STRAVA VS. GARMIN: THE LAWSUIT THAT BACKFIRED

E86 STRAVA VS. GARMIN_ THE LAWSUIT THAT BACKFIRED

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:00.462) Welcome to Venture Step Podcasts, where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book view. Today, we're to be discussing classic corporate hypocrisy, where one company is pleading to the public, we've got your back, we're doing it for the users, it's all for you, it's for you, we're doing it for you. But these big bad companies are taking advantage of us, they're doing all these mean things. And then in the background, they're doing the same thing to smaller companies, and they're the Goliath.

It's just a funny, funny, funny situation to play out. Today we're to be discussing the current change of vibes and feelings between Garmin and Strava. Once was a flourishing relationship that started around in 2015 with a master partnership agreement. And that agreement entailed like sharing data with each other and technologies basically to benefit

the users and you, the person using both tools, the hardware and the software, combining everything for seamless and seamless integration and a wonderful experience. People buy more garments. People use Strava more. Win-win. But recently this partnership has fallen apart with Strava looking for an IPO. They're shoring up

their data, their API and their intellectual property. And then they're locking down this AI narrative, strong intellectual property assets and the protection of those assets. That also entails kicking out a lot of the smaller companies, not allowing them to use their data, not allowing them to connect.

to create this narrative, this market narrative to push this aggressive IPO evaluation. I their IPO evaluation's over two billion and their annual recurring revenue I think is under 200 million. yeah, it's just, it's interesting, it's interesting. So we're gonna get into it, we're gonna discuss today, we're gonna discuss the

Dalton Anderson (02:28.792) the rise and fall of the Strava partnership. And then we are going to talk about the differences between their suit and whether it's, I guess, viable. It doesn't look very viable. And overall, the whole situation from start to finish. if you're into activities and running, you're gonna get real kick out of it. But if you aren't, that's fine too. I think it's a great dinner topic conversation that you could talk about. Once again, it's...

It's funny, right? Like it's to where it's like a laughable subject to the amount of hypocrisy that is being experienced in this whole story and how it's unfolded over these last couple of months.

It's just a hilarious, hilarious like situation. It's other than that, it's hard to describe.

But before we do that, I'm your host Dalton Anderson. I like to do a lot of things like running, reading books, doing this podcast. My background is insurance and data science.

And one thing that I've been getting in trouble with with Spotify is that you've got way too many listeners, not enough followers. You historically compared to your peers have more listeners to follow ratio and they're requesting that I add that call to action in my show. So I'll do a better job of that. It's a little bit odd asking people like, Hey,

Dalton Anderson (04:03.522) Can you subscribe or can you follow the show? But Spotify is getting on my back about it. They're the bad guys, not me. I'm a good guy. But in a general sense, if you find these episodes interesting or you want to support the show, please give it a follow or subscribe, like, whatever that really helps. And it probably would get Spotify from prompting me saying that I'm underperforming against my peers on a follower count to listeners.

because my listens are high, guess, for whatever reason, I guess, and then don't have that many people following the show. They're like, hey, you gotta figure that one out, buddy. I'm like, okay, okay, okay, I'll try my best.

Okay, now that's over with, let's get into the show. First things first, let's talk about background, timelines, and my thoughts about the whole situation. So the first thing, I don't know if everyone's gonna be familiar with Strava, so I felt, hey, let's just spend a couple minutes on Strava, and I can show you, share my screen. Screen.

You had to see my Strava profile. So Strava, you can share photos of runs. There's me after I think an 18.9 million, 18.9 million. It's like, what's going on here? I just went to the millies. An 8.9 mile run and I'm holding a smoothie and some milk, some nice milk. That's Milo, Neil, Neil's fiance and

This is me taking a photo. I wasn't playing at the time, but I just got done playing soccer. It's me on a run, randomly dropping at Central Park. A lot of people there. There was some kind of race going on. There always is something going on at Central Park. It's me after a long run. Got a Caesar wrap. Delicious. This is me at the store just shot at the the Chuck. This is Central Park again. Yeah, so don't post that many photos, but

