In a world where Garmin navigates planes and boats around the globe, you would think that no one would be able to touch them in the cycling space, but somehow a challenger emerged. It almost makes no sense. This isn't a company that was built in Silicon Valley, but from the obsession of endurance athletes to create products for endurance athletes.
Wahoo has become one of the most respected names in indoor training and connected fitness. Today I'm sitting down with Gar Joyce, the CEO of Wahoo. He's led giants like Mercedes, Delta, Proterra, and now he's steering one of the most innovative brands in sports tech.
We talk about everything on this. What he learned from legacy businesses like aviation and automotive, and how Wahoo plans to grow in a world dominated by Apple and Garmin, and where the future of indoor training, data, and AI is really headed. If you care about performance, innovation, or the future of cycling tech, this one's for you.
It's Garrett Joyce. Garrett, welcome to the Road Map podcast. >> Thank you.
I appreciate uh the opportunity to be on it with you. >> This is the intersection, like I was saying offline of two of my major passions in life, like business and cycling. So, I'm like a proper fanboy ready to like scoop inside your brain here and figure out how all this works.
to kick it off the the thing I'm most intrigued about about Wahoo and you'll maybe have good perspective on this because you've come from Mercedes, Delta, Proter Terra, and now you're into Wahoo. So, you got to experience Wahoo like I experienced Wahoo from the outside before becoming an insider. Like, how does Wahoo exist in a world where Garmin navigates planes through the sky and ships through the sea?
How is there how have Wahoo carved out this space that we still rely on it? >> That's a great question and it probably uh goes straight to the genesis of of Wahoo. Uh really this is a company that's founded and built on products that are designed and developed by athletes for athletes.
And that's our single greatest strength. we truly understand the psyche and mindset of an athlete and I know that as you said I as a customer who uses the product before I joined the organization um there's a certain intuition behind the product an instinct and affinity for the product and the application of the product for cyclists uh runners that that just is makes it much easier to use our products it like it takes the pain and suffering out of devices that have developed by people that are not necessarily as connected to the athlete as we are. I think that really is what's at the core of everything we do.
And that's how we became the sort of David to the Goliath if you like. >> Yeah. And if there's an interesting observational uh take on this as well.
If you look and you're looking to start a company now, the strength of a company like Garmin, it's the bulk they have. It's the thousands of employees, but it's also their weakness because you can pick off a small corner of that business like cycling navigation and do it better, faster, more nimble than they're ever going to be able to do it by being an underdog. >> That's exactly right.
You summed it up. That that's really the way we go at it. And uh we try not to stray from that.
>> When you came in from the legacy worlds, you're coming in from Mercedes Delta. What are you bringing with you from those industries that the cycling tech world specifically is missing? >> Two things.
Uh, one, uh, passion. Uh, fortunately, I've now had the benefit of, uh, doing two things in my career that I'm exceptionally passionate about. One is automotive industry.
I love cars. I always have since I was three or four years old. And I spent many years working in that environment.
And you know, every day I went to work, I I loved everything I did. Uh this is the same for me. I've been a cyclist since I was 10 years old.
Uh bought my first bike, saving money that I asked my friends to give me for my birthday party. I was very strategic about it. And uh I got a bunch of gift cards and cash and I that afternoon went off to the store and bought myself my first bike.
And uh ever since then, I've loved the sport of cycling. I I just get tremendous joy out of it. And so now I get to uh enjoy the benefit of that as a job.
So passion is one big thing. Uh and then the second is obviously through my career I have developed some uh just life skill uh combined with my academic sort of background and uh in running big businesses and startup businesses. I've I've got a pretty good cross-section of uh small to large.
Uh, I run teams that are 40,000 plus people large on a global scale in almost every country in the world. And I've run teams that are less than 100 people. >> And so, you know, you learn different things when you do that.
And uh you know I've got this kind of cross-section of leadership experience that I bring to the business that uh I think you just helped a company that is the David to the Goliath kind of um fighter in this market uh to help us continue to grow as we have become a legitimate competitor uh in the space. Do you see the transition for companies likely happening both ways? Like you've come from the legacy business world into the cycling space.
Do you think we'll see more cycling CEOs transitioning into the legacy space? Do you think how cross transferable are those skills in both directions? >> Uh gosh, that's a good question.
I would probably say no, honestly. Um for two reasons. One, I think it's it's a fun industry to be and so I'm not sure too many people would want to make that transition.
Uh but secondly, it you it's less likely to provide you with those. Yeah, it's not a if you're a specialist in the space, it may not be something that you want to translate into other environments. I'm a little unique in that I made the decision when I left Mercedes to do something completely different.
