Creating a free, Strava-like, app

I think Strava made a terrible business decision to move all that stuff behind a paywall.

Free accounts have been neutered to the point where I feel they are offering far less in value to the free users than the free user's data is worth.

They're biggest asset is their huge user base that's what makes all the social things worthwhile. If they start squeezing the free users out, which I believe they may have started doing with the latest round of changes, it will shrink their user base and make the product less worthwhile to paid users.

Their strategy needs to be to keep their free user's engaged, keep them uploading keep them doing all the social stuff, and generate enough ad revenue from free user accounts to offset costs, while adding features to entice some of them to become paid users. Taking stuff away from the free users to try and make them pay users may net them a few more paid users in the short term, but in the long term it will cost them in both free and paid users.

I deleted my account wrote:

to be to keep their free user's engaged, keep them uploading keep them doing all the social stuff, and generate enough ad revenue from free user accounts to offset costs, while adding features to entice some of them to become paid users. Taking stuff away from the free users to try and make them pay users may net them a few more paid users in the short term, but in the long term it will cost them in both free and paid users.

I kind of agree here, but I it depends on the numbers involved. How many paid Strava users are there, relative to free users? There is probably some kind of threshold ratio.

If enough people are paying, it's not worth the costs of supporting a lot of freeloaders. Free-tier users do cost money. They use up bandwidth, storage, and CPU cycles. I already experience that with my free app. Not only that, but these free users want customer service when stuff doesn't work, which requires a customer service team that includes fluent speakers of all the languages Strava supports.

The way companies like Facebook deal with that is to sell peoples' data. Facebook has a lot of information about what people like and don't like, and its a source of news for many so it's a great way to manipulate people in political campaigns and other advertising. You can make sure that people of a specific demographic see specific messages, enough to do things like influence an election. Remember "Crooked Hillary"? That was Cambridge Analytica in action.

I don't think Strava has that kind of influence. The data they have is location data -- a lot of it. As far as I know there isn't a lot you can do to influence people with that. Plus Strava doesn't have ads or a news (status updates) feed other than someone's last run or bike ride or whatever. If there was a way for the media manipulators of the world to leverage that data, believe me they would be all over it and Strava would be free!

Free training log? It's easy: draw a little grid on a piece of scrap paper and write your mileage in there each day. That's how people logged millions of miles in the past. I get that you want more, though.

If you like all of the additional things a computer program offers you, then why would you not be willing to pay the people who created all of those things? 5 bucks a month for all that you get beyond what pencil and scrap paper give you is a pretty good deal.

I do this stuff for a living. The answer is that it would be a lot of work. Using SWAG method, I'd say offhand that you could expect to spend a minimum of US $500k - 1m to get to an MVP.

Strava has raised around $70M in investment, and they have a big lead in network effect.

Or you could get an open source project going and get a lot of the meat of it done, and then let others take it in whichever direction they want (that's probably the way I'm headed).

The best way you can protest Strava's decision to insert the paywall is to use another app. Garmin Connect is free and vastly superior to the paid version of Strava in every way other than the narcissistic social element.

The segments are such nonsense, there is a 1 mile segment near me that's literally in the middle of a 10 mile trail loop, some guy walked to the start of it and ran a 4:30 mile when all the previous CR holders got the record during completing a full loop, the guy then went around "hunting" other course records and he's not even from the area he was here on vacation.

runnerchef wrote:

RobA wrote:

Not everyone uses Strava either, as far as I can tell. R2W, even though it is a bit dated, is still the best log out there.

if you just wanna stare at your own data and analyse your cadence - sure there are other apps - but what I love about strava is that its a social network of my friends that takes an ACTION to create a post. It is generally an extremely positive environment and its fun to track my friend's progress.

