How I Built Resilience: Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey of Strava

Hey everyone, just a quick announcement before we start the show. So A lot of you may know how much I miss seeing all of you at the live in-person shows that we do around the country during normal times. So I am really excited to finally announce our first how I built this virtual event. It's happening next month with Jay Shetty. Jay is a best selling author, former monk, and wellness coach, and if you're searching for purpose, peace, and clarity in your life, or you're struggling to find meaning and motivation at work, you will not want to miss this conversation. Please join us. It's happening on Thursday

March eleventh, and anybody around the world can take part. For more information and tickets, Head to NPR presents. Dot org. And I hope to see you there. Hey everyone and welcome to How I Built This Resilience Edition from NPR.

I'm Guy Raz. Each week on Thursday, we invite entrepreneurs and other business leaders to come onto the show to talk about how they've been building resilience into their businesses this past year. And you can join us each Thursday at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 Eastern on the How I Built This Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube pages. to hear the conversation and ask questions as well. This week, my conversation with Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath, co-founders of the social media app Strava. Strava is a social fitness platform for athletes at every level

And it's got more than 76 million users in nearly every country worldwide. If you've ever tried the app, you know that it's a way for users to track activities like running and yoga and cycling. all while connecting and sharing with other people in a huge virtual community. Strava's focus on community engagement was inspired in part by how Mark and Michael first met.

as teammates on their college rowing team. For those who don't know About you or Strava, the two of you started a a software company before Strava. How did the two of you meet? Mark? Let's start with you.

Yeah, we we have to go back to the last century, guy. Um we're a couple of dinosaurs here. We we met while in college. Michael is the senior of the two here. I'll point that out. He was uh class of nineteen eighty eight and I was class of ninety uh at Harvard. We met on the crew team. We met in the boathouse, uh Which are pretty critical on two fronts. One was just the opportunity to develop that friendship. Uh, he he was kind enough. He Michael was captain of the team at the time that I joined and he and some friends really took me under their wing and and taught me how to row. I was a kid from Reno, Nevada. Uh not a lot of rowing going on there. So learned how to row and the friendship developed and

Frankly, then just that experience we had in that boathouse became uh really a catalyst for for we'll talk about later with Strava. Wow. And you both went on to totally different careers. I mean, uh uh Michael, you went on to become an economics professor Um for a while. I say in a formal life, I I was a struggling academic.

After uh graduating with a my PhD, I could go east or I could go west. I I went to school in the middle of the country. Because Mark was already in in the Bay Area, I decided that job at At Stanford University was the one. That I would take and so moved out in nineteen ninety four. Uh and so for the people who remember what the early internet was like.

It was uh really difficult in some ways to sort of understand how it would change our lives, but we knew it would. And Mark was there. When we started to explore What would we do with this thing called the internet? How would it affect us in our lives? And that that was part of how we came up with the idea for Strava in those early days. So how did the two of you I mean you Mark, you went and worked in the early tech sector and Michael, you were an academic

How did you the two of you come together to form your first company. What what's the story behind it? I mean,'cause you left academia, Michael, so how did that How did that happen? Simply put, we were getting together in my office at Stanford in part because I had a fast internet connection and and Mark had nothing or dialogue back in those days. So We were exploring the space and we

We uh started to ask ourselves these questions like what would it how would it change our life, or what we what we would we do with this? And I was in I was in curious. both from an academic perspective, but also you know, as s someone who just you know had some entrepreneurial inclinations and Mark was definitely in that in that area. We went right away to what problems do we have in our own life? What are we missing that the internet might be able to solve? And one of those was Yeah, as Mark mentioned, we met

On the crew team. Uh and we have when we graduate. from uh that environment, you lose the team. It's difficult to keep growing, uh, unless you're gonna dedicate a lot of your time to it. So We said, Yeah, we kinda missed that feeling of being connected to a bunch of people around around fitness.

