I had a random email the other day. A guy claiming to be a Product Manager from Komoot had found my Gravelton Rides page and was interested to speak to me to get some insight into how I do my Gravelton thing as they were launching their own Groups feature. At first I thought it was a scam, why are Komoot contacting me FFS? but I clicked on the link and it looked genuine so I booked a 30 min call with him this morning to find out more. I was intrigued.
What is Komoot?
Komoot is one of the world’s most popular route-planning, activity-logging and navigation apps for activities like hiking, cycling, running, and mountain biking. It was recently acquired by Bending Spoons which saw a lot restructuring and redundancies but since then they have pushed forward with quite a few developments and updates of which the new Groups feature is one.
The Meeting
So the short 30 min meeting this morning was pretty informal, Arthur the Komoot Product Manager was in Milan and asked me a few questions about how Gravelton Rides started and grew. I filled him in on the back story and then we discussed what difficulties I face. I outlined the biggest headache is comms. Having to cross-post across a number of mediums is a headache but necessary to ensure Gravelton Rides get’s in front of many people as it can. I also explained my need to move to a subscription model and plans for growth around the UK by inviting other like-minded organiers to come onboard. He went onto explain that Komoot are launching a Groups feature tomorrow. He openly admitted, based on what I’m doing, because I’m quite technical, and some of my content was subscription only it probably wouldn’t be 100% suitable. So the new feature will allow app users to create public and private groups and will allow admins to create an event calendar and share routes etc and deal with all the communication in one place. It sounds pretty basic and I did point out not everyone uses Komoot but the calendar facility sounds useful to me because I can add my rides and piggyback the power of Komoot online when searching and point riders back to my site from Komoot if necessary, without the need to post a map & GPS file on there. It’s a feature that will certainly get some take up I think and more features will be added in due course but for now I’m just really chuffed I was found by Komoot and they wanted to speak to me and other community owners. Looking for that kind of frontline feedback to drive future innovation is a really positive move by Komoot and Bending Sppons and is proof they care about the riders.
Anyway, we signed off and he gave me a code for 12 months premium app access for my time. Bonus!
Adios
Well done on being spotted 👍
Sounds very like the Club’s feature in Strava. Good that they’re trying to get feedback from potential users but they have a mountain to climb to challenge Strava, even with its own problems.
True, I only found all the new club elements in Strava the other day. Used to be very basic, quite useful now
Sounds like they’ve tracked down an expert to advise them! On the face of it, it does sound as if it’d be another expansion for the Gravelton approach to get the extra ‘group’ exposure that Komoot might be able to offer you. Sounds like it would give you more promotion with minimal input from you. As we know, they’re a business relying on payments from somewhere – can only come from users, sponsors or advertisers, which often comes further down the the line as numbers or reliance on their platform gives them that opportunity – the ‘short & curlies’ catch!
All the best!👍
I’ve got free access for 12 months, they can wait another year for my short n curlies 😁
Well, well done them – smart to people who do this sort of thing, when thinking about starting something!