Dalton Anderson (06:13.408) It tells you your segments, what achievements you've done. So recently I had a 30K run at three hours and 36 minutes. had a PR on this Cat Hill mile. I think in certain cities it has like certain places memorized and they have the little segments within those places and they're named. Not familiar because normally I've been running, I wasn't running in New York City. I was running kind of in a suburb. So none of this stuff is like,

map through, but it's just quite interesting that it has this stuff and then it can break down your segments and then what you've done. But basically just records your events, right? In a social way. And that's, that's it, right? Like there's not too much going on here. I think it's great that you could do the virtual races. You can interact with people and then you can become like a segment leader in certain spots and you could be the leader in that area for that route.

and you compete against each other, it's quite nice. I don't have any issues with it and I haven't been working out that much because I'm still recovering from being sick. I'm feeling great today by the way. You can hear it in my voice, you can hear it in the energy of the show. I hope it resonates through your ears because I'm ready, I'm revving to go. I'm revving to go, especially about this Strava conversation. So that's Strava. It's a social network for activities, for running and cycling. They might expand.

to other things, but in a general sense, that is what they're good at. And I think one of their standouts is like the heat maps, their local legends, and the social aspect of Strava is great. People appreciate that quite a bit. But I don't think they do, maybe they have new activities. So they have, it looks like swimming, maybe swimming and running?

Dalton Anderson (08:14.062) activities.

Dalton Anderson (08:21.804) I don't know if Strava, let me just look it up real quick. Strava activities.

Dalton Anderson (08:35.672) cycling, running, walking, swimming, trail running, mountain biking, and gravel biking. So it's like cycling or running and then swimming. So like endurance sports.

Alright, so...

Strava, that's the background. The next thing is the timeline of the Strava Garmin situation. So I have this timeline put together, so I'm just gonna read it through. It's not that long, but it gives you quite a bit of background of the whole situation for you to have a good understanding of the stuff that I'm talking about. So in 2009, Strava Segments launched. In 2011, Strava files for a Segment patent. In 2012,

Race Shape Heatmaps launch, which is a third party app, not part of Strava. Then in 2012, October, Strava acquires Race Shape and acquire hire, acquires their founder, Paul. In 2013, Garmin launches Heatmaps. Garmin adds the Heatmap to its Garmin Connect app. Sorry, I almost said 2024. 2014, Garmin...

introduces segments.

Dalton Anderson (09:56.513) in June and then December, 2014 Strava launches the heat maps as a patent, file as a patent. April, 2015 master corporation agreement was signed the MCA Strava and Garmin signed the MCA to integrate Strava live segments on Garmin devices. November, 2024 Strava restricts API access. Strava implements a new

highly restrictive API terms limiting data sharing and use by third party developers.

We're gonna be discussing that a little bit more. That's very important to this whole situation. So just make sure that you mentally jot that part down. May, 2025, Garmin launches Kinect and Trails Plus. Garmin introduces this paid description tier that advanced routing features and becomes a direct competitor to Strava. June, 2025, Garmin updates its API brand guidelines.

Garmin publishes new guidelines requiring attribution of data source from its devices offering text or optional logo placement.

Okay, we're almost at the end. June through July, 2025, Strava issues private warnings. Strava sends Garmin private notices of patent infringement and breach of MCA. September 30th, 2025, Strava files a lawsuit. Strava sues Garmin for patent infringement and breach of contract in the US District Court of Colorado.

Dalton Anderson (11:45.089) Okay. Last thing is Strava has a chief product officer post on Reddit in the Strava subreddit. The chief product officer, Matt Cesar, post setting the record straight was the title of the post sparking massive community backlash. And it was the whole David the Goliath, David plea.

Goliath is being bad and the big company is being bad to me and help me out and be upset at Garmin. And the whole thing just backlash really hard against Strava. And the comments in there are just really tough, really tough. So I...

I'll have to pull that one up and read some comments later in the episode.

but it's probably.

Dalton Anderson (12:47.662) Probably deleted. I would be surprised if they didn't delete it, but we'll, I'll see.

Okay, so now you have the timeline.

