For serious athletes, Strava offers quite a lot and segment competition is a very small thing. I'd go as far as to argue that for this slice of customers, segments are just for fun and there are other real reasons to use it. Here's a quick overview of the things I find valuable that I wouldn't want to go without:

- Big community, with automatic ride grouping (showing rides together in the feed when you ride with other people). Ability to social network by leaving comments, adding photos, writing a story and so on.

- In depth (although I would love some more) ability to analyze your own performance: plot comparisons between segment rides by time; compare your power curves (W / duration) across different time spans; track your running PRs (1k, 1mi, 5k, 10k, 1/2 and full marathons);

- Calculate TSS (training stress score) per ride and per week in order to track training stress. Also supports tracking weekly duration, distance and so on. This is done based on HR during the exercise, I believe there are well known formulas. - Integration with a bunch of external services. I want the rides I track with my Garmin devices that end up in Garmin Connect to automatically end up in Strava. There's a thing called tapiriik (https://tapiriik.com/) that could be helpful here, it's also open source.

- Very nice route planner. There are other services for that (e.g. Komoot), but Strava is able to incorporate their data trove to make smart routings. When I make a route in Strava it also ends up on my Garmin devices, which is extra nice. No transferring GPX files left and right. The fact that it's built-in, easy to use and "right there" makes it quite an attractive option.

- Nice API. I hate that Strava is adding more and more limitations to it, but some of the local cycling groups use it to organize group rides and it works quite well. I believe any competitors will need to outdo Strava in terms of API coverage and limitations.

- Fitness & Freshness graphs, ability to create training plans, ride cropping, exploration ... many other things I don't use daily, but they're just there.

One should also probably read up on previous efforts in that sphere. Endomondo used to be pretty big, but then kinda just fizzled out. There's Ride with GPS and a bunch of others, but nothing on the scale of Strava. Why? I don't have a clear answer, it's probably a multitude of factors, even product timing.

As a daily user (7 workouts / week), group ride organizer and outdoor person, I'd be happy to discuss Strava and its alternatives further.

All my rides are now private. I sync them with GoldenCheetah that provides much more advanced and useful metrics.

The only thing that keeps me subscribed is the ability to draw a route with a finger on a map, and the app instantly generate a route based on rides done by other riders making a heat map.

Unfortunately the route generally needs to pass through Komoot to clean parts of it that are not appropriate to the type of bike chosen.

It does more than the Strava built-ins, but less than e.g. Golden Cheetah, while being much more approachable and easy to use than the latter. I'm not affiliated with the app or the developer (although I've donated for it because I really appreciate the product and the effort he is putting in).

[1] https://github.com/thomaschampagne/elevate/ [2] https://twitter.com/champagnethomas

This is how I record all of my activities to Strava. There's no need for an external sync service.

Maybe serious athletes and socialites rely on some specific Strava only functionality, but I find the Garmin service has pretty much completely replaced Strava in my own usage.

One of the best things about Strava which is the case for most social apps, is that the majority of people are using Strava. So I get to see all of my friends and colleagues riding, as opposed to each of us being on separate networks.

Also, Strava has spent expertise around topics like privacy and safety and made opinionated design decisions based on those. Have you considered your take on these topics? eg: Can someone make a random segment somewhere and find all the people who bike there?

Does anyone know if Strava is profitable or if it is still burning cash? Tough business - I started using it in the early days and was happy to be a paying customer when they started offering that. (A) to help fund more services and (B) I hate the free software model which I realize Strava was originally as they bootstrapped a user base.

A killer feature for Strava (or anyone in the social activity game) would be allowing me to setup social rides with my followers/friends. For example, I plan on doing this loop at 8am Saturday - and anyone who follows can hit ‘+1’ and let me know I’ll join. Where I live, everyone does similar road rides, but won’t coordinate times which would be a great social opportunity.

There’s no messaging or ability to setup casual rides - and if community is a key pillar for them, it’s a huge way to move further up the activity stack to planning activities (which they already have some basic functionality for mapping and planning routes for yourself).

As another poster mentioned, there are privacy considerations but make it opt in and if implemented well would be a killer feature to lock in community as a pillar (and moat). I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. FB is trying to do this with community on WhatsApp. Someone please eat their lunch. Anyone.

Initially it was for tracking all sorts of gear you use in your activities (because strava only tracks bike or shoes). I then added workouts, and challenges (but then strava added custom challenges...).

My workout component allows you to share the url with friends and they can RSVP, you can add the route and stuff. But I don't have a ton of social features, mainly because I built this for myself and somehow organically it has grown to a few hundred users. I'm not really looking to grow it... but it does everything I need and others seem to find it useful...

That doesn't seem to be true anymore. These days I can add any kind of gear to my bikes in Strava and track its usage over time. I use it for tracking tire or chain mileage in particular.

For example, in Strava I can add a bike and it's components. In MGG I can add a hashtag rule (say #road or #mtb) and MGG will add whatever components to that ride. Be it a HRM, helmet, tire, chain, bike etc.