Other sites and apps have a social network element too, I think Strava may just be more popular at the moment. R2W is pretty motivating too. The "top 20" is fun to look at during periods of high mileage.

cheaterfly wrote:

The best way you can protest Strava's decision to insert the paywall is to use another app. Garmin Connect is free and vastly superior to the paid version of Strava in every way other than the narcissistic social element.

The segments are such nonsense, there is a 1 mile segment near me that's literally in the middle of a 10 mile trail loop, some guy walked to the start of it and ran a 4:30 mile when all the previous CR holders got the record during completing a full loop, the guy then went around "hunting" other course records and he's not even from the area he was here on vacation.

I see nothing wrong with that. Someone put that one mile segment there, might as well see how fast someone will run it. How does that detract from a segment of the full 10-mile loop? It doesn't. If you don't find that mile segment meaningful, don't look at it. That he isn't from the area and is hunting wouldn't bother me at all either.

Flibble wrote:

Or you could get an open source project going and get a lot of the meat of it done, and then let others take it in whichever direction they want (that's probably the way I'm headed).

Everyone keeps talking about a hypothetical, future open source project.

What about golden cheetah? Free and open-source. Why not contribute to that software? Legitimately confused. If this thread were about delivering a free, feature-rich solution...why hasn't golden cheetah come up? It's ok if you just want to build your own software, but read up on what exists.

If anybody moves forward with an idea to create something new, please please come up with an easy way to look through popular race courses so you can look through elevation before running a race.

It's easy enough to jump through a few hoops on Strava now but a database with an easy search function would be dope. I'd also like a less clunky message board/group situation.

I've always called Strava the running Facebook but they really haven't made enough progress to make that an actual reality. Maybe they'll get there. I hope they try some new things, especially with more money coming in.

this can be hard if you know nothing about programming

Strava has burned through over 40 million in 10 years, and it has never figured out a way to turn a profit. So that gives you a sense of how difficult this is. Even if you're focused and you try to make something bare bones, you're not building a Strava competitor from scratch for less than a few million, and you are going to have significant operating costs going forward. Something the size of Strava isn't a set-it-and-forget it website. You need full-time employees, server space, legal counsel, etc.

You will never raise that money, though, because (1) Strava has basically proven that it's not a very valuable market, and (2) you're entering against an entrenched competitor with network effects on its side. Strava was built by investors who thought that the company was going to be massive. Now, the question is simply whether Strava can survive as a going concern.

I don't think there's much point aiming for a Strava competitor, but I think there is for an app that provides features they don't support

software engineer wrote:

I do this stuff for a living. The answer is that it would be a lot of work. Using SWAG method, I'd say offhand that you could expect to spend a minimum of US $500k - 1m to get to an MVP.

Strava has raised around $70M in investment, and they have a big lead in network effect.

I bet most of that strava budget is more for advertising than development. :) But yeah you are talking about a decent amount of development between the website, the mobile apps, the watch apps/connection software, and then running it. And it is for something that people aren't going to want to pay much for.

Rhodium Nights wrote:

Yeah but then your app sucks because people constantly see ads on it.

Strava is awesome and costs 7 bucks a MONTH. Is that really an egregious price? Sheesh....

That's the cost of one fancy frapumochachino latte at Starbucks

+10000000000

What's problem? There a lot of tools and services. I use Elevate for Strava and Final Surge. Also you can create new account and get free trial, then import tracks for analytics.

I would think going down the route bfef did, not trying to replicate Strava but rather building out a small number of features to enhance the user experience using the Strava Labs/API would easily take you over several hundred of hours not including time needed to skill up. And that would only get you to a limited scale usage under their terms of agreement. The features you want will dictate if you will have data storage need that would increase your cost beyond a basic low cost hosting agreement - like he stated.

I would say going down the road of building a Strava like site from scratch it a total non-starter. Garmin does not have a free limited use API like Strava. I believe it was a $10,000 licensing fee when I last looked. I think similar a similar deal for all the other GPS enabled fitness devices. And without GPS data you are unable to build the features you are looking for in the first place.