Same. I don’t need a paid subscription to Strava with Garmin Connect. However if they had more options like TrainingPeaks, I’d probably swap. TP is getting very expensive now
Is there a repository of this sort of information on all (or many) companies that folks tend to look towards for these kinds of answers? (ie. how many people work at Strava)
D&B/Hoovers.
https://www.dnb.com/...ce2d9c5e0dd6438.html D&B worth paying annual premium for? Do you pay it? What’s your use case?
Is Hoovers a different thing?
Thanks for your insight here.
Social media? I can’t imagine how it could resemble facebook… details?
Meetups and events. Most events from major to informal that I know of use Facebook as the primary public-facing event site. Except those that invest in full-up Web pages, but even they tend to have parallel FB pages. For informal training groups, I’ve used Facebook groups, Meetup, and SMS groups. And the most horrifyingly awful 90’s tech of all - “reply all” email chains.
I’m OK with this, generally. Do one thing well instead of trying to do everything. But I am surprised that Strava didn’t try much at either of those things that could benefit almost all of us athletes on a day-to-day basis with tangible benefit. I’m in several Strava “Clubs,” and they allows “Posts” but they are not useful for things like “Hey, going for a long ride tomorrow , anyone want to come?” With a little widget noting yes/no/maybes so you know who do expect.
I’d be OK with Strava doing their one thing well (segments and activity feeds), paring back staff to 20% of current, and being comfortable with low growth and minimal self-sustaining revenue. But that kind of talk makes venture capital bros go into seizures.
1 Like
Social media? I can’t imagine how it could resemble facebook… details?
Meetups and events. Most events from major to informal that I know of use Facebook as the primary public-facing event site. Except those that invest in full-up Web pages, but even they tend to have parallel FB pages. For informal training groups, I’ve used Facebook groups, Meetup, and SMS groups. And the most horrifyingly awful 90’s tech of all - “reply all” email chains.
I’m OK with this, generally. Do one thing well instead of trying to do everything. But I am surprised that Strava didn’t try much at either of those things that could benefit almost all of us athletes on a day-to-day basis with tangible benefit. I’m in several Strava “Clubs,” and they allows “Posts” but they are not useful for things like “Hey, going for a long ride tomorrow , anyone want to come?” With a little widget noting yes/no/maybes so you know who do expect.
I’d be OK with Strava doing their one thing well (segments and activity feeds), paring back staff to 20% of current, and being comfortable with low growth and minimal self-sustaining revenue. But that kind of talk makes venture capital bros go into seizures.
If the current state is as good as it gets for subscription and ad revenue, then trimming down makes the most sense. Maybe that is what they have realized and the VC’s are looking for a CEO that can take them to an exit.
D&B worth paying annual premium for? Do you pay it? What’s your use case?
I get (remote) access through my local library. My use case(s) are business research, and finding valid email addresses (for many co’s), which makes contacting individuals at respective co’s slightly less complicated, etc.
Is Hoovers a different thing?
There were two distinct products (Hoovers Business Directory and Dun & Bradstreet—which has contact info, financials, etc) that were rolled into a single product.
Thanks for your insight here.
Sure thing.
Meetups and events.
I do see a missed opportunity for Strava based events. It allows for a simple way to have friendly competition without requiring timing by organizers. There are many ways it could be done, but locally I thought it’d be cool to have a “climbing challenge” where certain Strava segments/climbs are mapped out, and participants try to ride as many as they can (most feet of climbing, only 1 ascent per segment) in say a 5 hr period… or for the more competitive, ride all of them for the lowest accumulated time. You program the event, participants are entered, and Strava does the rest automatically.
What I’m getting at is I don’t think Strava is staying away from ads because they’re on a moral high ground, I think they’ve run the numbers and don’t see enough potential money coming in from ads.
Exactly. While you can make money from ads at a certain level, the overall direction of the internet has been very clear the last few years: Away from static-image type ads. Instead, compaines are spending their money on other marketing opportunities. Obviously, there are still ads out there - don’t get me wrong (and I run ads on the site too), but fundamentally ad spend is down across most companies. And part of that is most shown in the comments around this very topic. People often say some variant of “just show me ads I can ignore them”. The problem is, companies know this. If you ignore the ads, then the companies stop spending because they see the CTR (click through rate) is too low, and they know it’s not converting. In other words, it’s a waste of money.