What if the internet could solve that problem for us? Could we create the virtual team, if you will, with this uh new technology? Yeah. Now, it would take quite a while. I mean nineteen ninety four, early days and Strava launched it, I think two thousand nine. So let's kinda fast forward to that. Um

Mark, let's talk about the idea for for for launching Strava. How how did that I mean you're talking about community or talking about fitness Fit bits and stuff start to come out around then. Tell me about

How Strava came about. Yeah, guy, you you hit the nail on the head. A couple of things happened. One was just the simple fact that the technology itself had advanced in a way that really opened up opportunities for us that didn't exist in the mid nineties. Things like wearable devices and garments on bicycle handlebars and and the advent of the smartphone, even you know the the the idea that we could start using phones for things other than talking to people. So that technology Definitely benefited us. Uh there were some social changes around technology. You know, we had the advent of Twitter and Facebook and things, and so all of a sudden this concept of people sharing their personal lives and sharing information, that was very different from again nineteen ninety-four, ninety five.

And so we saw those social trends. And then there was the personal situation for Michael and I. You know, as you alluded to, we had been fortunate enough to have this other company that we actually built in the in the late nineties when The original Strava idea just wasn't ready for prime time. Uh and so we had enjoyed what it was like to to start something and to build a team and and to be competitive out there in the business world.

But we had left that company in the early two thousands after we took it public and He and I were both sort of searching for that next thing. We realized that uh we had some life left in us and and we wanted to roll up our sleeves and And do something again, but something different. You know, it'd been enterprise software the first time and this time we really were you know, enamored by this idea of could we build a trusted consumer brand, uh kind of company that we could, you know, leave a legacy with, uh could be around for decades to come. So

That was the spur, the catalyst, and uh thankfully a couple other folks joined us and away we went. So for those watching, I think a lot of people probably use Strava and know how it works, but for people who don't know how it works, can you explain how how it works? Sure. Yeah. By joining the Strava community. You put your the things you do to be active into the community. You upload your activity, if you will, when you can track Runs, rides, hikes, walks, uh over thirty different activity types.

And by doing so, you connect with other people who share your joy of being active. Um, and so we enable those connections uh in a lot of different ways as part of the experience. And when you do that, what happens, as we learned, is that you stay more active. Uh people keep people active. And so it's that community. By joining Sravab. You join that community and it helps you fulfill your goals of what you want for your fitness.

Yeah. We had the founders of SoulCycle and Zumba and and John Foley at Peloton others on, and accountability is a word they use, which I want to come back to in in a moment. But before I do, I want to ask you about the business model. Um Strava is free to use, there is a paid subscription side to it. It's a freemium model, a lot of Brands use this Dropbox is a great example. We just had Drew Houston on the show and I think he said something like three or four percent of Dropbox users actually pay for the product, but that's more than enough to make it into a profitable business. Tell me a little bit about your business model,'cause I don't think you advertise on the app, right?

We don't. Yeah. We focus on building things athletes love to use and are really glad to pay for and tell their friends about. That's the aspect of our uh subscription offering. And it's a a number of different parts of the experience that you get when you when you subscribe. That make it even better. Um and so by focusing on building things that athletes love. That Bill is a great business.

Yeah. Uh Mark? Yeah, I know. I think Michael hit the nail on the head. We really like this idea of having just one customer that we can focus on, and that is the athlete. For us, if you sweat, you're an athlete. It doesn't matter what pace you run, it doesn't matter how hard you got. If you're going out and walking the dog on a Sunday afternoon. Put it on Strava. That's it's fantastic for them and and for us. And so that's the idea is to focus on that athlete. We love our free members. Uh they're contributing great content and activities and and being part of the community, but our focus is to convince them that there's something here worth paying for and investing in, and together we're gonna build this over the long term.

N PR is a great example, it's public radio is a great example because we offer all of our content for free. And we hope that people will voluntarily contribute to stations, and I think almost ten percent of public radio listeners do. They voluntarily contribute to their station. But it's it's a it's social contract. It's like we kind of hope most of you will. And you know, that model w works. I know you can't talk about'cause you're privately held and you don't talk about financials and so on and so forth, but can you give us a sense of

whether the business model works. I mean I mean can you talk about whether you're you're profitable? Yeah, you're right that as a as a privately held company, it's not something that um we share. What we can tell you is that when we focus on things that athletes love, it really does make for uh strong business. And so we have We have the starting point, as Mark mentioned, is like that customer is is the person who wakes up every day wanting to be active and we want to help them. We want to bring joy to their lives in the movement that they do.

