[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Charge Running (YC W21) - Social running ...
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Launch HN: Charge Running (YC W21) - Social running app with real-
time coaching
Hi HN, I'm Matthew Knippen, a 10 year iOS dev turned CEO for
Charge Running (www.chargerunning.com). We built a mobile app that
allows you to run with others from all over the world in real-time,
all while being trained by a certified run coach. Think of us as
Peloton for running, but way more social. You can learn more about
our product here: http://www.chargerunning.com I'm a career mobile
dev that always liked hacking on things, and worked on over 60
applications ranging from photos, games, and fitness. Over the
years, when I come across a problem in my life, I write code to
solve it. I built a garage door opener app before it was cool, an
electronic Go board, and an app to track different whiskeys I've
tasted like "Untappd for Spirits." Charge was born out of a much
bigger personal problem: I used to run a fair bit with my friend
(and now co-founder) Rory. It was a great way to stay in shape and
having someone to talk helped the time go by faster. Unfortunately,
when Rory moved across the country for the military, both of us ran
significantly less than we did before. I came to the conclusion
running by myself... SUCKED! We were chatting about it on the phone
one day knowing there had to be a better solution, and that's when
we thought of Charge. I spent the weekend hacking something
together, and on Monday, we tried it out. Our first version of the
app was an all white screen where it showed two things, Rory's
distance, and mine. We hopped on a phone, and used the app to have
a friendly competition. A programmer vs a Navy Seal is rarely a
fair challenge, and he kicked my a$$, but we LOVED it! On the
backend, we utilized Firebase's Realtime database for data, and a
group phone call to manage audio. (Most of this has since been
upgraded) As any developer would want to do, we kept building on
it, showing things like current pace, cadence, and more. A few
friends wanted to join us, so we built support for multiple users,
and listened to music while we ran. It was at this time that
someone joined us that was a friend of a friend, and said "Now that
I know I can run with this, I never want to run without it." So,
we decided to turn our ugly hacked together app into an official
product. When talking to our users, we found out that they wanted
four things during their runs: 1. Motivation - The hardest part
about going for a run is committing to do it and getting those
shoes on 2. A social experience - Every other running app focuses
on social after the run, not the ability to run with others in
real-time. 3. Education - Most beginner runners just start running.
After hearing Rory talk with them, they learned proper form and how
to improve without getting injured. 4. Music - When asked what a
big pain point was, users said they needed to put more work into
their playlist than they spent running! We took that information,
and made a small pivot into dedicated coached classes, where a
certified trainer would guide you through a specific type of
workout. Each workout was effort-based, meaning whether you're a
complete beginner, or have run 25 marathons, you could join any
class and fit right in. We hired coaches (finding them by doing a
bit of web scraping ) and built an audio solution with professional
DJ software, allowing the coaches to change the beat of the music
and auto-blend them together. Rory and our other co-founder Julie
(my sister), would host a few classes a day. I quit my job as an
iOS contractor for a big company to focus on a start-up full time,
at the same time my wife was 8 months pregnant with our first
child. (I have the world's most supportive wife!) We launched, and
we're instantly overwhelmed. Apple featured us on "New Apps We
Love". MacWorld called us the "App of the Week". We got 25K
downloads, but we're still in a very early beta. We had no on-
boarding. No app store video. Calling it a website would be an
exaggeration. No one knew what we did, or how it worked, and we
churned 99% of the users within the first week. However, the ones
that stayed lit a fire inside of us that we never knew we had. We
talked to them constantly, and they defined our product roadmap.
Since then, we've had users run over 350,000 miles in live classes,
hosted a wedding day ceremony for them, and have seen people become
best friends who live halfway across the world from each other.
That being said, we really want to learn more, and keep iterating.
We would love to hear the community's feedback and answer any
questions.
Author : mknippen
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-03-09 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
| jasondigitized wrote:
| How does the music component work and how to you deal with
| copyright issues?
| [deleted]
| mknippen wrote:
| Each running coach is choosing the music, and adjusting things
| like tempo based on what the specific workout is.
|
| Regarding copyright, we keep track of each song played, and the
| number of people that listen. We then send this to the large
| music groups each quarter, and pay royalties.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| How are you technically pulling this off? E.g Are you
| integrated with Spotify and leveraging an API to stream
| music? I love the idea by the way, just curious about the
| implementation.
| mknippen wrote:
| We're streaming the audio through a server that tracks
| which song is played, and records each one. We actually use
| the same technology that powered internet radios back it
| the Winamp days.