Now we're going to start from the beginning with the golden age, the partnership. the part, the perfect partnership that lasted for a decade. Strava was the social software. Garmin was this, the hardware, the GPS hardware leader. And it was a symbiotic relationship where the data provided to Strava makes Strava more useful. And then that makes running

a more social mainstream ish product. And on Strava, it shows like who who recorded the run for you. So it will say whatever watch you're using, et cetera, et cetera. And you can see a lot of stuff's coming up is like Garmin, Garmin, Garmin, Garmin. And there's there's influencers now like running never used to be like this super cool thing. People have always ran, but.

maybe loners, you know, like, like I've run, like, you run, like, why would you do that? That sucks. But running as of recently, maybe COVID time has become very popular because people wanted to go outside and it's a great thing, right? So not upset about it. It's really cool. And then the whole running club thing became a thing. And I think that combined with,

Dalton Anderson (14:28.728) the essence of people wanting to experience things and having this experience marketing. I've talked about that in several episodes where there's like a shift in consumer expectations away from these interactions to experiences because people want to feel more connected. They want to feel involved. They want to make memories, all those things. And so that's important to people nowadays. And one way to do that is run clubs or these events talked about.

in the episode I talked about with Diplo, Diplo had or has this run club, Diplo run club. And then also he has concerts to where you run a 5K with Diplo. And then after the run, he does a set for a couple hours, everybody parties, and then you go home. So stuff like that. People...

like doing those things more than they used to. And that's great. So running has become more popular, which is great for Strava, great for Garmin, because when people are looking on Strava and seeing their friends, they ask, like, which watch should I get? Which tracker should I use? Apple Watch, Garmin, whatever. And then they see all their influencers that they follow and they all have Garmin's for the most part are polar. Polaris, Polaris, sorry.

Polaris, Garmin. And so it's great for both parties. It's great. And then there starts to be seeds of conflict. Garmin has its own Garmin segments in 2014. Garmin launched the heat maps in 2013. And I think those are pretty reasonable things to launch in your own app.

It's not like Garmin made their own social media platform to compete against Strava. It's just they were launching their own stuff and it's within their app. It's not really very social. Garmin is social-ish. There's an activity platform and you can see stuff, but it's more for your friends and it's not like a public feed-ish. There's challenges and all of those things, but it's not the same vibe as Strava. Not at all.

Dalton Anderson (16:53.145) So Strava was getting upset, and they're like, hey, that's not cool. And then Garmin was like, I don't really see why that's not cool, but that's fine.

So then the big thing that really pissed off Strava and they're like, we've had enough, we can't do this anymore. This is horrible. Was the API guidelines that came out. And so the API guidelines are effective July, 2025. Garmin has been extended to November 1st or November 1st was their deadline.

So hope that they can figure that one out. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see. But basically, as I said earlier in that kind of timeline, Garmin's updating their brand guidelines on the APIs and they just want attribution of the data or saying, hey, here's a logo of the Garmin data, whatever. Data source from Garmin device.

the Matt Cesar guy got pretty upset, published it on Reddit. And from there, it was pretty fatal because there was background conversations between Garmin and Strava. Strava was blatantly like, we're not doing that. We can't do that. Garmin was like, okay, like you don't have to do that. But you know, if you don't want to abide by the guidelines, then we'd have to pull API access, which is a

big, claim because Garmin supplies.

Dalton Anderson (18:44.399) a lot of data to Strava. Like an insane amount. Probably 40 % of their platform is...

Dalton Anderson (19:00.495) from Garmin devices, like minimum.

Dalton Anderson (19:07.641) Like it's a substantial amount which would cause, it would cause very, it would cause a big difference in the system of what you're used to with Strava. It wouldn't be the same app. It's substantial amount.

So that doesn't really work for Strava. So Strava in retaliation sent a patent infringement notice. And then I don't know what Garmin's response is. Garmin has not been public about the issues ongoing. And then Strava filed for.

the patent infringement and is suing Garmin. I think the problem with the lawsuit for the patent infringement is really that.

Dalton Anderson (20:04.099) Patent infringement doesn't have any legs. It really doesn't have any legs. So for a patent to even be valid, there can't be publication of whatever the patent is a year before the filing. There can't be any of these things called prior art, which is basically prior implementations of the technology that you are patenting or the product that you're patenting. And so for you to get a patent and for it to be valid,

you have to meet those guidelines, but the patent was granted anyways. But there was clear prior technologies that provided the same services as this heat map of these segments before.

