Only difference to me is that if TR ever gets sold I would cancel my subscription during off season that could open the door to try something different.
It was Wendyâs 
.
This was while I had a full time job at a fortune 500 company. I was coding before work, during lunch, after work, and weekends.
@Nate_Pearson
Weâd hate to see you as a retired billionaire ⌠
And how would those features improve after an acquisition. I think the biggest danger for TR is that the new owner would push the social aspect stronger, which would dilute TRâs DNA.
The feature list you add is certainly full of desirables, but I feel quite differently about the workout player: I love the simple, asketic look, because that is what makes it very functional for me during a workout.
Plus, let me ask you the converse: we are all talking about TR being acquired, but what if TR was the one acquiring another company, say TrainingPeaks (just to throw out a name everybody knows, I am not claiming TP is necessarily a good fit for TR)? Of course, @Nate_Pearson will neither confirm nor deny any of this ⌠
A good few months but the Facebook support group is a great help. It does look pretty terrible, the model needs to address below threshold fatigue accumulated and I think people donât like being able to see a training plan in the calendar for weeks ahead (xert say that they donât do this because the plan evolves) for me is about 70% there but the Garmin apps are really cool and if you race, this makes it worth the subscription alone.
Iâd like to hear Wahooâs strategic rationale for their acquisition of Sufferfest. Itâs a bit of a head scratcher for me for several reasons:
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Wahooâs core business is making hardware, not training software, so itâs a different business.
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Based on some recent ânot greatâ reviews of new product launches (Roam), issues with hardware (Climb belt), and maybe falling behind on innovation (Tacx Neo smart bike; Varia radar), Iâd say they have other priorities to focus on
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They are acquiring a #3 player (I believe Sufferfest is behind TR and certainly Zwift in subscriber count), and acquiring a #3 player in the market behind some strong competitors is not usually a path to a winning strategy
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From the perpspective of selling their trainers and other accessory paincave products, they want to be agnostic to the training platform their customers use.
Which leads me to conclude that they got an opportunistic deal on Sufferfest, and didnât have to pay a whole lot.
I guess weâll have to wait and see what comes of this. My take is not a whole lot.
I disagree: everything is about software, because software is what makes hardware useful. You need software to make a smart trainer useful. The Roamâs problems are, apart from price, software problems. Etc. To me the purchase makes complete strategic sense.
In addition, The Sufferfest has a lot of employees with a background in sports science â which has also become one of Wahooâs assets. They can feed anything they have learnt from The Sufferfest that back into their development of trainers. Should the next Kickr measure and transmit the lean angle (e. g. to enable steering by leaning)? Or what about other add-ons?
Yes, and in that situation acquiring talent and products that fill a gap in your line-up makes sense to me.
Zwift is too big to be acquired, which leaves TR. Perhaps TR did not want to be acquired, who knows. But in that situation, it is quite normal that you are only able to pick up #3.
I donât think so. Wahoo is the market leader when it comes to trainers, and it wants to leverage that against its competition. You can do a Microsoft approach (being a platform open to âeveryoneâ) or an Apple approach (vertical integration), or something in between. According to the official communication, Wahoo has no intention of locking The Sufferfest down â which wouldnât make any sense for a #3. But it could boost subscriptions by giving away several months for free for each Wahoo trainer that you buy, for example.
I think you have a point, though: if mismanaged, this could spell quick doom for The Sufferfest.
I think weâll continue to disagree, but thatâs OK. I gues one (maybe neither?) of us will be right. A few counterpoints:
You can hire software engineers. Usually cheaper than acquiring a company. And the SW needs of many Wahoo products are firmware, not UI. So likely different skill set than Sufferfest SW teams.
If they need Sufferfest talent to inform trainer innovation, they indeed have problems.
Why does Wahoo think Sufferfest will be more successful as part of Wahoo? Leads to next pointâŚ
âRevenue synergiesâ are usually shaky ground to justify an acquisition. And you risk pissing off other training software companies - Zwift in particular. E.g. That first stage of a grand tour thatâs been talked about on Zwift? Likely wonât be on Wahoo trainers if Zwift has their say.