It was a big risk. It's kind of like, you know, you've made a a life-changing transformation when you went from a legal practitioner who was an innovator into something that is now a completely my parents. >> Yeah.
But I mean it's you're happy and so I made the decision to make a complete change and I went from the automotive industry into the airline industry. For the first two, three months, I thought I was I was an absolute idiot. And I wondered, there were days where I thought I just don't know if I'm ever going to learn this industry.
It was the best thing I ever did cuz the learning curve that I went through was one of the steepest I've ever had because I literally had to learn something completely new. I wasn't adding tools to my toolbox. I was building a whole new toolbox.
And that gave me the confidence to and honestly the enjoyment that learning something new is something I can continue to do through my career. And then that gave me the confidence when I left the airline industry to go into a battery electric startup. Again, a whole new uh adventure.
And I experienced the same level of learning and the same level of kind of reward. and and now I've kind of, you know, gone into this industry and I'm experiencing the same thing. So I think it's a something I would encourage people to do because you you truly do stretch and grow, but it does take a unique personality to do it because it's not easy.
It's uncomfortable. >> Absolutely. >> And painful in the beginning.
Do you see a difference in how cycling you know I guess we have one track which is you know to use a cliche it's the welltrodden one of the pro cyclist becomes ex-p pro cyclist moves into industry graduates up a company and you know there's great people like you like Ian Boswell there great people who have come this track so it's not to diminish it or downplay it they've make serious contributions to moving our sport forward do you see a difference in how that use case or person a views the cycling industry versus how you view the cycling industry in terms of opportunities and threats to it. >> I think the personality you described if you take someone like an Ian Boswell versus me, we've landed in the same company having traveled two very different paths. To me, that is the true kind of essence of what diversity means.
I think we use the word diversity as just way too much of a cliche in the modern business place. But as somebody that's traveled around the world with my career, I come from South Africa. I've worked in Europe.
I've worked in the US, Canada, back to the US, and I've worked in global markets running the businesses that I have. Uh I really have learned what it means to embrace diversity. Um I left South Africa, I went to Europe, I lived in Amsterdam, worked in the Netherlands.
I had naively entered that market with the belief that well you know look I just take the tools that I have put them in that market everything's going to be fine. I couldn't have been more wrong. I could not have been more wrong.
Uh for the first six months that I worked there I I found this deep sense of frustration that I could not move as quickly as I had in my career in South Africa. I don't mean me personally. I mean in terms of driving change and implementing actions >> and and I realized after a certain amount of time it was because I hadn't taken the time to understand culture and language and so I then invested in learning the language.
I spent more time truly understanding the culture. And once I did that, I could communicate with the people on my team and the dealer network that we worked with in a very different way. And then I started to make progress.
And that was a mo it was an aha moment for me which opened my eyes to the idea of like you have to see the world from multiple perspectives and you have to embrace different people's inputs and perspectives if you really want to make progress in a global community. And so when you do that then suddenly it changes the way you do business. So coming back to the point about Ian and myself, we've traveled two different pathways and landed in the same company.
And I deeply value Ian's input when I talk to him about stuff because he knows things that I could never know. I have never raced in a propelon and I never will. So I will never be able.
I don't think so. um I cannot put myself in those shoes. It's it's just something I can't do.
So So he's a guy who can. >> And so if you really open your mind to that diversity and go, "All right, Ian, like when it comes to that input, you are the master voice here, not me, and I need to listen." And if you do that for the 200 employees we have, um then you really are embracing diverse thinking.
And I think that's when you make you make companies and communities great because because you just are more you're richer for the experience. But you have to be open to that. >> How do you think about the market size in cycling?
Because I spent a lot of time thinking about this when we were launching the podcast. I stepped back and I if I was going to come into the podcast space, I didn't want to come in and have the 70th most popular cycling podcast. So the problem we're solving for is what how do you become the biggest player in a space that's already quite saturated.
So I looked for examples of companies in the cycling space that were attracting a totally new demographic. And the company I landed on really deconstructing was Pelaton as a someone that's come through you know my dad working on bikes after hours since I was a kid a cycling purist. It wasn't a company I loved because it wasn't a company in my world.
But what I through this analysis, what I began to understand is when I looked at my friends consumption habits around new bikes, one of them would ride a Specialized this year, they'd ride a giant the next year. So like Specialized lose a customer for a joint to gain a customer. It's like zero some game.