Dalton Anderson (20:52.719) Strava filed for the patent in the first place. So the lawsuit in itself doesn't have any legs. There is two instances of this heat map being used and one, prior art one would be the Race Shape company that was acquired by Strava. And then prior art two was Garmin launched its own heat maps in 2013. And then Race Shape was 2012. And so the

hadn't wasn't filed until December 2014. And so you have two instances where the product was being used by the public.

a year before there was even a filing for the patent. And so it provides very strong argument to Garmin stating that this isn't even a valid patent in the first place. What are you even bothering me about? And one of the biggest things that I thought was concerning from Strava is they're going full nuclear. They're saying that you can't do live segments, you can't do these heat maps.

And they're saying that it's such a large patent infringement and infringement of their MCA that they're stating that Garmin should no longer be able to sell their devices until they fix the patent. So they're saying that they want to, once you straight up remove the ability for Garmin to sell their devices, like the Forerunner, the Phoenix, and the Edge.

or the cycling computers.

Dalton Anderson (22:35.875) which is insane. It's a very aggressive suit. And for them to do that and not have legs and then also be a hypocrite in the first place, it doesn't look great. It looks pretty bad. It looks horrible.

And it's just, it's just horrific. Really horrific. And I don't wanna read the whole post of the Reddit post, because I mean, it's kind of long and I mean, it's maybe, I don't know, paragraphs. But in a general sense, the whole thing was like, we hear you, we're having issues with Garmin, Garmin's being unreasonable.

They're requesting this stuff and it's blatant advertisement. We wanna get the record straight. Wanna talk about Garmin. What they're asking for is inappropriate. We consider your data to be your data and you can do what you want with it. You own your data. And so we believe you should be able to freely transfer, upload that data.

without requiring logos to be displayed alongside it. And then we also believe that doing so would.

provide a negative experience to the users. And this is after they did all of their.

Dalton Anderson (24:18.319) protective API guidelines where you can't use API for AI integrative tools. You can't use the API for coaching. You can't use the API for basically anything besides for the person. And so it shut down a lot of opportunities for different folks and they to find workarounds and re-architect their product because they can no longer integrate with Strava and also community features like.

you know, some kind of step goals thing with your friends and family or whatever it may be, or this, coaching piece that I was talking about earlier. And so a lot of people were pretty upset because some apps just deemed that it was worth pursuing the changes and they just shut down.

And so the community, this is the Strava community that the CPO posted to, that Matt posted to. So the community is very passionate. They remember what just transpired about a year ago. And one of the top comments is, this is fucking rich coming from you guys after fucking all the API integration.

we had with data, data you consider to be ours. It's almost laughable how bold about the hypocrisy. Like do they even honestly think the community has such a short memory? It's true, like the whole thing is just littered with just getting dogged. Like they're just getting thrown through the mud. And if I'm on the post, they didn't delete it. So the

Top comment right now, if I go, it says so far controversy, let's do this one. Controversy, all right, controversial. Okay, let's do.

Dalton Anderson (26:17.583) The top comment is, how do I get rid of the Strava logo when I wanna share my data on social media? The third comment is, seems like blatant advertising, hypocritical much Strava?

Dalton Anderson (26:35.209) And then...

Dalton Anderson (26:41.365) It's just that they're just getting killed in these. As a premium paid Strava member, I want to be clear that Strava is only used to me as it works with Garmin. The moment Strava no longer syncs with Garmin Connect is the last time I open Strava. I speak for the vast majority of Garmin users. Literally, the only reason I use Strava is for Garmin integration. They bite the hand that feeds them and subscriptions will drop off the cliff.

just a crazy, crazy, crazy ordeal. And then another thing that happened was there was this guy that made a competitive app called ShareAura, which is all about sharing and its social aspect and being able to share without logos, like Strava makes you put their Strava logo on when you share. And it's all about

bringing people together and sharing your activities to different platforms, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a startup and he had posted that they forced him to...

If they forced them to.

Dalton Anderson (27:59.372) Add the logos or be cut off from access. So I share my screen of the email. He posted the email in a video, but I'll just do the email. So this is the email. The founder's name is Zach. So in a general sense, Strava had asked him that he needs to display powered by Strava or logo.

on all websites and apps and any distributed media such as images, videos or prints, no variations or modifications are accepted. So what Strava just said, literally on, and this email was sent August 22nd, 2025. And then this Reddit post was nine days ago. So they're just in a completely different world from each other. I just don't understand.

fundamentally where Strava thinks that people are gonna be like, yeah man, that's super cool, appreciate it, thanks for letting me know. No one is gonna be cool with this, especially the Reddit community, is values, authenticity, has a pretty good memory, and the users will definitely call you out on your BS, which is what happened to Strava.