That is the basis of this twelve year old old company. We started with it. Team of six of us uh with an idea that It didn't have to be big, it it had to be great. It had to make me something meaningful impact in people's lives. And we're here twelve years later and and growing and and thriving. It's been a fun journey and we're really looking forward to the next

Twelve plus years. A lot of folks watching are early stage entrepreneurs, small business owners, and they look at people like you for advice. So here's a question. That I I'd love to to hear your answer on. Um you have investors, you've raised tens of millions of dollars. at some point want a return on their investment. So

You have resisted advertising on the platform, but you've got tens of millions of eyeballs on your app. I mean you've got a lot of people who ha who use it Um, how do you resist the pressure to run ads? Because that that would be an easy way to To clear some cash. It's

Uh, we watched Social Dilemma recently, Guy, and uh you know, this notion of If you're not buying the product, you are the product. And and I really we believe deeply in that thesis, Strava. We're we're convinced that. There is a capacity within this fit community to continue to support Strava and grow this business in a way that our investors are excited about. It's we've not felt that pressure from the outside. Um, do we believe that there's opportunities for diversifying the kinds of services we offer over the next, you know, again, ten, twenty years?

Of course, but We really are stuck on this principle that you need to understand who your customer is and and stay focused there. Only to add that you also get to pick your investors. So for entrepreneurs out there, is it is really important to align what you see as the vision for your company with. who you're bringing in to help you grow it. And we picked our investors really carefully on that regard.

Let me ask you a question about privacy. Okay, I'm one of these Greek People who has like twenty burner email accounts and I use that for pretty much everything I sign up with. Even though I know that doesn't matter because my iPhone knows who I am. But You know I've got this this ring here that tracks my sleep, so they know me.

It it does concern me,'cause I I really am worried about privacy. I know you guys had a feature called flyby that you you now allow people to shut it down. It basically allowed you to you know, when you were passing by somebody, you could see their running route. And how do you deal with this question of privacy? Because in people are becoming increasingly aware

Of how important it is to maintain privacy. So Because you I mean For better or worse, like there's a lot of information that is You know, that that's on the app that is revealed on Strava.

No, absolutely. Uh you you you hit the nail on the head. It's it's uh this is very um Important to us uh because it's very important to the athletes on Strava. So we take Our athletes Data. and the privacy of that data very seriously. And we are working all the time on trying to make sure that we're providing the right

set of tools and understanding of how to use Strava in the way that you want to. You can use it in completely private mode. You can open it up to a larger circle, and you can be completely out there, you know, in in public. But y the important thing is making sure you can educate people on how they want to set. that level of privacy for them and for their needs.

thinking ahead so we've done a lot of things over the years to but and we're we're never done it's like it's a constant a constant pursuit of making sure that people understand and how to stay in that mode of feeling good about the information they are sharing. Um and you know, we can go to some things that are very specific things like how do you How do you educate people on an experience that they may not have? Really

uh understood yet when they first join So you have to continually remind them. That these privacy settings are there. And uh and think ahead. And that's why, for example, making flybys. Something that

You have to opt into was really important to us. So that Someone who joined who may not even understand what that feature means wouldn't inadvertently be sharing information that they didn't want to. This past year a lot of people Have

Yeah. found routines because they're not traveling Um, they're working from home and a lot more people have taken up Yeah. For people who haven't.

How how do you get people To get motivated. Mark, what what do you suggest? Well I I go to to two basic principles. One is I tell my own story, which is uh it it's not this is not about being fitter or faster or stronger. This is just simply an acknowledgement that when I find even twenty or thirty minutes a day

to go do some form of exercise. And again, it can be the walk around the block. Uh I've just found that I'm a better person, guy. I'm a I'm a better partner. I'm a better co worker. I'm a better parent. Uh And it's just a fundamental principle and it's been proven by science and everything else, but anecdotally I need to share that. The second thing I'll say is

There's enough people who've decided that Finn is gonna be part of our life that that's we're really there to Help them stay motivated because we believe that not only is it about accountability, but if we want to get other people off the couch, they need to be inspired. And so we know the community we're supporting that's figured this out. They're going and inspire the rest of the world. We could tell you some amazing stories of creativity and innovation from our athletes this this past year during the pandemic. People running marathons on their balcony. Uh you know, doing uh what we call Everesting, where you basically go the equivalent of climbing twenty nine thousand feet

In their back yard, on a on a little hill, right? It's a So for us, if we can support those folks. They're telling the story. And Strava doesn't have to do it. But I think it really comes back to that that concept of inspiration and and personal anecdote. Like H here's why this is valuable.