Pelaton played a totally different game. And I realized this when my aunt called me who like smokes like 50 cigarettes a day, probably heavy drinker and says, "Hey, I got a Pelaton." Then I got to observe her behavior over a period of months where it's like, "Oh, hey, what's the story with those padded shorts?
Oh, how do you use those pedals to clip in? Everyone's talking about eating on the bike. Do I need to eat on the bike?
Oh, I got these gels. What time's your group ride meet on a Saturday? What sort of kit do you wear when you're going on a group ride?
What do you use for navigation? What's Training Peaks?" Like all the way up to like what's W Prime now?
And it's like we're getting into it. It's like this is a totally new customer that's on boarded into our world. So, we set out to create the audio version of that.
How do we find someone and meet them where they are? And we had this moment quite starkly when uh Sarah, my fiance, who came on the podcast as a co-host accidentally one day and I'd had George Happy on the podcast that week and I'd had a George Hinapy poster on my wall when I was a kid. I was like fanboying out here for George Hinappy and we looked at the downloads like a month later and I was like, "Whoa, the episode with Sarah has got more downloads than the episode with George Hinappy.
" And she was talking about like like I don't understand. Why can't I turn my bike upside down when I puncture? It's stupid.
It makes no sense. And I was like just don't do it. Don't put don't turn your bike upside down when you puncture.
Just don't do it that way. And we figured out after I guess this is getting shared because this is what people are connecting with. So it's getting shared into WhatsApp groups.
It's getting shared into cycling clubs. We tried it again. Sarah comes on again.
Another stupid like, "Oh, do I wear underwear under my cycling shorts?" It it it outstrips the Tyler Hamilton episode. And I'm like, "Whoa, what's going on?
" on and that's when we set out to kind of create this we call it the yellow brick road of where do we meet somebody where they are which is outside of our cycling world and on board them to the point where they can listen to a two-hour conversation with me and you or me and Dan Bingham talking about frontal area I worry when I look at the cycling space that we're just eating each other's dinner that for garment to gain a customer wahoo lose a customer and vice versa how do you look at that competitive landscape >> so we're that's a great question and it was one of the you know the first things we started working on was you know what's the growth strategy look like for our business first I'll mention that as you you probably know we launched our kicker run product roughly a year ago uh which has seen us sort of take the disruptive technology mindset we have into the running space as well um and the reason for that is our mission is you building the better athlete in all of us And the one thing that I recognized is the athlete market that we had historically sort of been thinking about when we build our products was the sort of apex athlete, the high performing cyclist, high performing triathlete, high performing runner. And and that's a wonderful place to target products because that's where they get battle tested. That's where you really learn whether your products truly do add value for people who use them every single day in a very high performance environment.
That's wonderful. So they they have credibility. But we were playing in a market that's probably the 40 million athletes across the globe that are really hardcore dedicated athletes that are training three, four, five, six, seven times a week and doing a lot of mileage, very sophisticated athletes.
I don't consider myself one of those, but I was one of the customers that found tremendous value in using a Wahoo Kicker, for example. And the reason I found it valuable is it offered me a tremendous fitness opportunity >> but with an experience that resonated with me because it felt as close to real world cycling as I could get which is a sport I love doing. uh there is no reason why athletes and aspirin athletes beyond the 40 million sort of apex athletes shouldn't enjoy that benefit.
And when you think about a consumer base that has an interest just to become athletically healthy um and engage in some sort of sporting endeavor that adds richness to their life, that market is more like 4 to 600 million people. And that's where I tip my head to Pelaton because Pelaton recognized that. They realized that when they started, an indoor bike trainer is a great way to build cardiovascular fitness and strength if you train right and be entertained at the same time.
And so I think we have a product that absolutely achieves that. And you don't have to be a diehard cyclist or runner. Uh there are people out there that just want the fitness benefit.
And there's also, if you think about football players and soccer players, um, any kind of an athlete that requires some level of endurance training as part of their training discipline, our products are incredibly good to unlock that value. So, we've changed the way we think about the market and who our target audience is. And in doing that, we're not playing the one forone game that you're describing.
We're look I am looking to bring more people into the space so that we can grow the sport as a whole because I believe that you know what's the expression the rising tide lifts all boats. >> There's something strange happening in endurance sports and cycling right now. Nobody's talking about Nomio but everybody seems to be using it.
They've no influencer campaigns. They've no glossy ads. They just have the quiet word of mouth between riders who've seen what it does firsthand.
I spotted this on Mads Person's Instagram account. one of those little buttons and I got curious. So, I did two things.