Lastly - MGG will support this for any activity, not just cycling. Like when I run I use different shoes for trail vs road. And again, maybe HRM or running pack too. I like to track everything I use to measure ROI and durability.

Anyway... been a paying Strava user since 2013, glad to see they are adding stuff still.

From browsing comments, nobody on HN rides downhill. Which makes sense. A solid year of no concussions from some forced time off (hey titanium rods, what's up) and I'm a better programmer than I've ever been.

But anyway.

Strava won't track downhill runs as separate from the lift ride. Everyone agrees that this sucks. Nobody has made a move at a solution (as far as I know).

If MTBX has solved this problem, and no others, it's worth its weight in gold.

It would have a variety of "widgets" that let participants vote or give feedback on what times work for them, where they might want to go (what hike, bike route, restaurant), and who's carpooling with whom. The page would have a short URL that's easy to forward to more people who might want to join.

Lots of activity-focused clubs would probably welcome such a thing, especially if they could create a landing page with all their club's future activities listed.

Club -> Add Club Event

Specify time, meetup location, route, repeat interval, etc.

I don’t want to force people to join a/my/some club. I want to let my followers and friends see I plan to do a 80km ride Saturday morning and let them simply tag along. It could easily be integrated into the feed or as a separate section.

I’d argue social activity is one of the biggest opportunities for Strava to lock themselves in as the hub of all movement activity - but it requires supporting how people like to naturally organize in a local community.

I also hope you're paying attention to some of the privacy concerns of Strava. Strava makes it stupidly trivial to stalk runners. Some famous runners like Molly Seidel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2w_omUCVCs, starts at about 1:50) are bringing this up, and Strava hasn't done much to address them. "Features" like real time tracking, which may be a no-brainer to us in tech, are a huge safety liability to users.

And no, it's not as simple as "Why don't they just turn it off?" Self-marketing in a sport that gets little financial support is incredibly important, and can be done safely if the product managers are attentive.

Good luck!

Strava is a lot more than mountain biking, or even biking. Most of the people I know/follow run or hike. Some of them may also bike or mountain bike. I regularly see virtual bike rides, skiing and swimming too.

Strava supports Ride, Run, Swim, Walk, Hike, Alpine Ski, Backcountry Ski, Canoe, Crossfit, E-Bike Ride, Elliptical, Handcycle, Ice Skate, Inline Skate, Kayak, Kitesurf Session, Nordic Ski, Rock Climb, Roller Ski, Row, Snowboard, Snowshoe, Stair Stepper, Stand Up Paddle, Surf, Velomobile, Virtual Ride, Virtual Run, Weight Training, Windsurf Session, Wheelchair Workout, and Yoga.

Strava is also about more than KOMs or segments. For me, I don't really care about segments these days. I do care about routes. I really like the heat maps, and the start points that they've added recently. I like finding new places to hike or trail run. The SF Bay Area is an amazing place, and I can always find some interesting trail I haven't been on yet. There's a lot of room for improvement in the route building, finding, sorting, and organizing.

Gets data from strava.

Intervals - as well as TP, TR, Zwift, Garmin Connect, and Strava, are pretty lightweight on the free side (let's face it, you get a lot for free) and they are all integrated to some extent (push/pull varies by app).

I also advocate for supporting David (Intervals) with a $12 every 3-month commitment. It's an incredible resource.

Also gets data from Strava (and so much more, mostly free).

I started https://intervals.icu about 3 years ago to scratch a cycling itch and learn Vue.js. It has evolved into an analysis and planning tool for all sports. I have avoided segments because I get data from Strava (and Garmin/Suunto/Polar etc.) and that is very much their bread and butter.

Intervals.icu suddenly got popular about 18 months or so ago and I had to decide to drop it or spend my whole vacation doing devops work. It also started to cost real money to run. So I started a Patreon and then implemented Stripe. Lots of people have been nice enough to signup for the optional subscription (tx guys!). But I will probably add premium features in future to encourage more signups.

It is a lot of work! Large amounts of data to process and store and lots of support (have to put less bugs in the platform!). My next steps are to make this not just me.

Intervals.icu has an open API and a number of apps already integrate with it.

I don't like the idea of strapping my phone to the frame like that. I bought an Apple Watch so that I didn't need to take my fragile phone with me.

Also, Strava's watch app is very basic and boring, so I use a different app to record "Workout-doors", and then sync my activities to Strava for the Social Network aspect of it.

I suspect it'll be impossible to compete with Strava for the Social Network ability, but I think there is room for the apps that record your activities and give better real-time and post-activity stats.

Strava has a fairly robust free product and the nominal monthly cost for their premium service seems worth it to those more serious and want the extras. I guess I'm not seeing what you're addressing?

Create new formula for performance. Hire respected thought leaders. Convert users to your way of measuring new performance.

Use the fact that the big guys don't use this measurement as your ad copy. If they add support for it that will generate a certain status for you which can make your brand.

