Social media fitness app Strava is great for letting strangers know how fast you are and revealing sensitive info about nuclear subs, but it isn’t able to give great workout advice.
That’s about to change.
What happened: Strava is acquiring the British running coach app Runna for an undisclosed amount. While Strava says the two platforms will be kept separate to start, as it focuses on growing the Runna app, future integration is on the horizon.
- Runna gives users personalized workout and recovery plans. It caught on quickly with runners after launching as RunBuddy in 2021, and claims to have hundreds of thousands of users.
Big picture: After running’s popularity flagged in the 2010s like an exhausted marathoner, the activity found its second wind and has exploded since the pandemic. Run clubs are multiplying like rabbits, and race registrations were up 25% in 2023 compared to 2019 in Canada.
- Strava has thrived in this new run-happy environment, boasting a user base of 135 million who logged nearly 1 billion activities on the app last year.
Why it matters: The acquisition fills a huge gap for Strava, which lacked an adequate coaching feature. By solving this problem and taking out a competitor in one fell swoop, Strava looks to cement its dominance in what’s becoming a highly competitive market.—QH