How Runna’s Laser Focus Led to Its Successful Acquisition by Strava

there isn't really an existing really easily accessible running coach that you can kind of have in the palm of your hand super easily. And so that was that was how runner was born. I think that was kind of how things started. And I definitely think even still today there isn't really anyone else in the space who provides like the same level of personalization, the same level of thought to like really wrapping the plan around you and thinking about your goals as a runner. The team are working pretty much around the clock to make sure that we've got a really strong creative flywheel and we're now producing around 400 creatives a month across all different kind of formats, which if you told me that a year ago, I would have absolutely been gobsmacked. Having access to the to the millions of subscribers and general user base that they have at Straa is super super exciting. I would say another one is

like probably just learning a lot from their team. I think that they've been through a lot of the pain points and a lot of the growing pains that we will be going through. So, I think I'm really excited about that as I think there's a lot that we can definitely learn and maybe we can teach them quite a lot as well, I would say. Welcome to Subversive, a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps in the world. We'll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category defining companies and innovative startups. Let's get into the show.

My guest today is Miranda Payne, the head of growth at RUNA, a top-rated fitness app that uses AI to create personalized training plans for runners. In this episode, I talked to Miranda about how Runner's laser focus on product innovation for runners, as well as its deep commitment to building strong relationships within the running community has helped it to achieve breakout success in the crowded health and fitness category. We also discuss how RUN's rigorous approach to creating, testing, and optimizing user-generated content on channels like Tik Tok and Instagram. as well as its aspirational product positioning and highly priced subscription plan have fueled its rapid revenue growth ultimately leading to its recent acquisition by Straa. All right, welcome Miranda to the Subversive podcast. Super excited to have you on today and to learn more about Runna's story. Why don't we start for those who

don't know with just a little bit of background on what RUA is and how it's managed to succeed as a running app in such a crowded category. Yeah, thanks Phil. Um, super excited to be uh here chatting today. Um, so Runner is a personalized coaching app. Um, we provide training plans for runners all over the world. Um, and those coaching plans will take you from whatever goal you want. So whether you're a true beginner and you want to achieve your first 5K or whether you're an advanced runner and you want to run your 25th marathon at a super super speedy pace.

So um, yeah, it's a it's a great app and we've seen um, incredible growth over the last couple of years, which has been amazing. Um, largely as a result of I guess our super strong product market fit. So, um, we really believe that we're the best players on the market for runners, um, and that we do everything that we can to make our app as good as possible to help runners achieve their goals. Um, and then also through a mix of like different acquisition strategies primarily focused on um, social media, I guess, and and partnerships and ambassadors/influencers.

Awesome. And we're going to talk a lot today about both the unique product features that RUA has built to really become a beloved product in the running community as well as some of the clever growth tactics that you and your team have implemented to accelerate the company's growth. But before we go there, why don't we just learn a little bit more about you and your background? You've worked at a couple other fitness companies before joining Runna. So, what did your path to Rena look like? Yeah, definitely. So, um I think more broadly, I'm like super passionate about fitness and and wellness in general. It's a huge part of my life personally. Um, and so I'm always somebody who's really motivated to work somewhere where I'm like super excited by the product and and I could see myself as a customer themselves. And so I think I guess I started at a um boutique fitness studio actually called Flykick. And that was

where I was in a pure marketing role. It gave me a really great perspective across the entire marketing spectrum. So I did everything from brand partnerships, uh, influencers, events, and then like a lot of digital marketing. And that's where I really found my love of I guess performance marketing specifically and and SEO and I'm a scientist at heart. So I studied a masters in marine biology quite nichly um at university and and so I think I was really excited to be able to bring data and marketing together. From there I moved on to a subscription app called Fit. So that's a subscription app that provides like at home workouts for people. Um and I moved there during the pandemic. So it was a super super high growth um period for for the brand. And when I joined there, I managed all of their growth marketing. Um, but also kind of took my first foray into products. So, um, I helped product

manage the website, which was, um, incredible. And I I realized that I loved being able to bridge that gap and think about how you can solve growth problems across both product and marketing as opposed to just thinking about the marketing side of things. So, um, that put me in really goodstead to then join Rudder. So, fast forward to to November 2023 was when I joined Rudder. Um, and I think like I'm definitely a huge startup fan. So enjoy like the the super fast-paced environment and that's a lot of what I learned from my time at Flykick and then Fit and then applied that at Runner because we definitely have a real bias for action and it's definitely a ridiculous pace that we move at. And I think like having learned a lot from my time at FIT about both what to do and what not to do is has really worked well for me at Runner.

Yeah, I mean it really does sound like you have the perfect background both because you've seen fitness a couple of other times from a couple of other angles, but then also you have both the growth marketing and the growth product background. And I don't know about you, but I find that more and more of the biggest opportunities in uh technology growth teams right now are coming from this intersection between product and

marketing. So let's start on the product side and we'll go back to the beginning. How did Dom and Ben realize that there was this gap in the running market? seems like a category where there are already plenty of other apps. And so what was their initial vision for RUA uh to break out beyond all of the existing competition? Yeah, definitely. So I guess like a quick whistle stop tour of how Runner even came to be was actually that Ben and Dom were friends at university and then after university Ben was coaching Dom. um he was his running coach and he was doing that for multiple other people and then he didn't have enough capacity to take on any more clients and Dom with a background in engineering realized that actually um he thought that there would be a way that they could set something up set up a service that would enable them to be able to reach more people just a so that Ben could take on

