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If Nate is looking for an exit from his start up, heās doing it in such a completely terrible way that I would question why anyone would want him making any strategic or financial decisions. 
If he were looking for an exit from the company, then he would not need to raise prices in order to hire more staff: heād approach investors with a proposal to get them to fund the new hires, in exchange for the expectation of an āexit eventā later where he, and the investors, would make a ton of money when they sold their interest in the now more valuable company.
The price is going up to fund more work is pretty much the clearest signal in the world that he wants to keep doing this. This is in direct contrast to Zwift that raised $120M in order to grow. Thatās a huge amount of money, and everyone who participated in that investment was betting some variation of the idea that thereās at least a 10% chance that they get 10+ times what they invested (so one successful investment pays for the others that werenāt, plus some measure of profit).
Of course, does that mean theyāll never sell the company? Everyone has their price. But the actions being taken donāt set the stage for an acquisition that makes Nate or Chad fabulously wealthy and progressively less involved in the company.
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Of course, you also get to pick which 90 hours/week you work.
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Still going strong I seeā¦
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FYI, CTL (āFitnessā) is approximately the ā6 Wk Avgā TSS that is in the Calendar. ATL (āFatigueā) is approximately that weekās TSS (also on Calendar). TSB (āFormā) is the difference between the two, which is not displayed numerically but can be seen on the chart as the gap between the grey line (6 Wk Avg) and the green bars (week TSS). Bar below line is positive Form, bar above line is negative Form.
Other software will show you that information with a resolution of days instead of weeks, but I get the impression that Chad would not consider that particularly valuable.
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Really though, if TR had a performance management chart and some annual planner or annual plans it would be incredible. I kind of just hop around TR, Zwift, Sufferfest and Xert and do a bit here and there. Run Strava for the metrics and live segments and TrainingPeaks free edition to occasionally bridge workouts to my Wahoo.
Itās just a big mess. Everyoneās being niche and itās the end user thatās either paying more than they need or missing out on some features. Thatās not the worst bit - worst bit is the messiness of it all. Itās 2019 and you canāt have a cycling app with all your data, charts and training plans etc on it.
I love TR and Zwift but realise that the philosophy of Xert is the future clearly - but Iām far from satisfied with the way things are. Too many apps for me, I want it all, bit I want simplicity. Iāll pay for it too. Ā£300 a year would be cheap for a machine learning training app with every feature.
I know it wonāt happen - TR will not develop a virtual world like Zwift, so if I were to place a bet for which app will do it all 5 to 10yrs from now? Smart money must be on Zwift. Possibly a Zwift buyout of TR (even though Iām sure Nate would swear against it until heās blue in the face) but people and circumstances change daily, let alone year to year.
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Thank you, I understand this now.
For my purposes, the calendar does these pretty well. Whatās missing for you?
Iāve never been a TrainingPeaks user, so I donāt know how they compare.
You canāt set an A race (or date, for non-racers) and have TR analyse your previous year and set a plan leading up to it to maximise your best performance. And it certainly canāt re-configure the plan based on compliance (though thatās going even deeper into machine learning).
Weāre just playing lego at the moment with training blocks but thatās not how people work and TR coaches know it from looking at compliance rates. Guarantee you they want to go next level but know itāll take ages to implement - have they even started? They seem busy with a lot of polishing and doing the outdoor workouts stuff which personally I think they do need to finish up first before moving onto more ambitious next-gen features.
Think about it - why does TR need to be the way it is. They can take it all the way and make the current platform look basic AF. Every TR user should want that. Doesnāt mean we wonāt support them all the way until they get there, but itād be cool to see a long term vision, though zero obligation for them to do so and perhaps even bad business practise to show your hand to competitors.
Behind the scenes, every single cycling training platform has machine learning on the horizon. At some point itāll start heating up and anyone left behind will look properly old hat.
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Read that and first reaction was āwhat?ā Here is my perspective:
- TR has self-coaching resources like the season planning guide Training Plan Guide: How to Coach Yourself to Peak Fitness which makes it easy to think thru a full cycle and beyond.
- Using that info, I designed a season starting August 26 and consisting of
- 6-weeks SSB-1 as early base
- 9-week polarized block as late base to raise āCTLā to 90 (using 6-week average TSS in calendar) using a combination of long slow distance and hard vo2 efforts (trying this as alternative to SSB-2 HV).
- 8-week sustained build
- 8-week specialty
- That is 60% of a (365 day) year, and after that Iām just going to enjoy unstructured riding before starting the next season around September 1st of 2020.
Using the TR calendar, plans, and workouts has been the best experience as compared to buying plans (including free ones like SUF) on TrainingPeaks, using Zwift plans, or using CTS plans on Strava premium.
Does TR have all the charts Iād like? No. Iāve settled on TrainerRoad and doing data deep-dives in WKO4. Still have accounts on other services, for specialized reasons (data sync and archiving). Could I get along just fine with TR only? Yes. Would love to see TR add features to performance analytics.
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Did it today straight from my accountā¦updating to yearly. Always felt weird that I was grandfathered in on monthy but not annualā¦glad it was a mistake!
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Yes. 
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I really donāt think a guide is what Nate or anyone else has in mind as next-gen plan generation 
But if youāre happy with that then go you!
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Thereās a multi-stage release; FYI.
With features that other people havenāt done before I tend to share less about roadmap timing and specifics.
Thereās two reasons for this.
- New stuff is new, so things change a lot as we learn and develop it. I wouldnāt want to promise something and then not deliver it exactly the way it was promised.
- Competitors do seem to follow in our footsteps sometimes . I donāt want to give them an advantage.
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Donāt think the PMC is what the team has in mind for a next-gen platformā¦ And they have āsome assembly requiredā plans with guidelines on how to make them an annual planā¦
Your real point it seems is
which is an interesting point and fun discussion topic to debate.
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No, itās not the PMC thatās next-gen. No-one thinks that. Itās the machine learning and annual planning thatās hot. See above.
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tl;dr
TR are working on some serious shizzle and the price increase is worth it
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Sure, but then why start by saying this:
That was the head scratcher for me. Reading your later comments it all makes sense if I ignore PMC and equate machine learning with your āannual plannerā and āannual plansā statements 
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Itās approx 25% in the US. Not sure how you get to 50-75% unless you count allocation of rent, IT, etc.