When we come back in just a moment, more of my conversation with Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath. And how uncertainty and isolation brought more users together on Strava? in twenty twenty. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition. From NPR.

And one more thing, the New York Times best selling book, How I Built This, is now available. It's a great read and a great gift for anyone looking for ideas, inspiration, wisdom, and encouragement. to have the courage to put out an idea into the world. It's filled tons of stories you haven't heard about how some of the greatest entrepreneurs you know and respect. Started out at the very bottom.

Check out how I built this the book. Авелбакс. Hey, welcome back to how I built this resilience edition. And my guests are Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath, co-founders of the social media app Strava. Near the end of twenty nineteen,

Strava went through a very public layoff. And then a few months later The pandemic shut down their Bay Area office. The co founders were obviously worried. But, much to their surprise, the

Strava saw incredible growth in twenty twenty. As people looked for more ways to find community, Online. The initial reaction was one of How will we get through this? It's it's public knowledge that we had had a

had to reduce the number of people in the company. We had to do a layoff a few months before. So we had been through Already a uh a trauma for the company. It was really difficult for everybody involved. And so on the heels of that, a few months later, we're going into this unknown of pandemic. Our focus in the beginning was really we need to make sure. That our people are okay. All the other considerations They have to come after that. And that was where we focused initially.

So in some sense, you have a single purpose, you do that, you do that as best you can. And together we we we made it work. And you saw like geometric growth. Like I mean just insane growth over the past year, right? Like

Growth that you I guess sounds like you didn't anticipate initially. Yeah, that's right. Looking back now at the data, you can even see the The initial signs of it. in January and February, and we're

Not sure what was causing it. We didn't sort of think too carefully. But when uh when we knew that it was because of People's need. To get through this moment in time in the world's history with movement.

And connection. Uh, we lean into that. Uh, it took a lot of uh work to even be able to handle the the increased load. We went from adding about a million new athletes to the platform. Every month to At some point, three million a month.

And it's settled down to about two million a month now. So we're we overnight kind of had to go to a different mode of operating. Though it's software, it's you still have A lot of hardware.

Somewhere that's running all of this. And scaling all that up and making sure that it wouldn't all fall down and crumble under the under the increased load. We have some very, very talented

uh people in our team that have have worked day and night to make that possible and really appreciate all the work they did. You know, a lot of companies have taken big swings for the fences this past year because they've had to, out of the necessity. They've had to be radical. Are there any radical things that you've would have been more challenging or more bureaucratic to

to try in previous years. I can think of it. Two. One predated the pandemic and then we faced uh an interesting sort of question as to whether or not it was appropriate. And that was uh Some paywall moves. We did some in essence some pricing changes. Uh guy, and it was It it goes back to what Michael alluded to, you know, we'd gone through a rough past in twenty nineteen and

We needed to stabilize the business and we were really thoughtful around wait a second, if we're gonna dedicate to our athletes and to the subscription business, then let's be transparent, but let's do it in a way we believe is scalable long term. And so in the midst of the pandemic, we shifted the paywall, we we added seventy new features. Throughout twenty twenty. But it was not without trepidation. Uh, because here we are not just in the middle of a

illness and a pandemic, but there's an economic downfall that's taking place and you know being very sensitive to to our own athletes and and what they're trying to to go through. So The other I would add is just The way in which we had to allow our team to sort of find their comfort zone, find their space. And and whether that was physically, where do they need to be? No longer can we ask them to be in our offices in Denver and San Francisco. We need to let them go where they could find comfort and solace, and whether that was family or

you know, just someplace safe and off the grid. Those are two that I can initially think of. Wow. And and do you think I mean, seventy features over the past year, I mean do you think that You know some of those features would have been harder to introduce in a less volatile year in a sense, a m a more stable year.