more clients but b so that we could help more people in the same way as Dom had been helped and so that was how runner well it was originally the run buddy was born and I think um the kind of like gap there was that originally it was just like a PDF plan and they realized that like not many people have really easy access to like actual highquality running coaching. So you can spend a lot of money and and get a really amazing running coach or you can kind of look online and and forest through a lot of different resources but there isn't really an existing like really easily accessible running coach that you can kind of have in the palm of your hand super easily. And so that was that was how runner was born. Then they started thinking about all of the things that Ben applied to his coaching logic and how they could bring that into an app and make it a lot more self-s served. So um I think that was kind of how things

started and I definitely think even still today there isn't really anyone else in the space like yes it's super competitive but not necessarily anyone else in the space who provides like the same level of personalization, the same level of thought to like really wrapping the plan around you and thinking about your goals as a runner. Obviously, there's people who are doing lots of other amazing things in the running space, but um yeah, no one I don't think that does quite what we do. Yeah. Well, and to me, that's a real sign of opportunity when you look at a category that appears to be crowded, but then when you really dig underneath the surface, there are some real holes. I remember I ran my first marathon a couple years ago and I found an app in the app store. I can't even remember what the name of it was. I wasn't aware of runner at that point. And you know, it was good enough. I put in my race

date and it gave me a personalized plan for the next 100 days and it was good enough, but it didn't really adapt to my performance on every run, how long it was taking me, how much recovery time I was giving myself. And it sounds like one of the real keys to run a success was just being a more dynamic experience, being a more personalized experience. And so, can you talk through

what were some of the early features that RUA innovated on that nobody else was providing that helped it to really take things to the next level for the running community? A lot of it may have already been in the in the app that you also mentioned, but I think like some of those at the very early stage were things like just having real clarity on like pacing and then providing like audio feedback in in your ears, which a lot of people don't get from their apps and like being able to understand whether you need to slow down or speed up. Um, and then I think also like being able to interact with a coach. So we have um like a chatbot within the the app itself and people find the ability to like interact with our either coaching team or now team of like expert runners as well. It was was really really useful early on along with more basically like being able to structure your workouts and actually add

structure to your your current running routine where a lot of people I think just kind of like go out without a structured plan. That was definitely one of the the key things that people call out a lot with our reviews. Fast forward a little bit to like the last maybe year and there's been some amazing developments. So, um the main one of those you kind of touched on briefly there, but we now utilize AI to um really make sure that your plan is adapting around you. So, um, as you're going out on your run, whether you're recording that on your Apple Watch, your Garmin, your wearable, or on your phone itself, we'll take that data and your performance data, um, relative to the paces that we had originally set you, and then we'll feed that back into our engine and then calculate how your pace should adapt over time. And what that really means is that like you end up with like this hyper hyper hyper

personalized product which like you can't get from a blanket PDF you can't get from like anybody other than really a real running coach who would be watching you and understanding your progress over time. And that's been game changing I think for our customers. I think that our our runners like absolutely love the ability to get this little notification that's like oh you're you're smashing it. You're exceeding your targets. would you like to increase your your end pace target um by a little bit or actually it looks like you maybe need to slow things down a little bit and actually often people love that as well because it makes them feel like their goals are more achievable and that they'll enjoy their training more which is ultimately the most important thing. Yeah, I'm so glad you touched on that because of all the opportunities that AI unlocks. I really do feel like personalization is one of

the most important ones particularly for consumer apps because for years we've just been living in this world where most apps are fairly monolithic. Maybe there are a few different customer segments that they're tailoring things like copy and creative to, but the UI UX of the product itself doesn't really adapt around the user. And it sounds like you all are using AI to start to change that. And I particularly love the real-time feedback in your ear, right?

Because at this point, many people are running with their AirPods in. I've got mine in right now for our podcast, but I'm always wearing them on my run and I'm usually listening to a podcast or to a song on Spotify. But having a coach jump in and let me know I need to be picking up the pace or maybe slowing down a little bit to give my body more rest would be really valuable and it probably also builds an emotional connection with the runner. Uh which I imagine is is pretty compelling for retention. So we've talked a bit about some of the product innovation that Runna has done. Now let's get more into growth and marketing which is I know where your team has been focused and why

don't we just start with what did the growth team look like when you first joined RUA in late 2023 and how has it expanded over the last couple years? Yeah, definitely. So, um when I joined I was I was one of three. So, it was myself moonlighting his many many roles at that particular moment in time. Um and then uh a growth engineer and then a CRM lead. And uh there was about three of us, yeah, three of us in the team and about 20 of us in the entire company.

Fast forward to today and there's just over 20 of us in the growth team alone, which is super super exciting. And actually about 140 of us in the entire company. So things have definitely changed a lot in in that time. Now, I'm like super excited by the way that the team is set up. So, similar to some of the points that you touched on at the beginning, I think it's really fantastic having that split of like product and marketing together, but also bringing everything together to make things super collaborative so that we're driving as much growth as possible across the entire spectrum versus working in like silos, which I think can often happen.

