Strava, “You’re worth $125” plus 2 other stories.

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Image|STRAVA

Strava doubles athlete numbers to 100 million in 2 Years + hits 2.5bn activities in 18 months

The title says it all as Strava doubles the number of registered athletes in the space of 2 years based on claims from their own figures. Let’s look at the story in a different way.

Story #1

Let’s start with that 100 million figure.

The cynics amongst us will say that not all of the 100 million users are active and there is certainly some truth there.

The 2.5bn figure is more meaningful.

In today’s press release, Strava also claims that 2.5 billion activities were recorded in the last 18 months – that figure chimes sensibly with a similar one from February when Strava claimed to have recorded their 3 billionth activity since their founding in 2009.

That’s a lot of activities and there must be a lot of ‘correctness’ in the 2.5bn figure, although it will also include people who automatically upload to Strava but who have since stopped looking at Strava maybe, for example, just looking at the original data in Garmin Connect or on the Wahoo app. Remember that number though.

Table of Contents (Click to Expand)

Let’s do some Maths (Americans can do Math instead but the answer should be similar)

A billion is a thousand million not a million million. So
[Claim] 2.5bn = 2,500,000,000 activities in 18 months; or approx
1,666,666,000 per year ie 2.5bn * 12/18
1. [ASSUME] 1 average person records 4 activities per week (maybe it’s 2 or maybe it’s 6. 4 seems a reasonable average to take +/-1)
2. That’s 4 * 52 = 208 activities per year for the average, active strava user
Thus dividing out those numbers quickly gives us a figure of 8 million active users [Maths for Europeans: 1.666.666.667,00/208 = 8 million]
Put another way 90% of Strava’s accounts aren’t used. [8million is 8% of 100million ie about 10% active users and 90% inactive]

Even if you assume 2 activities per week as an average that just doubles the number of users to 16 million and lowers the number of inactive users to 80%. I can’t see any way of saying Strava has anywhere near 100 million active users. Which, of course, is NOT quite what they claimed in any case.

Strava Valuation

In 2020 Strava got some funding that essentially assumed a $1bn valuation. It’s a standard thing in fundraising rounds so we can assume it’s correct and we can assume that Strava won’t lie about financials. Let’s assume that the valuation figure is unchanged, give or take.

STRAVA Seeks Investors $1 Billion Valuation | BREAKING |

Your Valuation

Maths: 1,000,000,000 / 8,000,000 = 125

So. A 1$bn valuation divided by 8 million active users means that you are worth $125 to Strava.

Someone can probably chip in here with some calculations on the value of subscribers being WAY more than that as a) there are obviously much fewer subscribers than free users and b) Strava has no material source of revenue other than subscriptions.

Let’s say there are 9 free users for every paying user. Which I think is an extremely generous ratio.

Even if we guess a paying subscriber is worth 10x as much ie $1250 then that would assume a paying subscriber needs to continue to be a subscriber at $60/year for another 21 years.

Cycling probably makes you live longer but not that much longer.

Bottom Line

Strava is valued generously.

It’s no surprise that Strava is valued generously. It’s usually also the case that the valuation assumes significant future growth ie from subscription growth OR other income streams.

As a thousand other people have said before it’s flippin’ obvious that Strava needs to get ads on their site.

2 Other Strava Stories

There are two more Strava stories

#2 Pro Athletes

The same press release from strava talks about Pro Athletes using Strava. Or, at least those using it publically.

I’ve got three accounts myself and can safely safe that none of them is included in Strava’s other claim that 2,500 PROFESSIONAL athletes also use their platform. I’m surprised at the 2500 figure and would bet that the figure is WAY higher than that and it’s just that not all Pro athletes want to be public with their training.

#3 Strava Acquisition

Last week Strava acquired Recover Athletics. It’s not a very exciting story which is why I’m covering it NOW rather than THEN.

Recover Athletics previously linked to Strava to get data about your efforts per sport. My brief reading of what they do assumes that they then used the activity data to predict which muscle groups you are using and perhaps over-using.

Thus their cleverness came by trying to pre-empt an injury by assessing cumulative load on various muscle groups and to, simplistically, get you to do a bit of stretching on those at-risk muscle groups.

A good idea for sure.

It’s similar to how PowerDot link to Strava and Garmin to determine muscle usage and over-usage. The difference is that PowerDot then recommends you to use their TEN/NMES machine and app after a hard workout.

Also a good idea (I use it regularly)

5 thoughts on “Strava, “You’re worth $125” plus 2 other stories.”

Tim says:

26 May 2022 at 1:58 pm

Strava also charges brands for challenges. On average they cost around £10k to £15k per week. I see 15 running right now so that’s an average of around £8m per year.

Reply
1. tfk, the5krunner says:
  
  26 May 2022 at 2:23 pm
  
  ty for working out the numbers there. I knew there was some revenue that’s a bit more than i assumed. maybe that’s 10-20% of their overall revenues? IDK some people estimate strava’s revenue at about $80m
  
  Reply
Guest says:

27 May 2022 at 3:24 pm

I don’t think that an average Strava user uploads 4 activities per week on average. 4+ activities per week is the definition of a very active person. My guess is 0.5 and I still think I am editing too high.

Reply
1. tfk, the5krunner says:
  
  27 May 2022 at 4:06 pm
  
  maybe.
  we’re both guessing after all!
  activities also include gym sessions, classes and maybe even walks. strava attracts people who are active. one activity per two weeks is not an active person.
  I think your figure might be more correct for the average population rather than for Strava’s own biased sample of that population
  
  try this from YouGov: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2020/01/20/quarter-brits-dont-do-single-half-hour-exercise-se
  
  Reply
Dom says:

17 October 2022 at 8:18 pm

I regularly check segment leaderboards to see who is active in the area it is very common to click on someone’s activity from a few years back to see that they are no longer active on strava.
Also, you can see this by simply using the athlete search tool. Apparently there a A LOT of people on strava with the same name(which itself is a bit fishy)… Then click down the list and see most are dormant accounts.
Think about all the school/college athletes that use the app for social media then drop it after graduating cause lets face it, most athletes “retire” after graduation.
Also, many people install the app to try it a couple times then never open the app again. They could have used strava ONE time 5 years ago and Strava includes them in current user figures which is quite absurd.

Reply