And then in Strava’s case, it’s far worse, as ad spending is even further down in the sports realm (especially cycling) - with a number of key companies in the cycling space all but cutting marketing expenses entirely.
Now, maybe the answer is simply that Strava isn’t going to get much money as they could have 5-8 years ago from ads, but ultimately, it’s all about marginal gains. I question whether or not they can make enough marginal gains to make it worthwhile.
We can obviously agree to disagree. I would point out several things:
about ads
-
if we take the argument “Strava isn’t doing something because they’ve run their numbers and it’s not worth it” and apply it to everything I’m not sure what’s left
-
Advertising isn’t necessarily a zero sum game (meaning what you invest in one platform you don’t invest in another). If it brings more eyes, better targeting, it can mean better ROI and more sales and attract ad spend that isn’t otherwise there.
-
Somebody pointed out that Strava wouldn’t have enough data to run ads. That’s actually not true. Strava does have unique data that would be very interesting for sports brands. Most sport brands are regional businesses that target a single or handful of sports and have offerings that change depending on your level of experience/activity in that sport. You could target that very accurately with Strava. Besides, additional 1st party data can be ported by advertisers (if they are sophisticated enough to need that) or bought via 3rd party platforms in privacy compliant ways.
-
I would completely separate the business of an ad supported online publisher (such as DCR) and that of a big ad tech platform (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Spotify, etc). Strava with its strong global brand, popular app platform and 100 million users is closer to a small tech company. That brings opportunities of a different level, including the potential for a self service ad platform. Could the local bike shops be interested in buying ads that are targeting local users on Strava via a self service ad platform? a few hundred dollars from tens of thousands of sport shops globally may grow into a sizeable pie.
-
The only ads available on Strava (sponsored challenges) are very expensive and simply don’t scale. There’s so many challenges you can do as a user and it gets repetitive very quickly. Also, there’s few companies in the sports world willing to spend 20k on a single ad. Most sport brands are medium to small businesses. Besides, I really doubt brands are really getting their worth from them.
-
If there is a perception that ads are down it’s because of four effects going together. Seasonality in sports, Seasonality in the ad business (Q4 being the biggest quarter of the year), Seasonality in the economic cycle (which finally caught up with digital companies) and readjustments after GDPR - not because ad business is crumbling as a model.
-
It’s true that formats have developed beyond static image but images are still king. Besides, there’s no reason why Strava couldn’t have more unique formats. Sponsored routes? Sponsored segments? Sponsored events? Skippable video à la Youtube? Carousel ads à la facebook? Sponsored locations à la Waze? Something completely different?
about usage of Strava
-
It’s been said before that a lot of those100M users aren’t really using the app, just auto uploading stuff so ads wouldn’t be viable because there’s little actual usage. Then I would point out that Strava hasn’t done enough to keep users on the app. This isn’t because the market doesn’t exist. Facebook/Instagram are probably a bigger sport social network than Strava itself. There’s no reason in my mind why Strava shouldn’t be able to take that space.
-
Strava hasn’t built any functionality to really strengthen the social side of things. Main interactions in the app are the same as years ago. Thumbs ups and comments. I really struggle to believe that direct messaging and better social groups functionality wouldn’t make people use Strava a million times more. Yet, people are using Whatsapp/Messenger/etc for conversations that would be well integrated into Strava.
-
We all know they’ve come a bit late at adding functionality for other sports beyond cycling and running. Not much to add here besides that it ties into everything else.
-
They haven’t built strong functionality for brands and influencers. Facebook and Instagram have plenty of tools. Strava has almost none. And you can see very popular sports influencers on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok but they just can’t do much on Strava to bring their content and make it visible.
