TECHNOLOGY
“Gravel cycling is still the fastest growing sport,” he adds. “It’s been that way for the last two years.” In terms of generations, Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) is ascendant on the platform, approaching 30% of the registered users of Strava at this point, and growing twice as fast in the first six months of this year than they were just last year.
Gen Z is also particularly goal focused, as Martin explains. “More than 70% of them have recorded a goal in Strava. And they’re also very, very much focused on running with, again, roughly 70% of them engaged in some form of running activity.”
For her Away from the impressive headline statistics, Strava has been working in the background to upgrade its offering to those 125 million users.
In his own words, Martin admits that Strava has had “some gaps in the product” which the company is now in the process of addressing.
But what does that mean? “Number one, we’re going to ‘focus on her’,” he explains. “There are less women engaged in sport, and there are less women who continue with sport. “And that has nothing to do with women, that has everything to do with sport and the fact that it has been male centric from the very, very beginning.” For Martin, this presents Strava with the chance to take the initiative and make positive change.
“What I see here is an opportunity for Strava
to help, for Strava as a platform to be more inclusive, and for Strava to do a better job of solving problems that keep many women from being as active as they would like to be, “ he says. “And this is going to be a long term
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commitment for us. We’ve already been taking steps in this regard. “One of the things I’m most excited about is seeing the increases in activity and growth in women on Strava right now as a result of even some of these first changes.” Helping to implement these changes is Zipporah Allen,
Strava’s chief business officer. After taking on the New York Marathon last year, she experienced some of the gaps within the Strava platform as she logged every second of her training and the event itself. “Getting to the start line in New York is the real story here,” she says.
“I’m over 40-years old and I have two kids. Training for your first marathon under those conditions is really no joke. So for me it was not just the running, it was the Pilates twice a week, it was the walks to recover, it was the cycling to cross train. And yes, it was hours and hours and miles and miles of running. “We have a saying at Strava of ‘Strava or it didn’t happen’, so I logged all of it. And what it did was it reminded me so much of the magic of our community.
“But it also reminded me about the pain points and some of the gaps that millions of women that are moving outside
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