Strava, the exercise monitoring and social neighborhood platform utilized by greater than 100 million individuals globally, has acquired Fatmap, a European firm that’s constructing a high-resolution 3D international map platform for the good outside. Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Based in 2009, Strava has emerged as one of many preeminent exercise monitoring providers, proving significantly common within the biking and working fraternities, which use the Strava app to plot routes, converse with fellow athletes and report all their motion for posterity by way of GPS. The corporate has more and more been focusing on hikers too, and final 12 months it launched a brand new path sports activities and routes possibility aimed toward walkers, mountain bikers and path runners.
Fatmap, for its half, was based a decade in the past, with an initial focus on providing ski resorts with high-resolution digital maps. Within the intervening years, the corporate has labored with varied satellite tv for pc and aerospace corporations to bolster its platform with detailed maps incorporating summits, rivers, passes, paths, huts and extra, arming anybody venturing into mountainous terrain the data they should know precisely what they’ll encounter earlier than they arrive.
Fatmap in motion. Picture Credit: Fatmap / Strava
With 1.6 million registered customers, Fatmap’s mission, finally, is to be the Google Maps of the great outdoors, with a premium subscription ($30/12 months) unlocking entry to additional options akin to downloadable maps and route planning within the cell app.
Built-in
The final word long-term objective for Strava is to combine Fatmap’s core platform into Strava itself, however that might be a resource-intensive endeavor that received’t occur in a single day. And that’s the reason Strava is working to create a single sign-on (SSO) integration within the near-term, that means that subscribers will be capable to entry the total Fatmap feature-set by logging into the Fatmap app with their Strava credentials.
Whereas Strava and Fatmap will stay separate merchandise for now, Strava stated that it’ll determine sooner or later whether or not Fatmap will dwell on as a standalone product as soon as the technical integration has taken place.
CEO and co-founder Michael Horvath, who stepped down in 2013 earlier than returning as head honcho six years later, stated that the Fatmap acquisition is a part of Strava’s “ongoing funding to supply a best-in-class digital expertise” for these searching for an energetic life-style.
“The place different map platforms have been designed for navigating streets and cities, Fatmap constructed a map designed particularly to assist individuals discover the outside,” Horvath advised in a Q&A. “We are going to allow Fatmap know-how in all of Strava’s providers, empowering anybody to find and plan an outside expertise with curated native guides, factors of curiosity and security data.”
When it comes to timescales, Strava stated that it has arrange a devoted workforce tasked with integrating Fatmap, and it anticipates this to begin exhibiting up inside Strava from round mid-2023. The corporate was additionally fast to emphasize that Fatmap’s tech might be accessible to each free and paid-for Strava members, although sure options regarding maps, discovery and route-planning might be reserved for paying subscribers.
Strava offered with the next mockup photos to provide an thought of what Fatmap may seem like inside a future incarnation of Strava.
Strava / Fatmap integration mockup. Picture Credit: Strava
Strava has raised north of $150 million in funding since its inception, with big-name backers together with esteemed Silicon Valley investor Sequoia Capital, however the firm hasn’t engaged in a lot acquisition exercise in its 14-year historical past. Strava did acquire damage prevention app Recover Athletics final Might for an undisclosed determine although, and at present we’ve realized that Strava also bought on-line athlete neighborhood Prokit in 2021, one thing that Strava didn’t formally announce on the time.
It’s clear that the proprietary 3D mapping know-how Fatmap had developed would have taken an excessive amount of time and assets for Strava to duplicate itself from scratch, which is why shopping for Fatmap outright possible made extra sense on this occasion.
“Strava’s major objective is to be the digital expertise on the heart of energetic individuals’s lives — that features providing individuals a holistic view of their energetic life-style, irrespective of the place they dwell, which sport they love or what machine they use,” Horvath stated. “This idea fuels a lot of our strategic pondering and product roadmap. For acquisitions particularly, we discover these that may speed up our strategic imaginative and prescient to create one of the best subscription service for energetic individuals serving the biggest energetic neighborhood on the earth.”
Whereas Fatmap is integrated within the U.Okay. and has a part of its workforce primarily based there, the majority of its 50 workers are unfold throughout workplaces in France, Germany and Lithuania. Strava stated that it’s maintaining the Fatmap workforce in tact, and every will proceed to report back to Fatmap founder and CEO Misha Gopaul, who will now function VP of Product at Strava and report back to Strava’s chief product and know-how officer Steve Lloyd.
Whereas Strava isn’t revealing how a lot it paid for Fatmap, the startup had raised round $30 million* in funding, together with a hitherto undisclosed $16.5 million spherical that it stated it closed in early 2020 from 83North, P101 and the European Area Company (ESA). So whereas the worth of this deal may comfortably be within the nine-digit vary, having Fatmap on board doubtlessly makes Strava a far stickier proposition for a larger variety of individuals — not simply biking and working for which it’s higher recognized.
*An earlier model of this text acknowledged that Fatmap had raised round $8 million in funding to date.
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