Well, the other thing that we benefit from quite a lot is by having like the specific growth product team, we can unlock things for the growth marketing team much more quickly. Whereas, if I look back at my time on fit, we struggled a lot with getting engineering resource that was dedicated to growth. And as a result, our growth was definitely stunted quite a lot. We couldn't do the things that we wanted to maybe within onboarding. We couldn't think about matching our landing page experience with the experience further down the funnel. All things that are now like super super easy because we're all connected within one team, which is great. Yeah, that's such a great call out and I think it's a tragedy that so often these product marketing and engineering teams are relatively siloed because in many cases the marketing team is the one that could most benefit from just a little bit of engineering help to

unlock a whole lot of value especially when it comes to things like data attribution where we just need to fix a couple pipelines and then we'll have a much better understanding of how our uh marketing campaigns are performing. So that's great that you all have been able to integrate the team in that way. Um

we'll talk through a few of the different ways you all have grown. I know a huge part of your success has stemmed from community both offline and online uh with runners and so what are some of the strategies and tactics you've used to build really strong emotional bonds with your customers? Yeah, definitely. I think um yeah, I think inherently running is is such a communitycentric sport and I think we've definitely like leveraged that and lent into that and really like made the most out of that. I think that one of the key things that we've done is really make sure that we're showing up where our runners are. Um and so whether that's kind of run clubs, whether that's um shakeout runs, whether that's sponsoring marathon majors, but also much smaller events as well, making sure that run is really synonymous with like the in-person running experience. Because I think that often times when you're a

digital product, it can be really easy to disassociate um like the product with kind of like your real life and like the actual tangible impact that it is having on your life. And so by bringing runner to life in all of these settings, I think we've definitely um really propelled the app further and like made sure that like we're imprinting ourselves on on kind of people's running experience which has been fantastic. I think also thinking about like other areas that community has worked really well for us is that naturally people when they're running are are super excited about achievements and super excited when let's say you've run a new distance milestone that you never managed to run before you run your first 5K you run a new PR um any of those fantastic things and I think people are are super keen to talk about that with one another and runners will chat about that whether it's at a run club or

whether you go to a dinner party after you've just smashed your 5k BB and I think often times then the follow-up question is like wow how did you do that and and the answer is often times runner for us which is I mean it's always runner when you're using runner um and um I think that that really like sits in our favor and so we've again lent into that quite a lot so our word of mouth is is super strong but we've also done things like for example when somebody posts their run to straa and they've been using the runner app it'll say like 8k long run completed with runner um which kind of just has this like constant hint which sits within the community which we already know is is super strong um and helps us grow from an organic perspective. Yeah, those little product growth levers around watermarks or hints that you know this run was logged by Runna can be so powerful especially when you can ride

the momentum of an existing platform like Strava that already has so much reach and obviously Strava recently acquired Runna. We'll get to that in a moment but it sounds like for a couple years every time somebody would log a run on RUA it would say you know workout name logged by RUA and now after the acquisition there's actually an image associated with that which makes it even more compelling. Let's talk a little bit

more uh around UGC content. So content created either by your own users or by what I believe you call ambassadors or what others might call influencers. What sort of content have you been using from these folks on channels like Tik Tok and Instagram in order to expand your reach rapidly? Yeah. So it's also definitely worth touching on the fact that I would say that our ambassador strategy really feeds into that community piece that we just mentioned. I think that like we really make sure that we're well first of all we have an entire team that's like purely dedicated to ambassadors. So um I feel like a lot of times people try to use tooling to do what our ambassador team does but we really do feel like it's been beneficial investing in building out that team and we feel like we have one of the best ambassador programs in the world because um all of the team have such amazing relationships

with our ambassadors and what that basically means is that they're going on the journey with us. So we're finding people who want to be ambassadors who actually care about using runner and achieving their goal with runner and suddenly they're making much more authentic content. They're taking us with them on runs that we're not even actually I guess like paying for in terms of like deliverables etc. And it becomes a much more meaningful relationship which has really really really worked in our favor. Then thinking about the specific content. So we use it in a few different ways. Um one is as I said to like bring to life the community aspect and and basing on the ambassadors profiles themselves. And then the other way is in our page user acquisition. So a huge part of that strategy is leveraging UGC whether that comes from the ambassadors themselves or whether that comes from creators. And so

we spent a really long time building up like a strong creative flywheel where we can reach out to creators um and get them to create content for us because we actually found that producing content with creators has just as much impact as it does with producing content with our ambassadors. And so whilst it's fantastic that we can leverage the content from our ambassadors themselves, a much more much more cost effective and scalable way for us to um hit our production targets I suppose is to leverage content from creators and apply the same methodology that we do for the content that we get from our ambassadors and the same briefing and the same approach but just think about how we can leverage a huge network of creators that are then producing content for us on a regular basis. Yeah, I want to go deeper on this because this is such an important topic right now. There are so many consumer apps that are trying to

grow on channels like Tik Tok and Instagram through reals um and trying to use UGC in order to do that. I'll start with how do you recruit your ambassadors and creators? Like what's the process you go through to find the right people to support your brand? Yeah. So, um, we we actually hilariously have a te a Slack channel where anybody in the team because if you think about it, most of the people at Runner are either runners themselves or becoming runners themselves and we're all very invested in the running community. And so, we have a Slack channel where anybody can post somebody that they think would be a good ambassador that they've seen in their own travels. And I actually cannot even tell you how many people get posted into that channel. So that's a a very good way of us leveraging um the current uh staff I guess that we have at the in in in Runner. But no, aside from that, we use um a couple of different