Agreed. I tried Xert and itâs too much of a black box for me. I think the current TR approach is to have plans but then also to encourage users (via the blog, podcast, forum) to understand the thinking behind the plans and how best to use and adapt them in the real world. I.e. Fitting around races, holidays, injuries, unstructured riding, needing more recovery, etc. Optimal integration of AI for me would be to keep the user in control, but make informed suggestions to them on how to tailor the plan based on how users are responding, with an easy interface for them to accept suggested changes. E.g. TR could suggest swapping to an easier version of a workout, or moving a recovery week forward, and you can click to accept and then it does the necessary.
I also think the net needs to be cast pretty wide in terms of data sources to learn from. Not just workouts but sleep, diet, HRV, stress levels (from something like a Whoop), temperature and weather for outdoor rides, etc. Also needs to know as much as it can about your non-training schedule such as upcoming work trips, holidays, etc. How I respond to training is as much about how well Iâm looking after myself off the bike as it is about the training plan. And decisions such as whether to tough it out through a scheduled workout or skip/reduce it when Iâm not that fresh are made depending on what else I have coming up.
Excited to see where TR goes in the next year or 2!
This to me is the most important part - I would hate to see the platforms close up and I donât think it will, because, basically, Garmin would rule the world.
Doesnât take a background in sports science to build a solid trainer. Lastly, Wahoo should be focused on measuring power and cadence accurately w/the Kickr along w/quality control of the final product. Who cares about lean angle or other add-ons when the core functionality of the product is inadequate.The Gen1 was notorious for high readings. The Gen3 and Kickr Core have been quality control and PR nightmares. Then there is the Roam 
Wahoo might be the #1 trainer company out there, but that gap has definitely been shrinking.
Software engineers are rare, good software engineers with a firm background in the field you are interested in are even rarer. And I disagree with you on Wahooâs software needs: firmware just gets you a seat at the table, and the higher-level software gets increasingly important. Have a look at e. g. Garmin, Apple and Polar â the next big frontier is how to make the data these devices collect accessible and useful. That requires better and better software, which is tightly integrated with hardware.
Sufferfest represents an expansion into a new business segment, and The Sufferfestâs programmers will likely not be helpful to make mapping work properly on the Elemnt Roam. Nor will they be of help to fix the hardware issues Wahooâs 2018 Kickr has been plagued with.
Wahoo is world market leader in trainers, and The Sufferfest can leverage that. That wonât guarantee The Sufferfestâs success or survival, but at least thatâs the pitch.
I donât think Zwift cares, nor is it angered. For Zwift to be successful, it wants to be on all trainers. So as long as Wahoo doesnât block Zwift, which they wonât, there is nothing to worry about here. And given that @Nate_Pearson has been in touch with Wahoo already and gotten positive feedback, I donât see anything to worry about.
Of course, it does. And it takes even more sports science if you want to make all of that data useful to the end user.
Just consider pedaling dynamics: many pieces of software derive âpeanut graphsâ from left/right power data. Iâm quite sure the TR team could easily implement this, and I remember them addressing this feature request. The difficult thing here is: what do you do with the data? How does that help you train? Is there a preferred power curve profile? If yes, what is it? What kind of exercises do you do to extract that data?
Now you can object and say âwell, thatâs not Wahooâs problemâ, but if you use your Kickr to measure power it is: as far as I understand, this type of detailed power data is only transmitted via Ant+ for most power meters, so this is something Wahoo would have to implement. And perhaps because they think it is important, they could also find a way to transmit the data via Bluetooth using a proprietary protocol that some training apps support (e. g. The Sufferfest) while others donât.
I just donât see how 1 + 1 = 3 from this move, which is generally needed to pay for the acquisition premium typical in deals. Unless Wahoo got a good deal because Sufferfest was a distressed seller, in which case synergies and strategic rationale are less important.
As you say @mcneese.chad and @DaveWh it is a curious integration given how open Wahoo want to be in their support for others.
I wonder if
- SufferFest put themselves on the market (looking for a crystalisation of their investment)
or - Wahoo came fishing
Purpose and synergy is not clear to me.
- I buy trainer and training regime independently (they should all work together)
- its not a hardware economy of scale, or obvious software one.
