ROJO will you ever sell letsrun?

Boyfriend in back row? 🤔😳💭 wrote:

It's based on the visitors

Letsrun not only attracts lots of visitors, but many of them have solid incomes and college degrees

Hahaha. They also run sub 14 5ks and have models for wives.

derp wrote:

Boyfriend in back row? 🤔😳💭 wrote:

It's based on the visitors

Letsrun not only attracts lots of visitors, but many of them have solid incomes and college degrees

Hahaha. They also run sub 14 5ks and have models for wives.

Which is confusing because so many posters think their wives are cheating on them and ask questions about what they will run off of 18:30 predicted pace workouts

Nike would probably pay $10M and then shut it down.

biogen wrote:

Well yeah, but what drives those visitors? I think the front page content leads to actual fast people to come here and post which leads to the hordes of slow people (like myself) coming here to try to learn something.

I don't know about others, but I have the message board bookmarked and go straight to that.

I rarely visit the front page, so I don't know much about its content and reporting.

All of the fun is on the board and there is a constant update of information real time that you can't get from the front page.

If Letsrun was split in two - one site being the front page and one site being the message board - which would get more visitors and be more valuable to advertisers?

Jose the Plumber wrote:

This site claims letsrun is worth $2 million;

Depressing. Flosports got $21.2 million in VC funding and likely is losing money. We are profitable. I was hoping this baby was worth at least $40 million.

Gravy wrote:

Flotrack will own this site within 5 years.

Shoot me if that happens.

Actually, strike that. I'd only do that if I was PAID.Just like the Whatsapp founder, my morals can be bought so the money would have to be so magnificent I was happy.

Convexity wrote:

If a deal happened it would fail unless it included the founders to stay on. Like it or not, they are part of the brand and changing that would change the message board...and the site would fail.

So Rojo/Wejo, only sell if you're still in control of all content for as long as you want.

I don't make the messageboard. The messageboard is more fun with me antagonizing 40% of the audience but it would do just fine without me on there.

Having a small town business/town feel to it is nice but it's just like the local coffee shop, it won't stay in business unless the coffee is good.

We did almost sell to the outfit that bought trackshark maybe 10 years ago. But the best advice I got was, "Make sure the price is high enough that you are happy if you are fired on day 1." Then the guy went further and said, "Consider yourself fired on day 1. They own it. You are an employee and they can do whatever they want including laying you off."

Great advice as trackshark sold for peanuts and then was shut down.

On a more note, I have thought about doing something else and doing letsrun on the side. Our employees are great. I could just chime in on here every now and then. What should I do? Any consulting firm want to hire me?

i'm off the charts on ideaphoria - think that would work well in consulting.

I'd love a look at LetsRuns books. I'm sure they make decent money off advertising.

Good demographics, very low overhead. Although, I'd expect they are spending more now as they have 1) more employees and 2) seem to be traveling more to cover big events. Would be interesting to see if these changes have paid off.

Just speculating here.

Star wrote:

biogen wrote:

Well yeah, but what drives those visitors? I think the front page content leads to actual fast people to come here and post which leads to the hordes of slow people (like myself) coming here to try to learn something.

I don't know about others, but I have the message board bookmarked and go straight to that.

I rarely visit the front page, so I don't know much about its content and reporting.

All of the fun is on the board and there is a constant update of information real time that you can't get from the front page.

If Letsrun was split in two - one site being the front page and one site being the message board - which would get more visitors and be more valuable to advertisers?

YES!

Heil Keino wrote:

Let's be honest - most of the people here come to this board to read the comments of a handful of contributers - Calculo, Coevett, Bad Wiggins, El Keinio etc.

Rojo should consider paying these guys to post more often. Perhaps Calculo could be encouraged through financial incentive to flesh out his comments into fully fledged mathematical treatises?

Those are the last people I come here to see. Maybe they should pay them not to post, now we are on to something.