Firstly, I booked a podcast with Dr. Philip Larson. He's the scientist behind it.
And secondly, I ran my own little bro science experiment. Here's what I done. 4 days, I went out to the exact same hill and I rode the first 3 minutes of it.
Pretty much the same legs. Day one, I went 463 watts. Day two, 462 watts.
No Nomo, one watt difference between those two efforts. Then I added Nomio on day three. 470 W.
Next day 472 watts. Now this is bro science. This isn't peer reviewed.
But honestly, it's real and it got my attention. And when I sat down with Dr. Larsen, one of the top physiologists in endurance sports, he explained why this might be happening to me.
Nomio's broccoli sprout extract. It triggers something called NRF2, a pathway that helps your body adapt to stress, recover faster, and buffer lactate. The result, cyclists in a study showed lower lactate, higher power, and faster recovery without changing their training.
This isn't hype. This is the next chapter of endurance science. And if you want to try it for yourself, the good folks at Nomio have given our Roadman listeners a discount to check it out for the first time and just see if it works.
So Roadman listeners can get 20% off with the code roadman cycling 20@nomio.com. Let's use code roadman cycling 20@nomio.
com. Yeah. And it then in terms of segmenting that potential target market.
So you have you're call it the apex of your 40 million. I would suggest and maybe I'm incorrect that the two other use cases the football player or the you know the real novice cyclist are two different customer avatars because one has a potential to travel up a value ladder whereas the soccer player probably doesn't. He's probably sticking with hey I'm using the bike for just cycling cross trainining.
>> Correct. I could agree 100% they have different customers. I think then to your point you could take that 4 to600 million and segment it further which we've done.
Uh and then the use case is different for different people. So to your point you know if we take somebody who's training for soccer it's a complimentary training media that gives them a tool that's far more engaging and perhaps you know helps them just get the exercise done versus someone who's a new entrance into the sport of cycling. and will potentially grow into an outdoor cyclist who buys a bike, buys cycling shoes, buys power pedals, buys a bike computer, starts to consume gels as you described, buys a helmet, buys a Now you bring an a customer into an entire system, an ecosystem that uh creates monetary value across the entire uh cycling portfolio.
So, as you're capturing a customer and they're going from a casual customer to becoming a wahoo again looking, what's the decision- making matrix you use to assess whether a new product idea should actually come to market? Like, you know, I actually got in the post yesterday. It was good timing.
I'm starting to do a bit more time trial and got my new Aero pedals. >> Haven't even cracked them out of the box yet. But, you know, when something like that comes into full production, how have you how have you stress tested it before to make sure this is in fact the correct next product in the Wahoo line?
>> I I'll give two parts to that answer. One is the you asked me earlier about you bringing my experience to a company like Wahoo. You know, where's the value in that?
Um, focus as I've learned over many years uh in industry is either a great strength or a great weakness if you have a lack of focus. And so when you're an innovationdriven company, typically the ideas outstrip the capacity to execute. And so for a business that's in the current state that we're in, one of our most challenging tasks is to stay focused because we have more ideas than we can execute on.
>> Yeah. And so coming to this second part of the answer to get to your qu question specifically, which one of those ideas should find its way into development, production in the market versus what should die on the vine and just get put on the parking lot list is one of our most challenging tasks. >> Yeah, I would have thought so.
>> So we rely heavily on a couple of things. One, our mission, which is building the better athlete. We we try and stay really true to that.
Say like, is this something that will truly help an athlete become a better athlete and better is a relative term, right? So you could be a somebody who's starting from the couch and never done anything. Then you better is get onto a trainer, start to experience this world which is really cool, really beneficial, helps you become somebody who's living a healthier lifestyle or it's somebody who's performing, you know, in the top 10 as a as an amateur cyclist who participates in local crit races, for example, and you want to become a winner.
We have the tools to do that, too. Um it's that spectrum of how do you become a better athlete that helps us answer that question. And to answer that you've got to rely on athletes, right?
So what what does an athlete use? And we have two major advantages. One, our company is full of athletes.
The people who work here tend to gravitate towards our mission. And so everything we design, develop, and test is tested by people who actually use the product. as the old say, we eat our own dog food.
Um, and then we have a really good group of ambassadors out there. I mean, you mentioned some of them, uh, just as we were getting going, you know, Lachland as an example, Ian Bosle, who works for us, and many other pro athletes that we work with that help us validate and test whether the product really is credible and does provide that value to a consumer. So that when you take it to that whole spectrum of customers, we can actually legitimately say like this is a real credible product that's going to help you become a better athlete.
