Strava: where serious athletes get social
A fitness app that is more than just another tracker
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When I was training for a marathon, my runner friends on social kept me honest and motivated. We shared weekend Facebook posts about long runs, and traded tips on gear over Instagram. By the time I got to the big day I felt like I wasn’t just running for myself, but for everyone who’d chimed in with a word of support.
Strava understands the power of an athletic community; the San Francisco-based company has been building a global fitness network since 2009, and their growth has been impressive.
Approximately 1 million new users join the app every 40 days —
That translates to some serious activity — in 2017 alone, Strava users biked a combined 4.5 billion miles over 203 million rides.
How does Strava Work?
Swedish for strive, Strava’s mobile app and website combine features from fitness tracking and social apps to create a community focused on athletic prowess and achievement. After a quick onboarding (you can sync with your Facebook or Twitter accounts), Strava helps you “discover and plan workouts, record and share activities, and analyze and compare performance.”
All of this information is shared through a social feed, where members can also upload unlimited photos and comment on other people’s workouts and achievements. The atmosphere is supportive and competitive; users can start or join challenges and can comment and give kudos to an athlete after a workout.
What makes Strava special?
While the entire Strava community is serious about fitness, the platform boasts 600+ elite athletes as members. In 2016, Belgian cyclist Greg Van Avermaet posted his Olympic gold medal-winning ride on the platform and it quickly became Strava’s most popular post, with thousands of comments and kudos.
In 2017, Strava unveiled “Athlete Posts,” and on-platform blogging feature where elite athletes —
(like the athlete who finished 50 Ironmans in 50 days in 50 states…you read that right)
— publish in-depth stories and photos. They’re growing this model in the hopes that it will attract new premium subscribers.
It’s really the monetization that sets Strava apart from other social platforms that struggle to balance earning money with providing an authentic community experience. You can be on Strava’s free model, but they make it clear out that they want you to subscribe to their $7.99/month premium plan. Strava uses machine learning to refine and enhance what a premium subscription offers. Right now, premium users can get personalized coaching, live feedback on their workout, analysis of their fitness data, and safety features that integrate with other fitness devices.
Through its Metro program, Strava “aggregates member-logged data from more than 300-million rides and runs annually to highlight route usage and help determine optimal placement of infrastructure investments.” In the four years since piloting this program Strava has partnered with 130+ government agencies who use data to forecast and plan bike lanes and fitness trails for community use.
Why Strava is a Baby Unicorn
- Raised $69.3M from investors including Sequoia Capital, Madrone Partners, Jackson Square Ventures, and Go4it
- Strava integrates with over 300 fitness devices, with plans to onboard add devices and indoor workout machines
- Strong leadership team with major social experience (Instagram)
- Brand strength: unlike other players in the space (RunKeeper, MyFitnessPal), Strava isn’t on track to be snatched up by a bigger brand.
What’s in the stack?
Python, Ruby, and Scala. React on the front-end. Strava is also open source (e.g., Kafka, ZooKeeper, Finagle, Storm) and their developers also use MySQL, Redis, and Cassandra.
Know someone looking?
True to brand, Strava’s culture is distinctly athletic, with “generous stipends for continuing education, technology, gear and race entry fees.” With a new office just opened in Denver, they are adding capacity in analytics, design, engineering, community management, marketing, finance, and more.
Want to join the team at Strava?
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