platforms to think about like the the space in general. And then we also the team themselves just spend like we have people that are that that's their job essentially. So their job is to to think about outreach just to think about um where is the next um focus point for us geographically and then um how can we think about finding ambassadors that will work really well for us there and so we have an outreach team and then we also have a management team and so um between them they will work on the strategy of like finding the ambassadors often times organically to be honest we found that that works a lot better than going through the tool um the tool is more to check uh like engagement levels and actually how performant we think an ambassador will be um and then reaching out to them and building that relationship with them and then ensuring that like it's a meaningful relationship and something we want to invest in. Got

it. So, it sounds like it's a two-pronged approach. You have this in-house recruiting and management team that identifies the right ambassadors, onboards them, trains them, make sure they're set up for success, but you also have this Slack group that allows everyone at the company, many of whom are also fitness enthusiasts and runners themselves, to identify potential ambassadors. I guess the next question then becomes you've got these

ambassadors. It sounds like you also have creators that you're partnering with. What does your creative iteration process look like and what sort of creative has performed best for you over the last couple years? If maybe you can provide two or three examples of video content that has really gone viral. Yeah. Um so in terms of our creative iteration process um is very very in intensive. um we spent quite a lot of time um going backwards forwards about like how we should land on on the final on the final process and to be honest it's it's constantly evolving. I think one thing that we've found quite challenging is that our performance marketing budgets have been increasing quite substantially month-on-month. And so understanding how we can meet the demands of those budgets and still ensure that we're finding the super winners that we need in order to maintain performance at the standard that we need has been a really really

big challenge for us. I think over the last 6 months particularly um the way that we've really approached it is by splitting into like net new concepts and then iterations of winners and really doubling down on that iteration space where we know that we're going to find um a lot more I guess fruitful um creative and a lot more assets that we think will become super winners. We work with an external agency um and we collaborate with them and we have uh regular brainstorms that happen actually on a weekly basis where we take down all the information that's currently um uh performing well from an ads perspective break all of those down and work out what the iterations can be for each of those currently high performing uh winners that are in testing and then we'll go away produce them and then we'll kind of like aim to have them live by the next week. So, it's a super um I think intense cycle where like the team

are working pretty much around the clock to kind of make sure that we've got a really strong creative flywheel and we're now producing I think around 400 creatives a month across all different kind of formats which um if you told me that a year ago I would have absolutely been got smacked. So, yeah, I think that kind of maybe answers the the first part of that question and then the second part of that question around what we see work. So, we typically see that both UGC and statics will work well. The statics are generally what will convert people um after they've seen uh some of the UGC creative. But on the UGC front, we've had two main streams that I think have worked well for us. The first is similar to the ambassador piece that I was talking about before, really following the narrative of somebody's experience.

So, um making sure that we think about them before they were using Runner and obviously using all manner of different hooks. So, our hook testing strategy is very very crazy. making sure that we're we're experiencing them before they were using runner and then going through and following them to the point where normally they've achieved a race goal because we find that race content is the content that performs the best for us.

Um so really kind of like following that narrative from start to finish has performed really really well but doing it in such a way that differs for the different platforms. So Tik Tok it's um super super speedy like the cuts are so short and often times there actually might not even be any VO. It's just kind of like the visuals. It's a lot of audio, a lot of highintensity music. Um, and it's just super easy to consume. And then on Instagram, it's a lot more thought through. It's slightly longer content and, um, it's more measured and considered and follows the process with a lot more like voice over, I think, and a lot more input. The second thing that has worked really really well for us um, which is much to the dismay of the team is using internal team members. Um, sorry.

We we had um one piece of creative that was a super winner and stayed without fatiguing for I think it was about 10 months. And one of the people in the team was so upset that she was constantly being the face of runner and people were commenting on the video saying, "How long has this girl been training for this half marathon for?" But um yeah, I think like that's worked really well for us just being able to be scrappy. um and do cuts of things that we know work. So we then took that creative which for context was again a lot of quick cuts um and leveraging the UI from our app within the creative itself and then we've replicated that time and time again now with different um models and different backgrounds and thinking about US versus Australia versus UK. Um and that continues to perform really really well for us. So I think probably a really big takeaway is once you find a winning formula for UGC,

just thinking about how you can like reskin that and rework it is is is really important from our perspective. Yeah. So I'm going to draw out three main takeaways I heard there. You let me know if I got it right. The first one was and I've I've seen this with company after company. Even though you would think Tik Tok and Instagram reels are such similar channels, they actually beg different types of content. And so it sounds like obviously you've been telling some of the same stories across Tik Tok and Instagram. you gave the example of a runner's progression from the start of training until race day.

Um, but the way that you portray that story makes it maybe looks a little bit different across Tik Tok and Instagram. So, that's number one. Number two is the power of authenticity. And this is another story I've seen over and over again where often times it's a company's own employees who end up performing as well or better than professional creators in certain cases because they're just so authentic to the mission. and they really believe in it and that enthusiasm comes comes through in their voice and and how they talk about the product. And then I guess the last one is just the importance of uh explore exploit. So making sure that you're having those weekly brainstorm meetings that you're casting a wide net, thinking outside the box, but then when you find a creative that's really working, doubling and tripling down on it, finding different angles to um create content that looks similarly

because you know that will perform well.

Let's talk a little bit more about how AI has changed your process. So there any particular AI tools you're using to either speed up the process of creating those 400 creatives per month or to just find better creatives faster? Yeah, so I think the two that probably stand out um to me are SNO. So we use that to create music and audio that will go over our ads. Um and that works really well for us to be able to scale or rerun different ads or also just avoid some of the terrible music that is royalty-free.