Obviously ads isn’t the only avenue they could have explored. Another one is micro transaction. What about all those sport activities that happen in parks that people charge for. What if you could sign up for yoga/fitness classes, walking tours and other sport activities via Strava? What about exploring and registering for races? That’s just an idea and maybe a bad one but it’s very close to the core of what Strava is (doing active stuff). It does seem to me they haven’t explored enough monetisation avenues that have been proven by companies that are out there (airbnb adventures, classpass, active.com to name a few).
I’m not sure Garmin see Garmin Connect only working with their devices as a negative.
For me Strava has stagnated for a long time, hasn’t kept pace with iOS/Android features for years (dark mode), and hasn’t added new features to appeal to serious users.
It also bugs me every single time I find I can’t access data or a setting on the iOS app, even in the paid version…
No you can’t scroll down this list of times on your favourite segment.
No you can’t unhide this segment ( or just unhide all hidden segments everywhere forever).
No you can’t export a gpx.
Ads for free users is obvious, maybe getting nasty about charging all the legacy devices that only sync to Strava for cross-sync features (it’s the only way to get data into apple health → insurance company exercise points). They broke this in an update a while back and the outcry was loud.
I can’t believe how much better the veloviewer interface is, and I feel like Strava could steal most of their features in a couple of months at most.
Lots of numbers here:
Looks like revenue growth between 2019 and 2020 is almost 70%. That IS rather impressive, IMO.
Evaluation grew from M300 to M1500. Again, a lot!
This article less than a year old, says 375 employees. More stats:
More than 7 billion activities have been shared on StravaAthletes in every country on earth40 million activities uploaded per weekOver 30 million SegmentsOver 2,400 professional athletes on Strava375+ employees around the world, with offices in San Francisco, CA, Denver, CO, Bristol, UK and Dublin, Ireland7.1 billion Kudos given between athletes last yearOver 4 million photos shared per weekOver 1,000 communities making commuting better with Strava Metro
According to this article, Strava was profitable during 2019 and 2020.
Hard to see a business in trouble here.
But how many people make up that 40M?
I’m in tri training mode and my wife is training for Boston. Most of our friends/family who are on Strava are in a similar boat, so it’s not surprising that a person has 6+ activities recorded each week. My question is how many unique users are making up the 40M?
agreed, garmin in particular provide decent analytics features “free” with every device and a lot of strava’s market are using garmin or similar devices. if you’re not then there isn’t much data to analyse anyway. if you want more then there are any number of free or reasonably priced tools that do a better job than strava.
strava is firstly about social media style sharing your activities on a platform specifically tailored to that.
beyond that, it used to be about segment leaderboards but they do such a poor job (even when you flag them) of removing impossible times posted (bike instead of run, ebike and drive home) that these have become meaningless. still sometimes useful or at least fun for comparing your own efforts though.
they made it worse when they switched from a tiered, choose your functions model to an all or nothing one. so many of their key market would have to pay for something they already have and so many of the fringe market have to pay for something they don’t want. even mapping is covered by many other parties, strava do have an advantage with heatmap data but its not use case targetted enough
i think they would do better to have a very limited free offering, a very cheap offering with all the core features, and then allow pick and mix of premium features and let the market decide which of those are worth investing in.
It is interesting that so many people so far in this thread have said, “Garmin…”. I left the Garmin ecosystem years ago for Wahoo and love their products but there are things that Garmin does that I miss. I’ve looked at other small brands like Karoo, but keep coming back to Garmin. I think this is interesting. If Garmin didn’t control such a large percentage of the device market, Strava might be more valuable. Maybe Garmin should buy and integrate Strava into connect and make it work with non-Garmin stuff…
A response from Strava on their LinkedIn page. Whoever wrote this probably should have hit the delete button instead of posting. It’s tone deaf and raises more questions than answers. Also, nothing says “we’re listening” like turning off the comments.
I’m stuck and stubborn at this point – Garmin has everything for me back to 2009! Strava is fun for the social component but is a nice to have otherwise.
Also, nothing says “we’re listening” like turning off the comments.
“We’re listening … but, we don’t hear anything, so everything must be OK with everyone, right?”
What am I missing here? How are they not profitable? What are their expenses? Has that been shared anywhere? Where is the money going?