Is it just brute force checking every gps lat/long point in an activity to see if any path numbers are "close" to any segment lat/long start point? And then if so, to additionally match an end-point, and then if so see how many points inbetween match?

Seems like a heck of a db query, math ranges? Are the gps point normalized somehow to accelerate the process or just stored as original floating point and let the db engine do the heavy work?

adding: oooh it's right in the patent, figure 9+

Echoing what a few others have said, I think you should focus on feature differentiation from Strava; be the very best product for tracking or analyzing mountain bike rides, and don't try to differentiate on price. Make the product awesome then price it however makes sense - probably a free tier and paid features (like Strava) but up to you.

Have you thought about how you would defend yourself in a patent infringement suit?

[0] Defining and matching segments https://patents.google.com/patent/US9116922B2/en

I have had an idea kicking around for a long time to democratize segments via openstreetmap data, as it seems like a silly category of data for a single corporation to have locked up. They really rustled my jimmies when they reduced the views of leaderboards created with user submitted data.

I guess everyone has until 2031 to figure this out unless they want to have some kind of silly patent fight

1. Segment creation - over the decade+ that Strava has existed, people have eventually created enough segments to cover most riding areas. Most people won't be interested enough to create segments - Garmin has had segments for years and I don't see a single segment created on any of my runs, nor am I willing to create segments myself. So the feature is unused.

You can attempt to create segments yourself across all users by leveraging another source of data (like how Strava is using pre-defined Zwift routes instead of allowing user-input segments) or some programmatic way.

2. Global leaderboards - Strava is primarily a social media site, so all rides and runs are public. This means leaderboards are heavily populated. Having a KOM or PR in Strava is somewhat meaningful; but on a platform with few users, the KOM or PR is not. I don't know how you would address this without a lot of user data.

They do some ride recording, but maybe getting bought by Outside and integrating with trail forks would be an exit move here.

Now given that, I think your app looks quite cool, I just wouldn't compare it to Strava. I would highly recommend instead of positioning yourself as a competitor to Strava, is to allow users to record on your app and post to Strava. I use Garmin to record my data and then post to Strava because Garmin gives me a lot more detail than Strava, but I can still compare myself to millions of users on Strava that don't use Garmin.

https://gitlab.com/pikatrack/pikatrack/-/wikis/user-guide

https://gitlab.com/pikatrack/pikatrack

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9kw0mz/i_have_been_b...

I couldn't figure out how to have the devices just automatically send the data where I wanted it to go once you hit the stop/save button on them.

The only feature/reason why I still use strava is to send my wife the URL that will tell her exactly where on the map I am (beacon text). I'm guessing there are probably other open source solutions to this problem I have just not looked.

Good luck with the project - I like the focus on MTB especially since Strava deleted all the interesting downhill segments (which was a loss to us all) and also with Trailforks going the subscription route.

One thing I wish Strava would add - better route discovery. I know they recently added “routes” to the maps tab that you can filter based on elevation and distance, but I find they only show the same 2-3 routes every time I look.

Because of this, I’ve ended up going to segments I ride on, looking at the top performers of the day, then checking their routes to discover new places to ride.

If they had “route influencers” or some way to tap into the vast local knowledges that some users have I would love that.

However I think Strava's route planning features are too basic. Unless I'm very familiar with the region I will always prefer Komoot for route planning as it allows me to get detailed information about the surface (which is very important for a road bike). Strava's surface information are too limited and heatmaps don't make up for it.

Interestingly enough Komoot allows you to publish and present your routes but they don't have the user base to make it worthwhile. At least in my circles it seems as if everyone just uses Komoot in private. It doesn't really feel like a social network or community.

Once the iPhone standardizes all day, always on screen, with 3rd party data displays, bike computers will become obsolete. For now, iOS Maps just needs to be better about displaying an upcoming navigation prompt and then shutting off the screen entirely until the next prompt.

This seems promising, going try it on my next ride.

I honestly think the next thing to do would build a decent app to replace a bike GPS... there is nothing special about a head unit other than the ANT+ radio (which is superior to BLE in a lot of ways). The only one that comes close is shimano's e-tube ride, but they abandoned the app before adding critical features like GPX import. Everything else I can find is bloatware or is just really awkward to use.

Quality bike computers are specifically designed to fill a niche that smartphones just can't do, which is why the market still exists.

Strava, et al, work fine for a lot of uses, but as one gets into more serious riding a dedicated bike computer is the way to go. This is because of the hardware, not due to a lack of app to be run on a general purpose mobile.

Plus, it keeps my phone free for photography.

I’ve used it for a few years, and battery life is excellent compared to all the other tracking apps I tried.

That being said, the head unit is not as sexy hardware. The UI looks dated, the screen tech isn't OLED, and the battery life is "just ok" given the age of the other tech.

The final thing is I actually trust Garmin not to "sell my data", unlike google/apple.

I guess consider jumping ship if I had the Connect ecosystem, just done a little better!

Yeah watched some videos and clearly the answer would be no. What’s the model of top-tube phone mount you used?