- I have wahoo kit but that does not drive me at SF. (And they seem a bit brash and noisey for me)
Hard to tell.
Nobody knows whether this will pay off, it surely is a bet. But there is a lot of consolidation in this space, Tacx got bought by Garmin, Apple is spending more money on R&D in health and fitness than what many of these companies are worth. More and more things are becoming table stakes, e. g. access to a music subscription service for a smart watch. So you either have to look for a niche, try to grow yourself or aim to be acquired by a bigger player.
Wahoo is under pressure right now, also because of recent blunders in quality control, so I think it is a good idea to make aggressive moves.
Who knows. But The Sufferfest is a #3, and sits between two #1s, so it isnât unreasonable to think the price was good. (I know that TR is way smaller than Zwift, but for people who want to seriously train, it probably is market leader in that segment.)
Some interesting quotes from the Sufferfest announcement
There are great things in store (now before all you Android fans start writing me to tell me that the store better have AndroidâŚ.yes, Wahoo wants us to build it). Together, weâre going to have a lot of fun.
No proper android support - interesting. Looking for funding perhaps?
At the same time, we will still work apart. The Sufferfest will remain an independent product, team, brand and Nation.
Really? So you are acquired for vertical integration, but you will continue to be independent⌠I bet that will change in terms of direction options.
Wahoo will continue to work with its other software partners (but, really, why would you want to use anything other than The SUF?).
I would darn well hope so - as Nateâs call has suggested.
So no real clues in all that - just the usual acquisition fluff excitment noise of the CEO of a company that has just been acquired (merged/bought out).
Sports science backgrounds or expertise to make use of acquired data is one thing while being necessary to build a trainer to collect data is not exactly the same thing. An engineer can easily build a device to collect data while not knowing to do with said collected data.
This! More data is more data, but unless it is useful, why waste resources to collect it or even display it. Using your example of left/right power data, while interesting to see, itâs totally useless unless maybe you are rehabilitating a broken leg or post knee surgery. Even then, I would question its usefulness.
Pedaling metrics or Cycling Dynamics from Pioneer, Garmin, etc⌠not only have to be implemented on the hardware side (power meter firmware) but also on the receiving side (head unit firmware) as well as whatever software you might use on your desktop or phone (e.g., Garmin Connect, Golden Cheetah, etcâŚ) This goes for any new data/metrics that might be collected. Furthermore, unless using proprietary protocols, data fields for such information would need to be standardized and approved by the protocol groups (i.e., appropriate ANT+ working group or Bluetooth SIG working group).
The device you build will be so much better better if the engineers have deep domain knowledge, when they know why they should do things in a certain way and what is and is not important.
Precisely. And you can speed up adoption or more actively steer development the more layers you control.
You donât need to wait for standardization or broad adoption (if it is a standard), if you control both ends of the problem: The Sufferfest can give input on next-gen features for trainers, which Wahoo then designs and builds. And when that new trainer is released, at least The Sufferfest will have support for it.
Honestly, I if I look at the deal critically, the worst case scenario is when this tight collaboration will not materialize. Because then it is really as if Wahoo and The Sufferfest are two separate companies, just that Wahoo might have to pick up The Sufferfestâs tab in case it incurs losses. I am not sure how many indoor cycling platforms the market can support in the long run, and it is quite likely that even with Wahooâs help (marketing-wise and financial), The Sufferfest may just be a failed business venture.
If you always look to the past, youâll never see the future.
My post is not to criticize the product, I am a regular TR subscriber, I love the fact that you guys have grandfathered our price plans and appreciate all the work you do. The UI is beautiful, the calendar works well, the analysis is ok. I love the interaction you have with the customer base, the podcast and Iâm a big fan. But I was thinking about things in a hard nose business way. There have been a few private equity raising, mergers or acquisitions lately. This is a growth area, look at the ridiculous valuation of Peloton. My point is, development costs money. PE fundraising, mergers and acquisitions provide more development dollars. More dollars, more staff more functionality delivered quicker. Customers are loyal to a point but not as loyal as they used to be. If a better product comes around customers will switch. I was merely saying that without development dollars and quicker pace of development, TR IMO will get left behind and therefore is ripe for a takeover to keep it top of the pile.