|
| On the software side, we use Djay pro, which can forward
| the song id along to the server for recording the data.
| spotman wrote:
| Hi - very cool idea! Will probably try it out. Apologize if this
| is on the site (could not find it) but do you plan to offer any
| features to "meet" local runners in person? I am always trying
| new run clubs, and some have stuck and some have not, but I would
| absolutely LOVE a way to meet local runners that run similar
| terrain/fitness levels as me. Thanks!
| mknippen wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words. As of right now, we don't have an
| option to meet-up through the app, but we do have many users
| that are organizing their own meet-up groups via our Facebook
| Run Club.
| shubik22 wrote:
| Really cool looking product. The group that I run with in Los
| Angeles did weekly runs on Saturday mornings pre-COVID, but since
| the pandemic has transitioned to remote runs where everyone dials
| into an audio call and runs separately. It's not a great
| experience. Your app sounds like it'd be a big improvement over
| what we're currently doing.
|
| The one piece of feedback I'd give is that it's incredibly
| difficult to find pricing info on your site. I'm sure this is
| intentional, and maybe you want people to just sign up for a free
| trial and then learn how much it actually costs later, but at
| least for me it's a huge turnoff when any product does this.
| mknippen wrote:
| We actually have several run clubs that run with Charge
| Running. You can share which class your joining with your Run
| Club and see everyone on that same leaderboard and chat room.
|
| Regarding pricing, that's definitely a fair point, and
| something I think we could easily change. Thank you for the
| feedback
| Humdeee wrote:
| I used to be a marathoner, having logged over 10 thousand and
| some kilometers across various fitness apps. I'd led a few
| clinics and very much enjoy the running world. The running
| community sorely needs connectivity solutions like this imo.
| Especially with Covid, most communities have seen local running
| groups halt and essentially disperse. Strava is still strong
| however, and Zwift running is the closest thing I seem to use for
| building connections live with other runners. Something is still
| needed to make the experience more personable though in this
| space. I wish you and your team the very best of luck.
| mknippen wrote:
| This is exactly it. I love Strava, however, if I want to feel
| like i'm connected with people. I'm definitely not a
| marathoner, and I'm someone who needs the motivation to put on
| my shoes in the morning.
|
| Knowing that a coach is going to guide me, and that they see
| I'm signed up is great, but knowing that there's other people
| running at the same time make it even better.
|
| Thank you very much for the kind words!
| immy wrote:
| Why did you already build an Android app? You now have to
| maintain it as you iterate the product. Did you reach some growth
| milestone and decide to expand platforms in order to maintain
| growth? Or did you determine that the p2p nature of your app
| requires maximal network potential in order to have any traction?
|
| Congrats on your progress. This is a difficult and risky path
| you've undertaken! Having used RockMyRun early on, and the new
| Nike coaching, I definitely appreciate the coaching and am
| curious how real-time will help (yay accountability) or hinder
| (ugh, scheduling) me getting my runs in.
| mknippen wrote:
| Regarding Android, you hit the nail on the head. Nearly all of
| our customers were coming from word of mouth. Runners wanted to
| have their whole club do a run together, and not having an
| Android app made it impossible.
|
| In addition, we've had requests for in-person races to offer a
| virtual option through Charge. This allows us to grow our user
| base with a unique go-to market strategy, and wouldn't be
| possible if we couldn't serve 50% of runners
|
| Thank you for the kind words. Two notes for the live classes:
|
| 1. For me personally, having the runs scheduled has been one of
| the biggest reasons for me being successful on the platform. I
| plan all of my runs on Sunday nights, and they're on my
| calendar so I don't miss them. 2. If you can only run at
| another time, we do record many of the classes, and allow you
| to listen to them anytime you would like. You still get access
| to the leaderboard because we keep track on how far users have
| gone at different points in the run.
| bruceb wrote:
| "I quit my job as an iOS contractor for a big company to focus on
| a start-up full time, at the same time my wife was 8 months
| pregnant with our first child."
|
| If you are willing to share, leaving Big Co, at this delicate
| time, how did you plan family health insurance?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| You can buy it directly from healthcare.gov.
|
| I did it for 3 years as a contractor. It really wasn't that
| hard.
| mknippen wrote:
| I agree, purchasing it was not the hard part. It was the cost
| changing by state, specifically for Illinois.
|
| I was previously employed by a company in the state of
| Michigan, and to match the same coverage was not even
| possible on healthcare.gov. The closest thing was nearly
| double the price, and when you're going through your first
| pregnancy, you take a ton of other factors into account.