I can see it in both directions. We one of the things we worked on very hard was on a way to explore uh the world around you with whole bunch of functionality around routes and route planning. Um, and finding the interesting places to go be active. That's a really tough thing to launch into a world with that's shut down where you're you may not be able to leave. your apartment for very long and certainly shouldn't be far away from it.

So we had to really pivot on that one and and say, even if you're just exploring your own backyard, this can help you. And then on the other hand, I would say where the focus The past year has been predominantly around Our subscription offering what we're asking, you know, where where we where we have uh investe most heavily is you know on the athletes who are investing in us.

I'd say that that part In any other time. might be more difficult to do when right now people are paying a lot of attention. to being active. And so this really f looks like A great investment. You're investing in yourself when you subscribe to Strava.

were you seeing a correlation between how people were exercising and how their either geographic area or the country was affected by covet, like for example There were times in Italy run outside. You know, and then the epicenter was the UK for a while, then it was New York, and then it was LA and it's it's moved around. Has that correlated to how people are

Are are exercising outdoors? Yes, and and indoors. I think we see a shift to indoor activity. Uh lots of different ways you can track work out, even if you're not outdoors. uh saw that in countries that went through extreme lockdowns like the ones you're talking about. And then when it was removed, you see people Free. And they go outdoors and they they roam further. The patterns were were very clear.

What I think um the data can can speak to is that you find new ways. Uh as as your life patterns get disrupted by Pandemic. Uh, you find new ways to cope through activity. I know a big part of Strava is community. It's community building. It's getting people

you know it's connecting with other people who use it and getting people to hold you accountable and you holding other people accountable and showing up, right? How do you encourage that, right? Like every day I wake up and I exercise from six to seven, but I can only do it because I have somebody who holds me accountable. in the morning on a video.

every day. And I have to be there because that person's gonna show up. On my screen. Right. how do you enable that accountability through the app and and can you make it even more of a central

feature of Strava. Oh yeah, we're we're investing in exactly that right now. This is where we see the needs that people have in this present moment with pandemic as well. What people are lacking is that sense of connection with others. So we're building uh specifically around things that how you can use Strava together with the people. That will help you

Stay accountable to your goals and help you. uh get more out of the time you you spend being active. So that's coming. In uh in the months ahead. We're really excited about the work. Can you tell us about it? We're getting a lot of questions about it from Madison Harris and and Brian Fur and uh people I say, What are you gonna do to bring people together? Tell us about it. Can you give us a taste of what you're gonna do?

We'll just say You may have participated on Strava challenges before, which are kind of global, everybody just trying to accomplish a goal. We're building A capability for you. Two

challenge a few of your friends and it could be collaborate with a few of your friends to accomplish a goal together. But that we can bring this so that you can decide what you want. What you find would be motivating for you and your friends. That should be coming before the mid middle part of the year. Yeah, I l I love that idea of of c of a collaborative challenge. That's so cool.

Right that's what you guys did in crew. You all had to Work together to make that. That boat win. That's correct.

How can you think about the teamwork elements here? Uh guy, if you're not familiar with our challenge platform, I mean it's a really amazing experience. You know, I I think last May was the first time we had over a million people just sign up for our five K. Uh and it's one thing to sign up, but then you know, to be able to sort of connect with those individuals throughout that month and and try to go forward. That's that's what has us inspired to just continue to think about ways in which we we bring that to smaller groups and and individuals and and allow them to not always compete with each other, but sometimes support each other in a in a shared goal. With um you know mean you guys started this in two thousand nine, there's been an explosion in fitness apps and programs and there's a lot of competition out there. There's a lot of options. There's, you know, fit on and they have other devices and Garmin and other competitors.

obviously you have a huge critical mass, but how do you How do you maintain your competitive edge when there's so many options out there. We designed Strava to be the social platform at the center of all that.

So many of those experiences and devices they're Partners. They help athletes get their activities into Strava. So they can be part of the community and interact with their friends around those activities. And that's the way we intend to continue to build Strava is as.