Um and then the other one of those is um 11 Labs. So we use that for I guess creating ads that will work really well for us internationally. So let's say that an ad was originally um recorded by someone with a British voice, then we'll rerun the same ad, but we use 11 Labs to create a voiceover that will work really nicely for us in the US and then also in Australia. So yeah, I think those are probably the two main ones that we use at the moment to think about how we can and scale more quickly. Yeah. And again, those are names I've heard before. or I have plenty of clients that are using 11 Labs. Um, and given how much video content factors into performance marketing these days, it makes sense that you can use it for voiceovers. I hadn't thought of it in the context of international expansion, but that makes a lot of sense as well. Uh, one last

question before we get to our next topic is just around this intersection between product and marketing that we talked about before. So it sounds like when you joined RUNA um most of the purchase activity was happening in app and one of the things you and your team has worked on is a web to app flow where you can ask users questions about their goals on the web. Um you can get them to start a trial on the web and then deep link them into the app store and there are a number of advantages that go along with that. So do you want to say a little bit more about how run web to app flow developed? Yeah definitely. So um you're completely right. I think um until the back end of last year we actually launched it in December. So until then we were doing um solely app subscription payments and then yeah we launched in December of last year and it's been a really great start to be honest. Um I think there's as you mentioned all

manner of reasons that we would want to be using web in addition to app. The main and most compelling ones for us were um one unlocking Google search. So that for us is a really like sensible channel and like a channel that will makes a lot of sense for us in terms of people searching for like longer queries and like thinking about like running and educating themselves as well as some of the shorter term queries too. And I think that being able to run Google search with web has been really really positive for us. We have just started scaling it more recently. We've actually had a new team member um join whose entire role just sits around Google search. Um, and I think we're super excited about where we can take things on that front. The second is being able to, I think, iterate more quickly and being able to test and launch new product flows more quickly and think about personalization. So, um, if we

were to want to launch a number of different flows or onboarding flows within the app, it would take us a great deal of time to be able to go through release process and and develop those and and think about how they will fit all together into the bigger picture. Um on web we've now set ourselves up really nicely so that we've got our core flow. Um and then we've also got um a couple of different options that we can um send people through depending on the warmth of the traffic. We've also more recently just launched a super cool tool um for the ambassador team to be able to personalize the flow to the specific ambassador. Um so that's all done through our CMS and they can basically just upload imagery based on the ambassador and make sure that that ambassador's got a super personalized flow and all of this is stuff that we wouldn't have been able to do in app. So I think we're super excited about the

potential for for web and what it can do. I think also just thinking about it from a performance side of things. So already in the first what are we now May? So kind of like five or so months that we've had it launched. Um we've seen higher tri start rates, we've seen higher trial conversion rates and we're also seeing higher retention. And I think it's been a really really positive start for us. So the next steps are to try and crack meta. So our meta performance is still not exactly where we need it to be. We think we've got a lot more room to be to be growing there.

um and then continue working out how we can optimize the flow and think about how different people behave on web versus app and what else we can be doing to test there. But yeah, it's been it's been a super exciting project and I think the team have really enjoyed kind of like unlocking this whole new layer of growth that we didn't have access to before. Yeah. Well, that's great to hear that it's going so well. And for the companies that have really cracked web to app, I think you hit on a lot of the advantages, right? there's faster release cycles cuz you can iterate on web much more quickly than you can on iPhone or Android with uh release approvals required. Um number two is you end up um usually getting less involuntary churn if people check out um through web um just because there are fewer payment failures. Obviously you avoid the app store fees which is a nice advantage from a margin standpoint. And

then you get that deterministic data that you can pass back to the ad networks to make your paid advertising campaigns more efficient. With the recent Apple versus Epic ruling, companies are now allowed to do the opposite, right? take users who are in the app and send them to a web-based checkout flow. Have you all started to experiment with app to web at all yet or or not so much? Yeah, so um the engineering team are in the middle of um building out a test for it at the moment. We're going to test a couple of different ways of doing it. Either just linking out or thinking about some form of iframe. Um so the team are thinking about implementing at the moment, but we kind of wanted to um sit and let the dust settle a tiny bit first just to understand maybe just send other people out to to do the testing. And actually it's been useful to do that. I think um Revenue Cat did a super useful report of

um their testing that they did in their app dipsy and it's been so insightful understanding how that went and what learnings we can then apply to our approach. So I'm pretty happy that we did a little pause first before jumping in. But I think we will still test it because it's super exciting territory to try and conquer, right? Um yeah, so it's really exciting for everyone I think. Yeah, I'm not surprised to hear you say that. What I'm finding is there's sort of this bell curve and the companies that are moving first on app to web are either really small startups where the extra up to 27% in margin is so significant that they sort of feel like they have to try it and they have very little to lose. And then on the other end of the spectrum you have companies like Spotify who have so many resources that they're just confident they can find a way to make it work and the money at stake with that extra margin is so

significant. And then for all of the companies in the middle, the sort of mid-stage startups doing 5, 10, 20, 30 million in AR, I'm sensing a little bit more like, let's see how this plays out over the next few months and and we'll learn from other people's iterations and then we can jump in when the time is right. Well, let's get into monetization

for a bit. So, you all have a 1999 per month subscription plan and a $119.99 per year subscription plan. um that's relatively expensive as digital subscription apps go. Um but obviously you have an aspirational brand and aspirational product. How did you arrive on those price points and and have you run any in product AB tests or other studies in order to figure out the optimal pricing? We were actually originally priced slightly lower in the US. So originally we were at $17.99 uh for a monthly and $109.99 for for an annual. Um but we were kind of reflecting on things and that priced us much lower um in the US relative to the UK which felt a little bit misbalance.