I would leave if this site was sold. I left dyestat, flotrack. The messageboard is everything. Unregistered posting, easy to use, forum posting rules gray at best, site owners posting/responding.

Rojo, you shouldn't consider anything less than $85 million today.

Rojo wrote:

On a more note, I have thought about doing something else and doing letsrun on the side. ...What should I do? ...

On this very forum, you were given a great idea, spawned by recent RaceAcrossAmerica fiascos. Did you see it? What do you think? Any interest?

I'm loving that LRC is pushing forward and testing new directions. The Syracuse article was like a mini-RWTB and seeing how 'Why I Sucked in College' has so much staying power, I'll be curious to see if the Syracuse story and other similar stories have that kind of staying power.

Rojo, I'd love to see you give Malcolm Gladwell a column. And, include him in your round table discussions, like the one on Bekele, Geb and Mo as GOAT - those were great.

... maybe have regular knowledge-based contests to allow LRC visitors be guests on your round table discussions.

I'd love to see LRC content be more share-able across social media, which would require, possibly, the writing and page layout surrounding the stories be a bit more Altantic-ish.

Rojo, you have created an incredible website, an incredible experience when people visit, and an incredible improvement to the running world.

Seriously, this site does have that small town feel / coffee shop feel is awesome. I also bookmark the homepage to check out what's going on. A previous poster correctly pointed out that the two key value points are the reporting and the message boards. You guys do a great job recapping big meets, both the hype before and the analysis afterwards.

Also, you guys are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to stats. People can throw out claims like "best runner..." and you guys respond with actual data.

I may disagree with a lot of what you have said over the years about Galen Rupp and Alberto Salazar, and Haile G as well as he was ending his career, but disagreement is what makes the world go around.

Plus, it's cool that the site owners respond and are active in the threads. What other website can say that?

Thank you for an awesome site. Do NOT sell it. Keep it the same.

+1

I like this site the way it is. I originally came to the site for the front page articles, but eventually found myself visiting the forums much more often. I really like the forums due to the wealth of information contained within. Although some may dislike the trolls, I think they're hilariously original.

I love the simplicity of the forum. I primarily browse websites on a POS smartphone, which usually crashes on other websites, but LRC has never given me any trouble, which I am extremely grateful for. :)

At this point in time, I cannot determine anything about this website that I dislike. I believe that selling this website would disrupt the beautiful status quo that has been established. I would most likely leave if this site becomes sold.

In the 1970's I subscribed to pretty much every running magazine there was. I stuck with RW and T&FN into the 1980s, T&FN into the early 2010's, but now LR is now my source of running information. You're doing something right. Don't screw it up like RW did.

I check LR multiple times a day. I like the front page and do read it, but the value is about the message boards.

Just stop with the auto-play ads.

Letsrun is a bit like a parking lot located in the downtown area of a big city. Real estate developers just hold those properties, waiting for the big development deal to come in. The parking lot actually makes good money because operating costs are just about nothing.

Maybe one day the NFL is disbanded after all the players turn into drooling zombies from acute cases of CTE. Technology finally catches up to doping and all the E. Africans are banned. US distance running becomes the new "it" sport. Letsrun sees daily visits hit drudgereport levels (I mean they are pretty much the drudgereport of running in a way). Then, it could sell for tens of millions.

Or it could just go along with very little in operating costs making good money like that parking lot.

On this very forum, a visionary idea was presented, whereby LRC could springboard into a new venture that could potentially parlay this site into drudgereport levels. ROJO should 'first refusal' before the idea is shopped elsewhere (to the likes of flotrak or irunfar.com), no?

LRC is probably the reason I ended up being a halfway decent runner. The community and excited they provide are inspiring.

I come to LRC 99% of the time for the message boards. The main page is interesting when a major event is going on (Olympics, big marathons etc.), but the message boards are fun to read every day. And yes, the Mike Rossi drama is one of the threads I love to read. That guy must have given the Brojos lots of money in ad revenue.