Ep. 1: Mark Gainey, Strava

From snowboards ➡️ Creative Director of BeReal? David Pfluger studied medical illustration in college, i.e. learning to accurately draw the diagrams you’ll see in a doctor’s office. He then spent 15 years leading brand design at Burton.This episode of Appreneurs is all about what David calls the Brand OS (Brand Operating System), a system he devised after helping four different startups grow into the giants they are today. He think that the early-stage founders of today, especially technical ones, underestimate the importance of brand in the long run.

How do you go from selling lizards online to raising $15M for a debit card that builds credit?Scott dropped out of Cornell at 21 and moved to Germany on a whim to build an AI knowledge base for companies, similar to what Dust, Vectara, and many others do today. This was back in 2020.He and his co-founders applied to YC and were rejected. The second time they applied, the partners asked what they’d pivot to when they got in. A few months into the batch, they realized they wanted to build something they’d use themselves, and along came FizzScott shares:What a “f**k yes” approach to hiring meansHow to organically grow a waitlist to 50,000 peopleWhy consumer companies have “lost the plot”Tune in now.

Could you outship and outshine other startups in your sector if you’d raised 25 times less?
Zach already is. Onton is building e-commerce search that finds exactly what you’re looking for with natural language and images.Online shopping today is crazy inefficient. The average shopper spends 15 hours to make ONE purchase decision.Onton is bringing us to a world where that purchase decision will happen with 1 search on 1 website. And they’ve made serious progress: Deft already converts 5 times better than traditional retailers.My favorite part of Onton? The behavior change I think they’re going to facilitate: conscious consumption. Onton will make sure you don’t spend 15 hours being bombarded by ads that make you buy things you’d never have cared for.Note: Deft (shopdeft.com) is now Onton (onton.com). They rebranded shortly after this podcast.

We sit down with Strava co-founder Mark Gainey to explore how its unconventional early strategies made it the winner it is today. Strava has 130 million users, and in 2021, Strava raised $1 billion at a $6 billion valuation.