So we spent some time looking at some other apps within the vertical with like relatively similar offerings and then also looking at some of the kind of like benchmarking reporting that we can find. Um and we decided that we'll experiment with slight price rise to where we where you see the pricing today. Um with a hypothesis that I guess people are willing to invest in in the health and fitness and find something that like actually will be working versus kind of like a cheap fix so to speak. I'm not saying that what we're charging is cheap, but to that point, what we saw was um really surprising actually. So, we saw not just uh an increase in overall revenue, but an increase in our conversion rates as well. So, we saw an increase in our trial start rates and an increase in our our conversion rates as well. Um and so ultimately we we just stay at the stay at the higher price point and and it's been pretty great

from there. There was actually later a proposition to consider increasing the price again. At which point I then conducted like a a willingness to pay um analysis on our existing US and UK um audiences and we found that actually our current price positioning is pretty much spot on based on that. We were pretty happy with how things are sitting and so we made the decision not to change things any further. So I think we'll kind of stick where we're at at the moment but it's yeah it feels like we've landed in a pretty good place. Um but the first one was maybe slightly more finger in the air than it could have been. Yeah. Well, it's pretty typical, right? When you have a tech startup, you're moving fast. You only have so many resources. And so, often times initial prices are just set based off of what your competitors are charging in the market or what you believe you can charge based off of the available

substitutes. Um, but then the sophisticated companies at the very least run in product AB tests or maybe they conduct additional studies like Van Westonorb or conjooint analysis. It sounds like you did a combination of those things and ultimately found not surprisingly in many ways that you were able to charge this premium price point because even though you have a relatively narrow target market, you're I mean running is a huge market, right?

But it's not like you're a horizontal health and fitness platform. You're very laser focused on runners, but for the people who are running 5ks, 10ks, marathons, they likely have very high willingness to pay in a lot of cases. And then this um finding you had that increasing the prices not only increased average revenue per user but actually increased subscriber conversion while surprising I have seen that happened in a few cases there's something called ain good where um up to a point increasing prices can signal premium quality and so uh within reason that there are cases where it can actually increase conversions. So that's interesting to see. Um how did you all decide what to

put before and after the payw wall? You are a premium product and so what do you give away for free and then what do subscribers have to pay for? Our free product is really focused around well our full free product. So we have a free product where you can access the entire plan. Um and that's available for anybody who is new to running or returning to running after a long break. So I guess like what you would call catch to 5k. Um, the reason that's free is cuz we wanted to make sure that like the entry point to running is as accessible for people as possible and getting to that first 5k or 3 mile milestone is is like really easy for people to access. Beyond that, we give everybody a free 7-day trial. Um, even if you don't have any kind of like code or anything like that, after that, the whole plan is locked. So, you can't really access anything within your plan afterwards. You can just kind of like

record workouts if you'd like to. We landed there because I think like the value can definitely be seen within those first seven seven days and I think it makes sense afterwards for people to think about investing in themselves and investing in the in the personalized plan that comes afterwards. We haven't really seen like I think it's been it's been super positive. I think that we haven't actually considered putting more or less things behind the pay wall because I think it's kind of like the whole package and the ethos of runner is that you're getting the entire coach and we look at the entire app as the entire coach right now. So I guess there is a world where we could consider pulling out eg the AI adaptive features and things like that and putting them behind a different kind of pay wall. But I think that ultimately we believe that everybody deserves like the same level of personalized coaching and that should

just be what the premium offering is. Yeah, I really love that bold stance, this idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so we're going to give users a 7-day trial. During those seven days, they have plenty of opportunities to go on runs to experience the full power of RUA. But then once their trial has expired, they need to pay the subscription in order to access it rather than going the premium route where they can continue to use a subset of features for free, but they don't get to experience the full power of of Runna. U makes a lot of sense in your case. Um how do you all approach discounts for users with less willingness or ability to pay for Runna?

Um do you offer any sort of either holiday based discounts or strategic discounts focused on particular user types? Yeah. So on the whole, not really. We don't actually offer any kind of like uh I suppose day-to-day discounts. We do offer some discounts for for example like blue light and students as two kind of like cohorts that will receive discounts, but aside from that, we don't more broadly offer any other discounts. The main reasons for that is is simply that I guess we don't necessarily want to devalue the product or create a psychology where people are like waiting and only purchasing at the point of of discounting and we haven't necessarily felt like we need to yet. We do occasionally run discounts for Wimach.