>> Yeah. >> And hopefully in doing that, it also gives you a better experience. That's one of our primary objectives is like just make sure it's a good experience.
>> When do you think it's time to call time on the GPS units? And by that I mean remember you got your iPhone at the start and you were like, "Oh my god, this is magic." Like there's a calculator on this you can.
And then the next one came out and it's like you can take photos with this. The next one came out. It's like photos, music, I can do my email.
At some point, I don't know when, like I'm on iPhone 15, 16, I don't know, at some point they just became indistinguishable. They all do basically the exact same thing. Unless you're the 1% of customers.
My sister's boyfriend is always banging on to me about the new screen and the better resolution. I was like, I'm lost. Like unless it does something totally new, I'm just not going to buy another phone until this stops charging.
I feel like I'm almost there with head units. It's like if you use the Wahoo Ace, it's amazing. If you use the Hammerhead Karu, it's amazing.
If you use the Garmin 1050, it's amazing. I don't know where it goes in the next step that makes me not use my, you know, generation now computer to get the next generation computer. Yeah, I think there are two dimensions to that.
One is, you know, what's the kind of forward-looking innovation that comes, but there's also a a technology legacy issue that we can't forget. Um, if you think about your iPhone that you just used an example, if you're on a 15 now, you're not on an iPhone 8. And there's a reason for that, cuz your iPhone 8 just doesn't work anymore.
>> Yeah. because the continuous upgrades that come consume more memory, consume more bandwidth, need better resolution on the screens and so as these incremental uh developments are being made that bring new technology that I think will continue to happen you know that innovation curve will continue there's a there's a legacy uh debt that eventually becomes relevant where you just can't do it anymore with the computers I mean we just recently had an issue you might be aware of with our generation one by computers. Uh the chip that we use in it is a chip that has been around for more than 20 years and eventually it runs out of the capacity to process what needs to be processed and and you got to deal with that.
Now fortunately we were able to find a software uh solution to that. Um but eventually it will run out of bandwidth and so you do have to arrest that uh debt and just say at some point you stop development and you cannot support it any longer. that that's a sort of a push pressure if you like to continue to innovate forward.
But then of course on the consumer side there are always new innovations that you can continue to think about and you know you mentioned the ACE you know we put a wind sensor into that as the first bio computer with with an integrated wind sensor. We haven't really um unlocked or leveraged the value of that yet because we know there's a lot of innovation we can do with it, but we needed to get the hardware developed, get it out, get it in consumer's hands, and we now have some really good ideas how we can continue to innovate around features that would come out for that. So I think the development curve will continue to happen and uh and and that generally means that you've got to develop the hardware to support the continuous needs of the software demands.
>> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I like that answer as well. The indoor training space has changed like unrecognizably since you know when you were a kid riding and you know I was out in the garage.
You read the back of a paint can to pass the time and remember it like rip through your back tire and it just it feel like you're pedling in sand. I have a couple of years on you, but I remember my introduction to indoor training was on good oldfashioned analog rollers. >> And uh I will tell you that that was a and that was before you know helmets were a thing with cycling too.
And so I remember using my rollers I literally had to do in the hallway of my house in in the passage cuz it was the only safe way to do it cuz yeah if you just lose your concentration for a nancond it was a fairly um catastrophic event. >> I had one of those kinds >> but I the first I can remember of the new modern take your wheel off back trainers was Lemons. Do you remember the lemon trainer?
>> Yes. Was that the first of that whole market segment? >> It could be.
I must say at that time I was not that close to the developments in the market. Um, it must have been there abouts. >> It was good, but it was loud like you're you were getting evicted from your apartment if you used that past 7 p.
m. >> You would have been shut down in Switzerland. >> So, it's gone like to the point where today it was raining and I'm like I have three hours to do.
Three hours would have been not that tipping point where most people think there's no way I'm riding three hours indoors. Now I'm whiffed bike sitting behind with the Wahoo trainer on it and it's like it's a pretty nice experience to ride two and a half, three, four hours on an indoor bike now. Do you think there's more innovation to come in terms of the indoor ecosystem?
Not specifically just the bike, but you guys, you know, you have the fans, you have the the Wahoo Climb. Is there more in this ecosystem that you think can bring outside to inside? >> Uh, I think the hardware ecosystem is maturing and I'd say the innovation curve is probably >> yeah, it's hitting that that part of the curve where it starts to flatten out to your point.
Yeah, we've got elevation change on the bikes. We've got uh wind. We've got obviously you know infinitely configurable setup capabilities and now we're sort of in that phase of uh integration where hardware and software speak to each other in uh a way that offers consumers a wide range of choice.
