“The company lost its way as soon as it lost the founder’s DNA”
Michael Horvath founded Strava in 2009 with his college buddy Mark Gainey. The duo rowed crew together in Harvard in the 1980s and they wanted to recreate the same feeling of community that they had in the Massachusetts boathouse for the wider public. Thirteen years later and Strava has changed the world of amateur sport, allowing casual athletes access to analytics previously only available to the elite. In this podcast, Horvath tells Rosanna Cooney about building the company, his decision to step back in 2014 and to return again in 2019 when Strava was at its lowest ebb, freshly determined to make it profitable and meaningful for athletes.