Um, but we recently did some testing where we found that actually the retention was higher for those who didn't receive the offer versus those who did. And ultimately the revenue amount that we were getting back from not putting the offer in was higher than um than those that had the offer. And so we've kind of pulled it out again. Um, I think we'll continue testing in that space, but we're definitely not keen to launch any discounts anytime soon or any kind of like holiday discounts. The main thing that we do do though is um run like extended free trials and and things like that. Got it. Yeah. Well, and this again fits with your aspirational brand and strategy. I think for some companies, discounts can be really powerful because users maybe aren't as affluent or uh there are just a lot of cheap available alternatives and the marginal cost of serving subscribers so low that why not offer a discount? But

in your case, I think it's really important that runners view runa as the premium product uh in the ecosystem. And so you want to protect that. And one way to protect it is by avoiding uh cheapening your brand with with too many discounts. So let's wrap up by talking

about the big news that dropped in the last month or so, which is Strava acquiring Runna. Uh and obviously there will be things you can talk about and things you can't talk about. And so trust you to to speak to whatever you're comfortable speaking about. But let's just start with when did Stro and Runner first start talking about a possible acquisition and and how did the talk sort of ultimately lead up and culminate in u this acquisition decision? Uh I believe it was in April. The conversations first started back in September and then they were kind of ongoing from then all the way through until until the April um announcement that we made. can't speak too much to to the pieces that went on in between. But I think it was a very intense time and and a lot of um work from actually many many people that I was only lightly involved relative to some of the involvement from a from a lot of the

rest of the team and and the exec team. And yeah, it was a it was a definite whirlwind. And I think for me one of the most exciting moments of that April announcement was definitely being able to tell the wider team the news. Um it had been like a a long old uh x months. I'm actually trying to think. I think for me it was like maybe 8 months, 7 months um of keeping this massive exciting secret and then also of like helping the team to continue working really hard and be focused on things um whilst not being able to tell them the big news. And so I think um on that day in the office it was it was amazing.

Everyone was super excited and we we had some big celebrations and um generally the team like attitude towards everything that's happening has been amazing and so so so positive. Um so we're all super excited. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. I mean, I've never been in exactly the same situation, but as as a product leader myself for many years, I can relate to being in situations where you feel so loyal to your team, you want to be able to tell them everything, but in certain cases, you're just not able to. And so, I'm sure it was a huge relief when the day came that you could let everyone know. Um, so speaking of teams, how has the integration looked like? I know it's very early days and the two companies are just starting to come together and find ways to sort of integrate the different pieces. what have the ups and downs of that looked like to the extent you can share on a like actual

integration perspective I think like the main approach that we're taking is how can we bring the the brands together to benefit those who are users of both products and so we're not necessarily thinking about integrating the apps in any way that would I guess slow down the direction that runner is moving in already or change things for straa materially but we're thinking about ways to optimize that experience for for people on both apps so an example of that would be earlier I mentioned that we um currently already post to Strava every single time someone does a run with runner. Previously that was just text, but we've now got these like incredible visuals that go with it. So every time someone does a run on Runner, that appears on Strava in a really like lovely way. Um and it kind of just shows the synergy between the two brands. Um another thing that we've started looking at is single sign on. So thinking about

how people can sign on to both apps um really really easily and get access to both of them together. What we're not necessarily doing is thinking about how runner and any of runner's features can be integrated into Strava purely just because like we have so much on our road map already and so much exciting stuff and it would really slow us down and so I think like we're we both parties have very much been tasked with like continuing to build um what they were already building and what they had on the road map and obviously there naturally might be some more opportunities for us to think about sharing things and we're definitely really excited to leverage a lot of um the work that Straa has already done previously. So for example on localization and thinking about some of their tech eg root mapping and how we can perhaps bring that into runner as well. Um but no kind of like substantial changes I would say to like the road map

or like the general direction or the things that we had planned to build anyway. Yeah. Well, that's so exciting. And you know, I'm a big believer that in most cases, acquisitions between big tech companies often don't don't go as planned. But in this particular case, it just makes so much sense. I feel like the two products are so complimentary. You know, Straa's had a running community for a long time, but they started in cycling. Run is innovating on the running community and adding new features that Straa doesn't already have. And even the look and feel and sort of aspirational nature of both products feels very complimentary. So, I'm very bullish on the acquisition. It sounds like you are too. Um, maybe to wrap up before we get to the lightning round, what what most excites you about being acquired by a larger company like Straa that has so many resources and what sort of opportunities do you think

it will unlock for your team? I think for me the most exciting thing I mean I'm going to speak from a purely growth perspective and obviously from from from that lens I think like having access to the to the millions of subscribers and general user base that they have at Straa is super super exciting. I mean, obviously, as you just pointed out, like a huge portion of those are cyclists versus them all being runners, but I think that like being able to tap into that um database of people who are already runners and are already engaged with like a digital running product is amazing. And I think that like being able to segment kind of like how we're communicating with those different runners and better understand um those runners will be fantastic. So, I think that's one of the things I'm most excited about. I would say another one is like probably just learning a lot from their team. I think that they've

been through a lot of the pain points and a lot of the growing pains that we will be going through. So that can include things like thinking about hiring for example and how we can better structure things maybe internally or or thinking about like what hire we do next and and same with tooling. So for example, we share the same um CRM. We both use the same CRM system and so they've gone through a lot of the same questions that we have around like is it worth us investing in additional add-ons? Is it worth us kind of like investing in somebody to manage this particular part of the platform? Um, so I think I'm really excited about that as well. I think there's a lot that we can definitely learn and maybe we can teach them quite a lot as well, I would say.