And then Garmin's just chilling, like Garmin's winning this whole situation and.

It's so funny how this is all playing out where a lot of folks on that thread are saying that they've stopped their subscription with Strava and they're no longer using them.

Dalton Anderson (29:51.755) I think the whole thing is weird because a lot of the stuff that Strava does, they don't own. Like they're literally just a data aggregator that aggregates data and then puts it together in a package that's in a social experience that enables social experiences. Like who are they attributing the map? Cause that map looks like Google maps. Is it saying powered by Google? Like where do we stop with

using other people's tools and saying that they're yours. You have the map, you've got the social media platform, are you gonna start reading the languages and say, okay, like powered by JavaScript.

I don't know. It's just a weird thing. And I think the main thing that bothers me about this whole situation is fundamentally, one, the CPO doesn't understand their customers. The CPO just doesn't understand what is legitimately going on in the company because for you to go out on Reddit and call out...

all these things and have these strong statements even though your terms and conditions state otherwise, your actions state otherwise.

It seems like there's just a massive disconnect between you, your customers and your org. So that didn't go well. And then another thing that I think that is fundamentally just frustrating on these situations is companies consistently think that they have a product when they're really a feature.

Dalton Anderson (31:31.939) Strava is a feature. It's a social media feature. They don't have a product. Like in my mind, Strava is not worth $2 billion. They have subscriptions, they have an app, they have community events.

Dalton Anderson (31:53.731) Like where in that do they have a moat? They don't own the devices. They don't own the experience. They don't control what information is tracked. They have no control over any of the stuff that they're talking about. It's all dependent on other people. So as soon as somebody is like, hey, we're not liking the vibes anymore. We're not doing this. Or if Garmin wants to...

invest in a startup-ish like Strava competitor and says, okay, we're going to be, they probably would never do that, but we're going to be exclusive to this app and all the Garmin devices are going to sync there or maybe the new Garmin features will sync on there. And then we'll roll out to other platforms a year later. Just not exclusivity, but first come first serve because of this, the...

This services will test for a year, make sure it's working correctly, and then we'll forward it over, port it over to these other platforms.

That's massive. What if Apple does that? What if Polaris does that? And so Strava just doesn't have this ground to stand on and they're just this chihuahua just attacking and attacking and attacking. It looks pathetic. It really does. And I like Strava. I've used Strava for years. I've used Strava for a long time. But it's just like, man, how are you doing?

Why are you doing this? It doesn't make any sense. And I'm also a huge fan of Garmin. They're at an all time high on their stock and I have convinced I think six people to get Garmin's. And I always upsell them like, hey, you don't need that watch, you need the one above. You need to the one above. You want all the features, you want the power. Come on, let's go Garmin crazy. Let's go get all the attachments, get all the gadgets.

Dalton Anderson (33:59.14) And before you know it, they're they're garmined out. So, it's just a hard thing to comprehend. Like, how do you get there? And how do you prevent companies from doing this? I really don't think that there's a...

Dalton Anderson (34:22.201) I don't think the true believers in Strava, which are the most important people at your stakeholders, at your company, that the people that truly believe in your company, your mission, your vision, the people that tell other people and convince them that this is a great app or this is a great product, those are your most valuable customers. And so this might not affect the...

random people that want to start running. It won't affect the people that are casual, but the hardcore folks, they're pissed. The most important segment within your customer base are pissed. And so those are the people that are the market movers, right? Like the people that are super serious, locked in on running, they've got a large running community, they got all their running friends.

They're gonna be complaining, they're gonna be upset. I was a Strava subscriber. Whatever, I've been supporting them since 2012 and I can't believe they're doing this. Because those hardcore, hardcore market movers, guess what devices they most likely use and a large percent of them, the super majority at least, use? It's Garmin. So, it's just a bad.

Bad move. Lacks strategic thought, execution, and communication skills. Horrific botch. Interesting thing to talk about, but sad to see play out. But thank you for listening in on today's episode. Of course, wherever you are in this world, good afternoon, good evening, good morning, and I'll see ya.

next week. Goodbye.