Full disclosure - Free Account User here. I get enough of what I want from Strava with this.
They keep trying to sell me on the “deeper analysis” of my sessions from the paid account. If it’s physiological analysis, I get that from my Polar Flow app which I get for the price of my Polar wrist unit.
I enjoy the social part of it - interaction with others following training sessions - and also see what others are doing. Where they are riding & skiing. The segments are a bit of a motivator for me every now and then.
I use the Wandrer App as well https://wandrer.earth/ - I honestly find that more interesting. It’s all about exploring new roads and trails, and a bit of gamifying it all!
I do enjoy reading the massed macro data at the end of each year that Strava produces. They have cut free accounts out of the individual massed data at the end of each year (we used to get that), but that’s easy to figure out with calculator and adding a few numbers up - you know the way we used to do it years ago.
If they forced ALL users to pay something on Strava - not sure what I would do. Probably commit at that point to a paid account.
I’m surprised they have not done more with the Monthly Challenges linked to brands - that to me, seemed like a HUGE opportunity. Either it’s nor being sold properly or brands genuinely not interested, or both??
I cant really understand how people like the Garmin route planner, its goddamn terrible.
Creating routes ( specially editing when trying to change certain paths ) is awful, but you cant really trust the route suggestion it does. Here in Spain I had to start using google map first person view just to make sure Im not going to be thrown into gravel or dirt roads when there are roads I dont know.
Maybe on the states is better? Here in Spain is not good at all
A response from Strava on their LinkedIn page.
Agree it is oddly defensive in tone, and reads like some back channel insight from a random employee rather than a PR-approved message. E.g. referring to “Michael and Mark” without last names. If it is intended as a corproate communication to customers, LinkedIn is yet another odd choice, following the Strava Club very few people are members of.
A response from Strava on their LinkedIn page.
LinkedIn is yet another odd choice, following the Strava Club very few people are members of.
Yeah … LinkedIn?
Who the fuck is gonna see that?
It’s not exactly a global declaration
“We told some people - so that counts as ‘disclosure’ right?”
Maybe that’s their new tagline: Strava - doing the absolute minimum to be compliant
A response from Strava on their LinkedIn page.
Agree it is oddly defensive in tone, and reads like some back channel insight from a random employee rather than a PR-approved message. E.g. referring to “Michael and Mark” without last names. If it is intended as a corproate communication to customers, LinkedIn is yet another odd choice, following the Strava Club very few people are members of.
It wasn’t just LinkedIn. That exact same message word for word was in their ‘strava club’ club on strava.
The Garmin route builder and the Strava version both have their weaknesses. I prefer the UI for the Garmin builder all things being equal. The heat map on Strava is better than the Garmin equivalent however, and that gives me better indications of where it’s actually better/safer to ride or run. But, despite that, I won’t be renewing my Strava paying membership. Chasing segments ruins workouts, or the “leader†was clearly in a car or e-bike (sorry, nobody climbs at 26 mph). The annual recap is not useful, and the social function is free. Not paying a dime more. I’ll pay for Zwift forever since I live in an area where I use it 9 months a year 5-6d/week.
I personally have started taking the heatmaps with a grain of salt. Lemmings over a cliff and all that. Just because 1000 riders frequent a route doesn’t mean it is safe/fun. It literally only means that many have done it.
You have no guarantee that it’s some massive 200 person weekly group ride that traffic is low for that time of day.
As for segments, the ones worth caring about locally, some regional pro shows up and moves even the top 10 further out of reach since that leaderboard is “forever” and nevermind how stupid some of the segments are that people make.
My thing is that by trying to be SO inclusive of “anyone who moves”, it leaves the largest participating and paying groups of Strava…the runners and cyclists…left to pay the bill for all the complexities and extra noise to go along with all the other activities.
I really wish Strava for run/ride had a lot of the Zwiftpower-esque features for events, clubs, categories, results.
When it comes time to re-up, I am not renewing. Private segments only and more Garmin/mapmyride kind of stuff. I care a lot more about Trainingpeaks tracking anyway.