and advanced analytics (admittedly the analytics are on par with Garmin Connect) are very popular.

2. The social aspect is huge. Most other social media platforms are primarily lurkers, then commenters, then a tiny fraction of posters. Strava has a ton of users who post almost every single day automatically from their watch, and then add pictures or commentary, then stick around and look at other peoples' posts

3. Clubs use it a ton for run coordination, and that's good for the running community. More people having reasons to run every day and hearing about local races is good.

4. They have access to a ton of data that's surely valuable to sell

5. Runna is getting very popular for people who want the structure of someone telling them what to do without paying a bunch of money for a coach. There's a massive gap in the market for coaching services, since most real person coaches charge $100/month or more. A subscription to an AI that's probably better than many unqualified coaches, will be more responsive, and is way cheaper, is a money printing machine as running competitively continues to skyrocket in popularity (see: BQ times)

6. People don't care about unobtrusive ads that much. It's a ubiquitous part of being online. You're on a website littered with ads right now. If they do expand to traditional ads (from just challenges), it probably won't have that much backlash.

If I have learned anything in the last 15 years, this means the app will quickly go to crap and eventually become a ghost town.

Don't know where you're pulling this from, other than your rectum. It's a small minority of runners who use Strava with any regularity.

Once a company is publicly traded the only goal becomes increasing profit unrealistically every year. You are not allowed to hum along and reinvest in user experience. This directly results in significant declines in user experience. From unreasonable ads to not showing content of people/things you care about, to jacking up sub prices, to making the free tier unusable. We have seen this in every thing from social media apps to streaming services over and over again. It would be shocking if this doesn’t happen to Strava.

This reflects my experience 100%. Additionally, the mapping tools are great. Setting up and having saved routes is super convenient generally, while the ‘heat maps’ feature helps to figure out where locals tend to run when I’m traveling and don’t know the roads.

2.2B for a unique social media like Strava is cheap imo especially in this market - quantum computing stocks and flying car companies with no viable business or meaningful product are valued at 10-20B, 5-10X of strava. I'm a strava bull, this will easily be worth $10B in the future imo. I'll be buying shares in the IPO for sure on this one.

Strava seems very popular with every high schooler in my city. My daughter has made a ton of friends through there and I'd say it has really added a lot to the sport. When I was running in the 80s I didn't know any of my competitors and we pretty much disliked each other. When my daughter first started running I encouraged her to get to know all of her competitors, if nothing else because you might want someone to run with in the off season. I'd not been thinking about Strava or other social media.

These kids are all connected through social media and my daughter knows everyone in the running scene in our very large city. It is a wonderful community. They see each other at races every so often but they communicate through Strava and Instagram all the time. Some of my daughter's best friends in the city are other runners at other schools and whenever they don't have team practices they often get together and run together. It's wonderful to see and the competitive running community in our city is thriving.

id rather see it absorbed into meta

I think it will immediately lose appeal when it inevitably is forced for legal or profit reasons to include political ads.

if they added a dating service for paid members they could add another few billion to that valuation

With how inaccurate stats like "Best Efforts" turn out to be routinely, the analytics are just a meme at this point. Raw numbers and data can be valuable, and that's about it.

But if you need AI to coach yourself with all of the excellent free training resources out there on the internet, then I don't even know what to say. The amount of blatantly outlandish AI training plans I've seen is egregious.

I love Strava just to compare myself to my past self on segments. IMO it’s better for cycling than running. It’s also cool to see elevation profiles on mountain rides.