|
| In hindsight we probably didn't need the advance plan that we
| had, but it was (and still is) a major portion of our
| expenses.
| mknippen wrote:
| To be totally honest, health insurance has been awful as a
| contractor, and as a start-up entrepreneur. I was working for
| this large company for over a year, but because I was labeled
| as a contractor, health insurance was not provided. I have a
| healthy family, yet we have to pay a ton of money because we're
| not on a corporate plan.
|
| The solution to the problem was saving up money. I built up 6
| months of runway where I knew my family could go without
| income. We made it last 7 months, and then I found another job
| to pay the bills while I continued working on start-up.
|
| After literally years of trying to do both, Charge is finally
| at the stage where it can pay the bills and be my sole focus,
| but there was way more blood sweat and tears that went into it
| than I would have ever dreamed.
| trentontri wrote:
| Matthew! I'm a front-end engineer at Twitter and an avid
| triathlete. Seeing this post and the progress you have made gave
| me overwhelming motivation. I want to help out, I don't even know
| how but I don't want to miss the opportunity to be apart of
| something this awesome.
| mknippen wrote:
| Wow, thank you so much for the kind words. I'd love to chat
| more! Feel free to email me at matthew (at) chargerunning dot
| com
| yllus wrote:
| Really interesting concept and product - perfect for the times
| we're in! Desperately needs a video of the product in action on
| that home page, get on it! :)
| [deleted]
| mknippen wrote:
| Great point, thank you. We have one that we're working on now!
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| This look like something that I would have used when I started
| running.
|
| Most running injuries happen because of overtraining, heel
| striding, wrong shoes, rigid posture, stride length, bad upper
| body form and dynamics
|
| Would any of these being taken into account? Considering the
| sensor data is from the phone I guess not.
|
| It would be interesting to see a video of app in action as well
| as how the trainers view and give feedback.
| mknippen wrote:
| Great points. We do use the accelerometer and pedometer data in
| the phone to give the coaches many key parts of data such as
| cadence, average pace, stride length, and more.
|
| Regarding form, one of the best ways that we've found to fix it
| is by doing routine "form checks". During this part of a run, a
| coach will walk you through your posture, and make suggestions.
| An example would be something like this:
|
| "Let's take a minute and look at our feet. Where is your foot
| hitting the ground? If it's on your heel, focus on leading on
| the center of your foot." They would then proceed to do the
| same with your arms, shoulders, back, and more.
|
| While we can't get exact data here, we can provide runners with
| a way of actively thinking about these form issues.
| RoryJustin wrote:
| Hey all! I'm the co-founder that Matthew was referring to above.
| I've recently made my exit from the military after 12.5 years to
| pursue this crazy adventure! If you have any questions about the
| coaching or class structure, let us know!
| aloukissas wrote:
| The main issue I've seen (and have worked on to improve) is
| running form (heel striking, upper torso movement, etc). How
| can this app help on this? My form now is pretty good so my
| next goal is increasing speed + distance, which requires a
| training schedule (e.g. speed drills). Is this something that
| the app will (does) have? Thanks!
| RoryJustin wrote:
| Offering feedback on running form has been one of the biggest
| requests that we've gotten, as well as training schedules
| catered to your specific needs.
|
| All of our daily classes follow a week-long progression to
| make sure that you are getting in a proper training cycle and
| avoiding overtraining. An example is if you were to join the
| 6AM classes each day during the week, you might have speed
| drills on Monday followed by a base run Tuesday, followed by
| a light interval run on Wednesday for recovery, etc...
|
| Fun Fact! Olympian Jeff Galloway is starting speed work in
| Charge the week of March 14th. He will be taking over some of
| our track attack classes for speed work.
|
| To address running form, we recently launched private
| coaching, where runners can work directly with one of our
| certified coaches to develop a specific training program
| catered to their current experience level and training goals.
| This includes an in-depth running form analysis video where
| we receive a video of them running, and provide a video back
| thats broken down piece-by-piece to give direct feedback on
| how to improve running form for injury prevention and overall
| efficiency.
| aloukissas wrote:
| Great! Will definitely try it out. Is there an option to
| get the benefit of the app w/o the "social" part? Running
| for me has always been a solo sport, closer to meditation.
| RoryJustin wrote:
| Excited you're going to try it out, and we would love the
| feedback! At the current time, we don't have any option
| for omitting the social aspect. We've been laser-focused
| on creating an addictingly social experience that drives
| users back into the app in order to push them harder and
| further than they would alone.
