startups

Strava has 46m users – we asked its creator to reveal the secrets of his success – British GQ


From its origins as a ride-tracking app for cyclists, Strava has raised £34 million in funding and expanded to a breadth of other sports and exercises to reach more than 46m users – including one in six British adults and over half the Tour De France peloton. Cofounder and chairman Mark Gainey shares nine secrets of his success…

Lose the safety net

If you quit your job and have no source of income, you’d be amazed at how quickly you start to come up with business ideas. I had a year and a half from the moment I quit to when I knew I’d be out of money. Once you have that time, don’t take the recruiter calls. Don’t think about applying for another job. Keep the blinders on.

Begin by catering to a hyper-specific audience

We focused on one group: passionate cyclists. When we started to talk to them, we realised certain things about their experiences that were unique. They were big adopters of data, GPS devices and power meters. Cyclists like their gear. Then, frankly, we also saw no one was really paying attention to them.

Don’t get arrogant, especially in tech

Oftentimes, here in the Valley, there’s a level of arrogance that gets in the way of too many start-ups and good ideas. I wish there was a little more humility spread around some of the start-ups I see. There are dynamics that put undue pressure on early-stage companies here in the Valley that maybe you don’t see elsewhere.

For difficult decisions, ‘bookending’ helps

Take a situation and ask, “What are the two extreme [responses] to this particular challenge?” We know full well that neither of those extremes is the answer, but once we understand those – now we’ve corralled the issue – is there a compromise somewhere in the middle?

‘Paralysis kills companies. The beauty of software is you can correct it pretty quickly’

Make decisions, even if they’re wrong

There’s a quote from Touching The Void [when] Joe Simpson’s been cut loose by his climbing partner, who’s left him for dead in a crevasse. He says, “You’ve got to keep making decisions. If you don’t make decisions, you’re stuffed.” Paralysis kills companies. The beauty of software is you can correct it pretty quickly – if a piece of software didn’t work, we can put a bug fix out in a matter of hours.

Read, read, read

The online tech [news] space is interesting, though I don’t dig in deep – it’s [about] capturing the top headlines on The Verge or Business Insider. [And] I always have two books: one is on my iPad, which will be business related, and one is on my bedside table, which is just a hard-copy book, fiction of some kind.

It’s more efficient to hire people with new skills than learn them yourself

When you’re a kid who studies art history then goes to start software companies, you learn really fast: “I don’t have the answers; let me just go find people who do. I can’t code to save my life, so I’ve got to figure out how to hire engineers.” Once you start to appreciate that’s what a great team looks like, it’s magic.

Give yourself time off thinking about work

When I was working on my first company, Kana, my ex-wife, Lisa, who is still a dear friend, used to joke that I had “KOB disease” – “Kana on the brain”. Today, it would be “Strava on the brain”. I might be sitting at the dinner table and somebody asks me a question and I did not hear any of the last five minutes because I was so engrossed in something at work. It really does consume you. That is really not healthy and it can infect everybody around you.

Don’t accept venture capital prematurely

Often, early-stage companies chase venture capital too quickly and don’t fully appreciate what kind of return they need to generate. With Strava, it wasn’t until about two years in that we began to see an opportunity. There was a network effect inside Strava – cyclists inviting other cyclists to join – and we realised if we began to think about marketing strategies and had additional capital to invest in that, it would be interesting. The other thing we had was the ability to monetise: a premium version people could purchase. So we had the opportunity to use the capital and a story for the venture capitalists in which they could see the fundamentals of the business coming together.

Now read:

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