Oh, I'm sure I'm sure you can. And you touched on the most obvious answer that I knew you would there, which is, you know, they just have very deep pockets and a lot of resources. But I think maybe the less appreciated advantage of being acquired by a larger company that's just been around a very long time really since the dawn of you know fitness tracking back in 2008 2009 after the iPhone came out is they they have all of these lessons they've learned over the last 15 plus years and uh obviously you all can benefit from their wisdom and they can probably also benefit from an infusion of youthful startup energy given that Rena is only a few years old. So let's get to our

lightning round. I'm just going to ask you a series of rapidfire questions and we can keep it light and fun and and move quickly. Um, first question is just what is the best part about working at Runa and what's one thing that you might change? Um, the best thing I would say is definitely I feel like it's definitely a cliche but I would say that best thing is like the passion of the team. So the team are all incredibly passionate, not just about running and making running a habit for everybody, but also about doing like the absolute best in their specific area. And that comes together in like a really incredible way where everybody shows up and goes above and beyond for one another within the team. And I think that's really what's facilitated us being able to move as quickly as we can because people are really like bullish and like forward thinking around like making decisions in their area and

passing on something that's really high quality to somebody within another team and and collaborating on that. So I think the passion for runner and running alongside with the passion for individual um I guess progress in the team as well is is super strong at runner. On the flip side of that, what do I would I change? Well, now we need a bigger office. So, I would maybe that would maybe be the main thing that I would change. I I was waiting for you to use the Michael Scott quote from the office where you say, "We work too hard, we care too much, and you know, we we just can't stop doing doing great product and marketing work." But that that was great and it does sound like an awesome culture. Um, that relates to my next question, which is just, you know, is there anything particularly unique or quirky about RUA's culture that sets it apart from other companies?

Yeah, I suppose so. Um, so we do on Mondays and Fridays this like push-up/squat challenge. We do it to a song called Sally Up. I don't know if you know it, but uh yeah, so essentially we have to all squat or or push up um to the beat and we do that every single Monday and Friday. So I think that's probably one particularly unique thing that we do. Another would probably be that we have workout Wednesdays. So we all we all run together on Wednesdays and then and then go for lunch, which is amazing and and so good for culture. Um yeah, that's great. It's nice when you're a fitness company because building in these fitness routines as part of your culture is obviously going to be beneficial for everyone. It reminds me a little bit of we had Ron Schneiderman who was the CEO of All Trails for about a decade I believe on the podcast as as one of our very first guests and All Trails has trail day

every month where everybody gets I think it's a Friday off to get outside and enjoy the trails and whenever you can do that obviously it doesn't lend itself to every company's product but I think in your particular case it makes a lot of sense. So, what does your running routine look like and how has RA made it better over the last couple years? Yeah, so my running routine I would say I run two to three times a week maybe.

Um, I'm currently training for my first marathon. So, I'm I'm running Lisbon in October which I'm super super excited about. Um, I guess in terms of how runner has made it better, um, it's made it infinitely better. So, for me, my main sport is is net ball which I don't think you have in the US so much. Um, but I think before runner, I just used to run sporadically kind of around net ball, but I would be doing net ball or also crossfit as my kind of like secondary sport. Um, and so I didn't really necessarily like have a real passion or love for it. And I think since a joining runner, but b just like starting to use the app, it's now made me so excited to run like as as often as I can. And also like if you told me 3 years ago that I would be doing a marathon, I would have absolutely like laughed out loud. So, I think it's um yeah, a real testament to like how much I've improved and how like incredible

the app is. So, yeah. Well, congratulations on taking the leap. As I said, I took I ran my first marathon in Steamboat here in Colorado a couple years ago and it was definitely a lot of work, but man, what a great experience and I I hope I get to do it again one day. It was it was wonderful. Um what's the top tip that you have for growth leaders trying to succeed in crowded categories like health and fitness? Really focus in on product. Um I think for us like really honing in on your product and your differentiator um and how you can amplify that not just on the product itself but as in like in the correct spaces is probably the key. So what I mean by that is for us we know that like training for a race is like a really really like core core core USP for us and we know that our highest value users will will be those who are training for races and so we think about that on the product but then we also

really hone in on that on like the marketing acquisition community side of things as well. So um yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense. I just think focus is so important and I think with AI democratizing the world of software development it just means there going to be more and more apps. there's going to be more and more competition and so it makes focus even more important because I think there are going to be these smaller and smaller and more specialized niches that suddenly become viable but you got to stay focused because the last thing you want is to try to be everything for everyone and then fail to be truly special for anyone. So last question here and it relates to AI. How will AI change health and fitness and specifically running over the next two to three years? Do you think I think that there'll probably be more personalization? I think that there will be more personalization, but I think

that with that increased demand for personalization, because I think that consumers are craving more and more personalized experience, especially when it comes to the health and fitness in general, there'll be a much less human touch. And I think that's like where people need to find the balance because I think that the the greater degree of personalization and being able to personalize at scale will be fantastic, but losing like human input and human understanding when it comes to your health and fitness and running goals. um is fundamentally so important and I think that like there is a risk of that maybe being lost um at the kind of like cost of being able to scale things which I think is where AI will probably come in and and help people scale. Yeah, I think that's so well said and it's a great point to end on, right? Because AI has the potential to unlock so many opportunities for human flourishing, but

also I think humans are at their best when they're outside, when they are paying attention to their physical fitness and their mental and emotional fitness. And so if AI can be used to enhance existing products like Straa and Runna uh rather than replace them, then uh I think that is good for everyone. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Miranda. It's been such a pleasure. Any words that you want to leave the audience with before we wrap up here? Uh, it's just been an absolute pleasure. It's been great chatting. I really, really enjoyed it. Um, and I hope everybody feels inspired to get out and and go on a run or at least um, yeah, get out in sunshine in the fresh air and enjoy the rest of the day. Well said and likewise. Thanks, Miranda. And best of luck with the Strava integration. Thanks, Phil.