|
| With that said, we do know that some runners enjoy solo
| running more, so we are working on future features to
| track your solo runs so you can still earn upgradeable
| medals for weekly/monthly/overall mileage tracked in the
| app.
| aloukissas wrote:
| Will wait until the solo mode is available then :)
| mknippen wrote:
| We do offer an On-Demand option if you'd like to see what
| it's like on your own!
|
| If you're someone who prefers running by themselves, this
| may be the best of both worlds. You can see what a live
| run would be like, without needing to think about the
| live aspect.
| qnsi wrote:
| Congrats on the launch.
|
| Because it is kind of hidden, I am pasting the pricing from the
| FAQ
|
| A one-month subscription is $29.99 and an annual subscription is
| $239.99/year ($20/month). Both options give you unlimited access
| to every Charge Running class, as well as our weekly "Club
| Races".
| mknippen wrote:
| Great point, thank you!
|
| Because this is a live experience with a coach in your ear,
| there is a cost involved
| crazypython wrote:
| What if you used GPT-3 and 15.ai (currently down, but it
| produces voice-actor-quality audio) to offer your service?
| rrose wrote:
| I wonder what the liability concerns with this are. Could a
| runner that gets injured because the AI coach bugs out and
| tells them to do something dangerous (e.g. extreme
| overtraining) sue?
| mknippen wrote:
| We do require an injury waiver for all users to agree to
| before accepting to hearing coaching advice
| mknippen wrote:
| As a developer, I would love to have this! However, after
| talking to our users, the biggest thing that we
| consistently hear is that they love the community, and the
| coaches.
|
| For example they can talk with Coach Amy on social media,
| chat with Coach Rory on Clubhouse, and see Coach Justin
| making a funny TikTok. The relatable coaches may not be the
| reason that runners are coming to the app, but they're
| definitely a major reason into why they stay.
| snug wrote:
| These workout subscription cost seem insane to me. Why are
| these apps costing the price of a gym, with none of the access
| to equipment. I know it's the price of a drop in class or two,
| but given that these apps/coaches could do many x more people
| in one group should drive prices much lower imo.
|
| edit: to be honest though, it does sound like a fun app and
| good idea. Especially after I've gotten back into running this
| new year, after being out for the last 2 years from an injury I
| got during a half marathon, and had a hard time getting back
| into running. I do want to give it a try, but i have trust
| issues with free trials if I have to put my card in.
| ccmonnett wrote:
| I'm a runner, and I love it. Two things from my POV.
|
| 1) Gyms are no competition for my money because I have no
| interest in going.
|
| 2) I am continually relieved at how cheap running is relative
| to most hobbies - I just pay for shoes, some clothes (don't
| need many), and race fees. Personally I feel like I have
| plenty of headroom to give on what I'd be willing to spend on
| what is _easily_ my favorite hobby, and would really consider
| paying for something like this (I just had a kid so I 'm not
| doing a lot of training right now).
|
| For comparison, I have paid ~$100 for 3-month training
| programs and would gladly do it again. So these prices are in
| line with what I'd expect to pay for a dedicated running
| training program.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > Gyms are no competition for my money because I have no
| interest in going.
|
| Sure but at a gym you also get unlimited access to coach
| led group training _in person_, as well as unlimited access
| to large and expensive facilities, so it doesn't really
| make sense that this costs as much as a gym membership.
| rrose wrote:
| most gyms won't have coaching geared towards distance
| runners, though. Competitive distance runners are
| specialized enough that most fitness classes won't really
| give them what they're looking for.
|
| If you're somebody who goes for a couple runs a week to
| supplement their main forms of exercise I agree that this
| is a pretty steep price to pay.
| mknippen wrote:
| Great feedback. I completely understand that the price
| point may not be for everybody. We've done our best to
| keep the pricing competitive while still being able to
| pay our coaches fair wages. We've also tried to look at
| it from both our costs, and value added.
|
| We do offer 20 different classes each and every day.
| Users who purchase an annual subscription can get an
| entire year of content, thousands of runs for less than a
| pair of competition running shoes.
|
| Even for a runner that only uses our application once a
| week, they pay under $5 a class for a live certified
| coach, curated playlists (that cost a decent amount for
| copyright), live streaming data and other costs.
|
| At scale these things may become more economical, and we
| may be able to offer a lower price.
| bluntfang wrote:
| >Why are these apps costing the price of a gym, with none of
| the access to equipment.
|
| At least in tech, the biggest cost center is employee wages,
| it's possible that this is what's happening here, the cost of
| employees (coaches) is probably their biggest cost.
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