We say it's the model where like if we can be the Hoover vacuum for all activities in the world, we wanna be the record of the world's activities. So we we wanna build it so that others can plug into it. And we have an open API. It allows developers to develop an experience perhaps that's around a sport that we don't we don't do particularly well inside our app. They can plug in through our API to get the data from the athletes into Strava, and then it's part of that community. Experience inside Strava likewise with devices, hardware. Uh, you know, hardware like uh that you see on trainers, like anything if you're on Zwift, you can connect your Strava accounts if you're on Peloton.

You can connect your account to Strava. And that brings that experience into Strava, so it can be part of of what you get out of uh out of the community of other people who love to be active. I want to ask you about, given that Strava is such an important cultural force In the world of running, particularly running. Um, I wanna ask you about race, running in race. You know, back in May obviously we we all, you know

heard the story of Ahmad uh Arbury and his killing. When he was going for a run. And a lot of a lot of media attention was focused on r running as you know, predominantly seen as a white

Um or or an activity that excluders or that it's literally dangerous. There was a a whole conversation about running while black. Um I mean, given your cultural importance in the world of running What role can you play in changing that in in working to

Running Perceived as a is an inclusive and safe activity. For everybody.

Yeah, I'm really glad you asked this question, guy. It's uh the this last year not only Did the world face pandemic, but we had to face also the inequity an injustice in the world, and it it's everywhere. Um

Uh A mod's killing Definitely affected. the world of sport and the world of running. And we aren't leaders in that space. Uh before we can be that platform, which we I believe we can one day be.

To give people voice to raise awareness of the injustice and inequity in the world. We've gotta work on on our inside striba first. And so we we made a commitment to be an anti racist. company. after the murder of George Floyd.

In May. And you can make a commitment, but then honoring that commitment takes real work and we're engaged in that now. Thankfully, there are a lot of people who are on the outside of Strava who are helping us and connecting with us, people like Alice and Desir.

Who was the first to raise awareness of Ahmad's killing and what that really indicated about the world of running. How different the experience was for people of color. than for white people. So we are definitely a work in progress. Uh we spend

A lot of our time right now really just focusing on how do we strengthen Inside So that we can be great at being that platform one day for giving voice to to groups that are gonna make it real change in the world. I think we're not the only company doing this. There's lots of Lots of companies that realize they have a role to play.

What started in the summer in the in the middle of twenty twenty. absolutely needs to continue into the decades ahead. We have to keep keep on it. And we will. Um, before you guys go, one one last question for both of you. In practical terms, how has this past year

And all that. you've been through as a business and um as partners and as leaders How has that helped you become a better leader. Uh, Mark?

First to you. You know guy, I think what it's done is it's it's Taught me to slow down. I think for me Trying to figure out how to do that more effectively. To slow down, to appreciate things in ways that I hadn't before? Michael's heard me for years talk about the three Ps. It's it's something that's not a good thing.

he and I created way back in the late nineties. And the three Ps were Patience. persistence, but also perspective. And uh I think these last nine, ten months, that's

There's a lot of silver linings to what's happened here. Uh being able to slow down Time uh the I keep joking, I never was a walker. I I I if I went out with my with my two feet somewhere, I was either running or biking or skiing, but I wasn't gonna walk. Just a walk now, uh something as simple as that. Realizing the value of of that.

About pace. Um both physically but also sort of mentally, and and for everybody else around us. Michael? Yeah, it's a corollary to what Mark just said, which is do less better. We are besieged with all sorts of

Places where we need to sp uh pay attention and get involved and We can't spread ourselves thin and expect to accomplish things that we're gonna be proud of. So make some tough choices to To prioritize the the best things, you have to say no to some really great things. And doing less better is what I have taken away from the last year.

That's an excerpt from my live conversation with Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath. Co founders of the social media app Strava. If you want to see the full interview or any of our past live interviews, you can find them on the How I Built This Facebook page or at youtube.com slash NPR And if you want to join our conversation live and maybe even ask questions, they happen every Thursday at 9 Pacific, noon Eastern. If you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org.

This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, with help from Ferris Safari, JC Howard, Bruce Grant, and El Manian, Gianna Capadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant. and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Ujong Lee. Thanks for listening, stay safe, and I'll see you in a few days.

I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening. To how I built this. Resilience From NPR.

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