Training for the next leg

Chase T. Rigby
Jul 26, 2017 · 3 min read

We built Racepass because we love running. We know firsthand the high costs, limited flexibility and time spent trying to find events, so we decided to do something about it. We built a platform with the goal to encourage runners to run more & help event organizers grow their businesses.

Our Contender, Athlete, and Pro passes have done just that. One new user completed four marathons in just three months and sent us a note:

“I just wanted to say thank you so much for everything! I would have never found the Aspen Valley Marathon and decided to do it had it not been for Racepass (and thank goodness because this is definitely one of my new favorites!).”

Now that we’re a couple of months into our experiment, we’ve gathered enough evidence to confirm the need for simpler and more flexible solutions to event discovery. And we’ve also sold enough passes to know our current business model of passing 100% of registration fee to the event organizers won’t be sustainable.

So for the next few months, we won’t be selling any new passes or facilitating race registrations for new users. Rather, we’ll be busy at work building solutions that the running community has voiced they want most.

We’ll be working on a new version that has the most complete list of races available on the web. Staying true to our Google roots, we’ll make searching for races easier than it’s ever been before. We’ll also empower the running community to make sure that every race — from the Big 5 down to the local 5K — has accurate details.

In the next version of Racepass, every race will have its own profile that’s dynamically shaped by ongoing feedback from runners and race directors. We already have accumulated the largest database of endurance events, but as of now, we only have event names, locations, dates, and websites.

Imagine if every race had its own high-quality photos, interactive course map & topographical elevation profiles. We are confident that standardizing this kind of data for races — all the way down to the nitty gritty details of amenities, course records & expo details — will add value to everyone in the community. We are also confident that runners want to help each other out so we want to give them the forum to help solve common travel and logistical challenges.

We believe that by organizing the highest quality database of races, we’ll help match runners to the right races and increase participation, while also helping race directors derive the kind of insight and feedback they need to grow their event and more effectively connect with sponsors. Even some of our most vocal critics in the industry have said they would welcome a solution like this.

By helping runners run more races, we’ve also helped race directors grow their businesses. Our mission is to help these events grow, so we started by passing full ticket value to the organizers, foregoing any fees.

To build the largest and most accurate database of events, we’re going to have to include every race we can find and every race that’s submitted to us. Until we build a system that gives race directors full control of registration, we will point users to an event’s direct channel of registration.

This new way of doing things generated an overwhelming response from the community. Many organizers have emailed us to include their races in our platform, while some have concerns & confusion about our registration process.

While we’ve made sure to protect event organizers from any liability, it’s clear we need to communicate proactively and build a solution that gives them more control over the registration process — from collecting more nuanced race day details to including liability waivers for direct signature.

As always, we hope any runner and race director will send their feedback so we can get this right.

Happy running,

Tom & Chase

Racepass

Racepass is the first-to-market subscription-based pass that gives runners unlimited access to endurance races.

Chase T. Rigby

Written by

Chief Product Officer @ Kanopy — xGoogle, xNiantic, xTFA

Racepass

Racepass

Racepass is the first-to-market subscription-based pass that gives runners unlimited access to endurance races.

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