I kind of agree. Strava is the only system that has all my rides (indoors, outdoors, gym etc). However as I have the free version I use garmin for creating routes when I need them a few times a year.
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What can Strava possibly sell to make back this investment money???
$60/year is a lot of money and their little add-on tools have never cut it. The vast majority of people don’t care about training plans, structured training, routing, or KOMs. No matter what they build or take away, most people won’t pay that much.
I do think a lot of people would pay $12/year. Allow people to record a run/ride for free but give them hardly anything else - no training log, no mileage totals, etc. $12/year to get everything - that’s a $120M/year if 10M users pay. That’s a solid business.
Strava could have sold and built hardware. They could have been a Wahoo, TR, Peloton, or Zwift if they had wanted to but it would have been easier to jump into other areas 5 years ago.
They have a huge captive audience. But Strava hasn’t been good at executing on much over the years so I’m not confident they could pull off grandiose business plans.
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The company.
Seriously…that is what the play is about. They don’t want to hold it long-term, they want to quickly ramp up user base base AND revenue and then sell it someone else.
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My gut reaction - Peloton is the target and convince them it will feed their subscription based Workout From Home “WFH” and equipment business model 
Quite possibly…or a competitor looking for an advantage over Peloton vs. just copying their model.
Alternatively, it could be an option for a big tech company that knows how it can monetize the data.
Good point, I hadn’t done any outside the box thinking that was just shooting from the hip.
Looks like Strava are planning power meter and cadence sensor integration. I already subscribe but that would be a great feature.
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They had it before, then got rid of it cause apparently it caused crashes, so a feature but not new
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You mean bluetooth to work with your phone and the app? That will appeal to about .25% of users and drive tons of sales.
Did they have PM integration? I’ve only had mine since April.
I thought it was a bad move when they just ditched BT, but it was a free app for most so personally I wasn’t surprised they didn’t invest in finding a solution.
Finally they have money to fix basic bugs.
Fixing bugs does not make you a nice acquisition target. Making nice new window dressing, driving aggressively for new subscribers, those do. The next few months will show which way they go. Dress up the bride, or build the family.
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Indeed. The intersect of cyclists with a power meter and those willing to use a cell phone as the primary recording device is certainly very small, if not empty.
I use my phone to record MTB because my primary computer is horrible with GPS tracking. Power meter, unlikely, but I’m sure there’s lots more mainstream users out there who will benefit from using say their Apple Watch as a HR recording device.
I dismissed phone use as a widespread thing, and then saw the number of posts on FB cycling groups with quad locks etc on their bikes and put a foot in my mouth
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