So I think we start to see more innovation in the experience than we do necessarily in the hardware itself. And I think that's good because ultimately if we want to bring more people into the sport, one of the barriers you have to overcome is ease of use. And the more we can innovate around that, the more we will bring people in.
And so, you know, for me, the vision now is how do you create the lowest resistance uh engagement in the product? Uh to your point, I think if you consider the experience we've we've created today, whether you're using our own training products or whether you're using it with a product like Zift or Ruby or any one of the the great products that are out there, it's a really good experience to the extent that five years ago even to me the indoor workout was a well okay I can't work out outdoors so I have to do it indoors. Now the experience is that good that I find myself on certain occasions choosing indoor over outdoor because I just feel like that.
>> Yeah. And depending on the session as well changes. >> Absolutely right.
So >> so yeah if I'm doing a structured workout I hands down I'd rather do it indoors now because it's just it's it's a much easier and better experience. So I think we've moved the industry to a point where once you're engaged in the product, the experience is really good. What we need to work at now is how to make it easier for people to engage, especially if you're looking to bring new people into the product because there is still a little bit of friction when it comes to setup configuration and I would say becoming technically literate on the product.
>> There's an exclusionary vocabulary we use, >> correct? which makes total sense to us. But when you talk, you just realize how ridiculous it is when you go to explain something like even the tour to France.
I use this example all the time because I tried to explain the tour to France to a friend who wasn't into cycling at all and try do it. It's like, oh, it's a three-week race. Well, who wins?
Oh, the guy who's the lowest cumulative time wins. Okay, why is this guy celebrating today? Oh, no, because there's there's a winner each day as well.
And it's like, all right, and then there's a race to the top of the mountain, but there's other sprint points and it's like it's chaos. >> It's hard to explain. explain Formula 1.
First guy across the line wins. >> That's right. And there's, you know, there's so many races a year and that's it.
Uh, no, I I think that's exactly right. There's a uh there's a vocabulary that is, I think, restrictive because it's intimidating. Uh, you know, we talk about, you know, power profiles, you know, uh, cadence, heart rate zones, uh, power zones.
Um, these are all things that that if you if you're trying to bring somebody new into the sport and you go straight to the sort of deeply technical components, it's overwhelming. >> Yeah. >> And there I come back to to the point you made about Pelaton.
I think they did a really good job of just removing that friction. I I have respect for the >> yellow brick road we were talking about for how do you baby step them in here? >> Um, I mean, you mentioned it with, you know, you you talked about your girlfriend.
Why can't I turn the bike over? These are things that are, let's say, in the sort of dieh hard parlance, they're taboo. Um, but the truth is that's what also restricts people from coming into the sport.
So, I'm all about destigmatizing that. I think we really need to take that out of the sport and say, you know what, if you want to turn your bike upside down, go for it. Why not?
You know, >> yeah, >> where's the rule book that says you can't? There's there's code that says you can't, but you we're keeping people out of the sport and and I think the way we grow it is by inviting people in. And >> so we if we can make it easier for people to engage in the product like one button click it I'm riding and I understand what I got to do that's where like that's the holy grail and then then you get those people taking it outdoors and we're using more computers more power pedals more you know and we really then help people train with insight and meaning and when you do that we unlock value.
I mean, I'll give you a good example. Sorry to kind of wax lyrical about this, but uh this past winter season, I never rode outdoors from the 1st of November until the 31st of March once. Not once.
All indoor training. And it's the first time I've I've basically abandoned outdoor training completely through the winter. And I frankly enjoyed it.
I had a great training season. And the first rides I did, I'd gone to an event in Mayora. And the first ride I did was 125 kilometers with 6,000 foot of climbing.
And that morning, I was thinking to myself, man, I don't know, maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew. And we were riding with some Sean Kelly was actually riding with us. So, I mean, there was there was a little bit of pressure to jump up, you know, and I really I was like, I don't know if this winter training worked worked out well enough, but we went, we rode.
I was absolutely fine, fully prepared for the event and it was a true revelation for me that indoor training is now at a point where it can absolutely successfully prepare you for outdoor cycling. I agree with you from a physiological point of view, but I think the part that we can't separate from this is like the person with 50,000 Instagram followers, like we're socially connected digitally, but we're isolated and we're lonely. And for me, the antidote to loneliness is community.
And I don't know if that extends to virtual community. There's nothing like meeting a friend in a coffee shop before a ride. And I don't know how we bridge that gap in a world where close passes are getting worse, where female participation on group rides doesn't seem to be growing there.
