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Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

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Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#21

Post by tmpz22 »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #20
vemv wrote: post #5

As a mountain biker Strava feels just silly. It's a leaderboard for imaginary races that can be trivially cheated, be it via GPS idiosyncracies or by using an electric bike. I reckon the features oriented towards navigation/discovery are ok, but it's a crowded space with a relatively low barrier to entry. I wouldn't be surprised if one only can make marginal gains with those 110M, but with a high pressure for ROIng w…

> As a mountain biker Strava feels just silly. And this remark feels unconstructive. As a touring cyclist I absolutely love Strava. The tracking and logging is excellent, the community aspects are fun, and overall I find the product very easy to use. Do I think it's worth a 100M investment? I'm not sure. I wouldn't have expected Peloton or Mirror to exist. But there's clearly a demand for social fitness products and…

Its about the opportunity cost of parking hundreds of millions of dollars into fitness tracking software - which is trivially FREE via a variety of apps on iOS and Android. That money could be deployed much more effectively, IMO.

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#22

Post by polote »

vemv wrote: post #5

As a mountain biker Strava feels just silly. It's a leaderboard for imaginary races that can be trivially cheated, be it via GPS idiosyncracies or by using an electric bike. I reckon the features oriented towards navigation/discovery are ok, but it's a crowded space with a relatively low barrier to entry. I wouldn't be surprised if one only can make marginal gains with those 110M, but with a high pressure for ROIng w…

> I wouldn't be surprised if one only can make marginal gains with those 110M

Strava is a social network. Like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit. The day you have hundred of millions of users you stop the bullshit with premium features and you start putting ads and you make money. I'm not worried for them at all

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#23

Post by benofsv »

count wrote: post #13
vemv wrote: post #5

As a mountain biker Strava feels just silly. It's a leaderboard for imaginary races that can be trivially cheated, be it via GPS idiosyncracies or by using an electric bike. I reckon the features oriented towards navigation/discovery are ok, but it's a crowded space with a relatively low barrier to entry. I wouldn't be surprised if one only can make marginal gains with those 110M, but with a high pressure for ROIng w…

I know a ton of people using Strava. They use it entirely for socializing runs/rides/swims. Friendly pressure, kudos, complaints about the humidity, etc. Literally none of them pay attention to the 'KOM/QOM' more than a 'haha, check that out' bit. It's a hardware vendor neutral (looking at you GarminConnect) way of socializing with fellow athletes, and is super popular for that.

Entirely the same for me - It's more to see what others are up to (finding out what routes I could take), and it's fun exchanging kudos for what it's worth. Once in a while, it's fun to see what segments I've improved on as well or just how I'm doing in general compared to my past rides.

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#24

Post by jeffbee »

Strava has a bit of a German tank thing going on. Athlete 55-million joined April 2020, and 65-million joined August 2020. 71-million on November 1. 72 on November 11. 72.3 million yesterday.

So it seems that the pace of 2M per month is about what they claim, and the number of total athletes in the article is also close to what they claim.

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#25

Post by carlineng »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Earlier this year, Strava removed many of their free features. Previously, free users weren't really limited by the platform. Predictably, not many people subscribed. Forcing users to pay for popular features received a lot of public backlash at the time ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23228426 ) but in retrospect it appears to be the right choice. People never like losing access to free features, but losing p…

> Predictably, not many people subscribed.

How do you know this? I don't believe I've ever seen them (or anyone else) publish actual subscription numbers... closest thing I've seen is some statistical analysis done by a VC way back in 2015.

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#26

Post by spotman »

Good for Strava. In my community of athletes Strava is the gold standard and there is really nothing else quite like it that is compatible with more than one brand of device and offers a similar feature set.

Probably about 1/2 of my friends are paid members. Since they changed their billing model/feature/plans earlier in the year, more people in my circle started paying and I can not think of anyone who left.

While there can be some frustrations with some of the segments, it really varies heavily sport to sport and area to area. In trail running segments where I am it's pretty rare to find a completely unbelievable segment entry that screams someone is cheating. But at the end of the day often you are filtering the segment results down to your followers or clubs list.

Overall I find Strava to keep me more engaged in friendly competition than other-words and the premium features do a good job of adding actual value in terms of another view/opinion in your training status.

Having said all that, my circle of friends are not your casual athletes.

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#27

Post by [deleted] »

vemv wrote: post #5

As a mountain biker Strava feels just silly. It's a leaderboard for imaginary races that can be trivially cheated, be it via GPS idiosyncracies or by using an electric bike. I reckon the features oriented towards navigation/discovery are ok, but it's a crowded space with a relatively low barrier to entry. I wouldn't be surprised if one only can make marginal gains with those 110M, but with a high pressure for ROIng w…

[deleted]

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#28

Post by ahi »

ogre_codes wrote: post #19
Wonnk13 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that after a decade of user data, they still can't automatically detect when someone accidentally uploads a bike ride as a run activity. Like yea, kudo phil for knocking out those... 3 minute miles for two hours. \rant

One of my big frustrations. They can't even figure out that I put my bike on the roof of the car and drove away. My heart rate goes down, yet I'm going 40-60 miles per hour... and Strava still thinks I'm riding my bike. They rely on other users to flag my activity as bogus because I busted some random KOM. It should be reasonably straight forward to suggest auto-cropping, particularly when I start and stop a ride in…

I have lost a couple 30 mile rides because location tracking died for a minute and they had me going 90mph. Did I get a PR on the dozen other segments? Who knows.

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#29

Post by ogre_codes »

ahi wrote: post #28
ogre_codes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my big frustrations. They can't even figure out that I put my bike on the roof of the car and drove away. My heart rate goes down, yet I'm going 40-60 miles per hour... and Strava still thinks I'm riding my bike. They rely on other users to flag my activity as bogus because I busted some random KOM. It should be reasonably straight forward to suggest auto-cropping, particularly when I start and stop a ride in…

I have lost a couple 30 mile rides because location tracking died for a minute and they had me going 90mph. Did I get a PR on the dozen other segments? Who knows.

you could probably have salvaged those rides by cropping them.

Re: Strava raises $110M, growth rate of 2M new users per month in 2020

#30

Post by adamjb »

voisin wrote: post #10
timerol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leaderboard aspects of Strava are the worst part. I like it as a personal training log, and as a way to keep up with friends who are also being fit. The social aspects are really nice, as it's fun to be asked about your run through X over the weekend, or to know who to ask about running routes in a certain park. It's also a nice nudge to go work out. "I don't have anything on Strava yet this week, I should go for…

It would be nice to be able to look at month by month rather than week by week, and not just sequentially but year over year to see improvements.

Veloviewer's good for that.
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