There's just some endemic problems in I I think that's such an amazing onboarding vehicle you have for expanding our whole ecosystem. But then I wonder how you get them past the first hurdle from riding indoors to going out on their own. >> So I couldn't agree more.
Uh I think we learned a lot of lessons through uh living through co in the past few years. One of which was the value of social context and social community. There are many studies being done now about the impact it had on uh the schoolgoing community during co and how it's affected their social uh experience and and skill set that you know had to be developed later in their life because they missed out on those valuable years as one example.
So I couldn't agree with you more. I think it is uh complimentary as opposed to substitutional is the way I think about indoor training. >> And uh for us ultimately one of the key value drivers of engaging in a product that builds a better athlete is the benefit of societal development and engagement.
To your point, the sense of community. I love getting out and riding my bike with a group. I love riding my bike with my wife.
That's it's a it's a valuable social experience for me and that brings a mental health benefit. >> Yeah. >> That I don't get through my indoor training.
>> So >> how much of a responsibility sorry for being across a small bit of lag but how much of respon maybe a different way to frame this is why I love entrepreneurs and why I love conversations like this one is you're taking responsibility for solving problems in the world that aren't really your problems to solve. you're doing it for a greater good. A problem needs to be solved and it's you guys who are sticking your hand up to solve this problem.
Whether it's making the indoor experience better or better navigation, we have these endemic barriers to more participation on the road. How do you think about your role as a leader in tackling these problems? Are these problems that we need to solve as a community or are they like I'm talking problems like close passes like you know dangerous environments whether that's in races or outer races.
I think even the kit is a problem when you chat to females. It's difficult to show up in a maledominated training group. If you end the sentence there that's difficult.
Now, if you ask the same girl to show up in a male-dominated training environment wearing clothing that's essentially body paint, that adds an extra layer of I'm not sure I want to go out with this group. So, there is a we could brainstorm there's probably, you know, five or six other problems that hinder participation. How do you think about your role as a company in addressing those problems?
>> I I think there are a few things that we can do. one, this has traditionally been a male-dominated environment. If you look at uh various studies around the world, more or less they mimic the same demographic.
80% of the outdoor cyclists are male, 20% female, more or less. Um, and that's a real shame because to me, you know, we're we're missing an opportunity to to give the female athlete the experience that is actually an incredibly good experience. >> Yeah.
Maybe the best point is because there are real barriers and so we we owe it to the cycling community to try and participate in breaking down some of those barriers. Can I remove them all? No.
Can we be a part of removing some of them? Yes. One is becoming comfortable in a sport that does have a higher friction than for example running.
Yeah. And now again we're we're into the running brand which is a valuable opportunity for us to help transition people. But you know running is something where you put your sneakers on, you choose whatever clothing you want to wear and you get out and run and there's very little judgment.
I I've very rarely found the running community to be one that is sort of judgmental about the way you choose to train. >> Your socks don't match your runners. >> Nobody laugh, >> right?
People just get out and run. And so the the barriers to entry there are really really low. And the the data shows that in the sort of 20 to 30 year old community, running is one of the fastest growing sports.
And it's easy. It's because it's easy. And they have developed a really strong sense of community through the digital applications.
I mean, if you think about products like Runner, they've created community around their applications, >> that's a huge success with a great product that has brought people into the sport >> for a sense of community, not just athletic achievement. So I think in cycling if we can look to destigmatize some of the things you describe like kit um you know ease of setup is a real problem. You know getting a bike setup it's not it's not like just buying a pair of sneakers.
>> You go into a running store, somebody helps you fit your feet and you've got sneakers and off you go. >> Whereas a bike is a little different and you do need to set it up properly because if you don't it can create injury. it can it can be an uncomfortable experience especially for women who historically haven't had as much help with the sport.
to do that I think we need to attract more females to work in the industry because one of the things I'm acutely aware of is you know in our organization it's something we're working on is you how do we embrace more female um input into our design process because we haven't done enough of that and so I said we we are athletes who build products for athletes but we also have a male biased uh employee base and that's not to say anything about the team that we have today we have incredible people. I'd like to add more female voices to that though to make sure that we've got a to the point of diversity like let's listen to the community, hear what the problems are, and then engineer that into the solutions. Otherwise, we're never going to get it right.
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Parley cycles engineered for that feeling that keeps us coming back. Yeah, I think you're totally right on that. Even I've been had my eyes really open in the past 12 months as Sarah, my girlfriend's got more and more into cycling.
She started training for Badlands this year which you just finished. And it was just that training journey for me highlighted that almost like your past that you trod versus the party in Boswell tro two totally different experiences. Maybe we both arrive at the start line of badlands but we two totally different experiences getting there.
Even the indoor training experience, I would have never thought that you're more prone, more susceptible to greater severity, saddle sores indoors versus outdoors because that's just not a consideration I've ever had. But the female anatomy just isn't the same as the male anatomy when it comes to sitting stationary for and the decision to ride indoors for 60 minutes versus 3 hours. It's a different decision-making matrix you go through that we're not privy to.
So that just totally opened my eyes to go, well, we still do have quite a long way to go. >> Absolutely right. Um, so it's a journey.
We're we're not where I'd like to be yet. Um, but we certainly are working to make sure that we engage that community more. For example, the teams that we sponsor in the Pelatons, we only work with teams that have got um, uh, both male and female riders.
We also work very closely with the humanpowered health team which is a female only cycling team. Um these are avenues for us just as examples to kind of both highlight the opportunity of the sport and the you know value it can add to your life but also learn and get you credible feedback into our product development process. >> If you're back on the podcast in 12 months, what does what does a 12 month success look like for you guys?
Well, 12 months uh ironically is actually not a long time uh when it comes to sort of product development. Um so you we have a product development pipeline that goes out multiple years and uh so there are products that we plan to release within the next 12 months and that's part of that pipeline. So I would expect 12 months from now you should see a few more products on the market from us.
Uh but more than that, I think uh I'd like to see us making good progress on our uh software product. Uh so we have an app ecosystem that provides you with an integrated view of what your running experience, what your indoor cycling experience looks like, what your outdoor cycling experience looks like. That you know that is a a data set that is really important for our community to understand how you are performing as an athlete.
So what's your goal? And again, your goal can be I've never run before. I've never ridden before and I want to go and do my first local event.
Um, you know, if that's your goal, what I need to do to train for that goal and how am I progressing towards that goal? That's an important data point for people to be able to feel good about what they're doing, right? The experience that they're having with your product.
So, 12 months from now, I'd like to see that advance from where we are today to start to create more of a mission focus. So you if I want to say to somebody you know we're building the better athlete in all of us well you need to know what athlete you are today and you need to have a goal for what kind of athlete you want to be and then you need to be able to see how you're tracking. If we can't show that it's very difficult to measure whether you're actually delivering on your mission or not.
>> Yeah. >> So that I'd like to see some progress on. So hardware software you know products will come in both spaces.
Uh, and then the third thing I'd say, you I'd like to continue to advance the the brand equity that we've built in the cycling community. I think, you know, I've got the shirt on the Waholigan brand. I mean, it I know it resonates differently with different people, but um it does speak a little bit to our grassroots culture.
Uh, we build products for people that are really passionate about what they do. And I'd like to see us continue to advance that um that brand equity because we do the things that that you the kind of people who have helped us become who we are, love, and want to see more of and and we're kind of moving the ball down the field in that direction. And just to finish up, uh, you had a beautiful moment with two of your ambassadors you mentioned already with Lackl Morton and Ian Boswell up in Vermont, I think it was, where instead of racing for the win, they decided to come in together to honor their friends.
You tell me a little bit about that and what it meant for you as a company to see that unity. >> Well, I thank you for bringing that up. Um, it was a couple of weeks ago, Ian and Lachlan had lost a very good friend of theirs during this race, which Ian supports up in his local community.
uh in Vermont and uh there was a tough moment for them and they had set out on the start of this race during the start of this race and it so happened organically that they ended up between Lachland and Ian sort of uh challenging each other for victory in the race and it was just one of those organic moments where they made the decision to cross the line together and celebrate the fact that they they could look back on a tough life experience was something that demonstrated what sport really does mean. And I think it was to me it's a moment we should celebrate because it's more than about winning. It's it's about the friendships you build.
It's about the sense of community you build and I thought it was something that is two wellrespected athletes. Uh I tip my hat to them and say well done because you set an example for all the aspirin athletes out there, children and adults. That's how we should behave, I think.
>> Thank Thanks for sharing that story and thank you so much for being so generous with your time today because I know you're a busy busy man. I really appreciate it. >> No, it's a pleasure.
Hopefully you uh want to have me on again in 12 months and we can let's do it. >> We can talk about what we have achieved and what we're doing for the cycling community and the running community and uh making healthier, happy athletes out of the people that we uh we love to engage with. So, thank you for having me on.
It's in pleasure.