The Hustle -  🦜 Strava for twitchers and fishers

Happy Trends Tuesday!

The Olympics might be over, but the sports craze they ignited isn’t going away anytime soon. 

Recently on social media, I’ve seen more friends share their cycling and running routes from Strava, the popular fitness tracking app.

It's even making me, a homebody, itch to join the platform.

Today we're looking at on how to unbundle Strava, and build a community for the niche-r sports that haven't made it into the Olympics. 

In today's email…

• How to build "Strava for X"
• A summer newsletter reading list you can't miss
• What we’re surfin’, from the addiction economy to the influencers shaping the 2024 election

Let's dive in!

☝️ BE MORE DIRECT

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📜 FROM THE ARCHIVE

Unbundling Strava for niche sports

We first wrote about Strava, the popular exercise and fitness-tracking app, when it just hit 50m users. 

Back then, the app added 1m new users every month, who uploaded 4m+ photos every week and 20 activities every second. 

Interest in Strava remains high today, as 125m+ users have joined, and the company recently launched “Family Plan” to expand its reach further.

Source: Subreddit Stats

Strava was first conceptualized as a social network for athletes, specifically runners and cyclists, with an additional gamification layer that allows athletes to track and race the same routes and give each other “kudos” for activities that they log. 

It has evolved to include a number of other sports (e.g., in-line skating, yoga, rock climbing, roller skiing, and stand-up paddleboarding) and integrate with other apps (e.g., music, weight loss, and other fitness apps). 

If you mine the underbellies of Reddit and the Strava support page, you’ll find users requesting that Strava add their specialized sport of choice to the platform. 

One user made this compelling argument: “There are more than 9 million horses in the US, and more than 30 million people ride horses annually… [but] only 2.8 million people [have] tried stand up paddle boarding.”

He’s got a point: The global equine market is worth $300B. In the US, the market is worth $102B and includes both competitive and recreational riders. 

But what’s missing from Strava is an unbundling opportunity for you. 

We spoke to Adam Torkelsson, the cofounder of Equilab, a Strava-like tracking and community platform custom-built for the equestrian market in Europe that has 500k users. 

He told us about the journey of the platform, which was conceptualized as a training tool (think Fitbit for horses) and later evolved into the Strava or WeChat for horse riding. 

Torkelsson believes that there is an opportunity to build the same for other seemingly niche sporting communities that…  

1. have large recreational and competitive participation;
2. have high tech adoption;
3. and can be done individually or in small groups.

In addition to horse riding, here are some sporting communities that warrant a closer look: 

🎣 Fishing: Recreational fishing is one of the most popular hobbies in the US. In 2023, ~58m Americans participated in freshwater, saltwater, and fly fishing. The only sport with more participants was running. 

Some companies of note:

• Fishbrain is the self-proclaimed “#1 fishing app for finding fishing spots, forecasts, socializing, [and] logging catches” and has 15m users.
  
  
• FishFriender is a “social fishing log” app that allows users to analyze and share their activities, and browse fishing products and equipment.

Source: FishFriender Website

🦜 Bird-Watching: Although not technically considered an official sport, if you have met an ornithology enthusiast (also known as “twitchers”), you know it’s arguably more competitive than the NBA. The name of the game is to see the widest — and rarest — varieties of birds. 

Before you laugh off the twitchers, consider that they spend ~$41B each year on trips and equipment in the US. 

The US Forest Service considers bird-watching “the most steadily growing [recreational] activity in the United States.” 

There are already a number of apps catered to this market, but none that combine all the features of a Strava-like experience. Birda, which has a leaderboard and social network, comes close. 

Gotta keep the twitchers motivated. Source: Birda

Extra features that would enhance the experience include a bird guide, an equipment marketplace, and predefined trips on which twitchers could compete directly (like Strava’s routes functionality). 

🍄 Foraging: If you want to go more niche, there is a substantially growing community of recreational foragers (705k members on the r/foraging subreddit) that's currently underserved by the app market. 

Similar to bird-watching, recreational foragers need good data to find, identify, track, and share the location (and photos) of certain harvests. 

So go ahead, dive into niche subreddits (like you need an excuse) — a "Strava for X" idea might be closer than you think. 👊

👽 OUR LATEST OBSESSIONS

Our favorite newsletters for the summer, and beyond

My, my. Trends recently got a shoutout in my colleague Laura Browning’s “Favorite Newsletters” list, which is almost as important as Barack’s summer reading list. 

Laura's tough and fair, so getting a nod from her is definitely a cool thing. 

But you already read Trends, so I’ll share some other top picks today — these are my four favorite newsletters from her exhaustive list: 

1. Marketing Examples 📝

Marketing Examples does exactly what it says on the tin: Each newsletter includes six examples of great marketing.

Author Harry Dry breaks that down into three short examples, two copywriting tips, and one favorite tweet. Truly a something-for-everyone newsletter, Dry’s marketing examples span social media, ads, content, SEO, and sales. It’s accumulated 130k+ subscribers. 

And it’s just plain fun to read. This recent opening line wouldn’t be out of place in a hardboiled detective novel: “The story starts in California. 1981.”

👉 Author: Harry Dry

👉 Frequency: Every Monday

👉 Cost: Free

👉 Sample subject line: The marketing genius of Lil Nas X

⭐ Recommend if you like: success stories, marketing inspo, digital marketing

2. Stand The F*ck Out

With a name like this, it could’ve easily been the shock jock of marketing newsletters, but Stand the F*ck Out brings style and substance to the table, er, inbox (of 13k+ subscribers). Each email contains one “super-practical” tip, and author Louis Grenier’s tone no-nonsense tone is straightforward but never boring.

👉 Author: Louis Grenier, “a recovering Frenchman who helps marketers stand the f*ck out”

👉 Frequency: Daily, Monday - Friday

👉 Cost: Free

👉 Sample subject line: 3 IRRATIONAL messages that stand the f*ck out

⭐ Recommend if you like: swearing, contrarianism, lots of real-world marketing examples, Lady Gaga

Source: STFO

3. Link in Bio

A wise marketer once said, “Viral is an outcome, not a strategy.”

That person probably subscribed to Rachel Karten’s Link In Bio, “a newsletter about working in social media, creating clever content, and making sure your boss never asks you to ‘go viral.’”

The free version of this email is limited to every-other-week interviews, but the interviews are so in-depth and relevant that you’ll still be thinking about them during the off weeks.

👉 Author: Rachel Karten, who previously led the social media teams at Bon Appétit and Epicurious.

👉 Frequency: Every other week.

👉 Cost: The free subscription sends out every-other-week interviews “with people who actually press post.” There’s also an upgrade option for $8/month or $80/year, which adds a Discord invite and a weekly Logged On email (sample subject line: How to Build a Content Calendar).

👉 Sample subject line: This Politician is Very Good at Social Media

⭐ Recommend if you like: case studies, pop culture, social media inspo

They’ve got a fancy new website now, but the Wayback Machine shows that as late as December 5, 2022, their homepage was still a simple Beehiiv landing page. Source: Archive.org

4. Inbox Collective

Dan Oshinsky describes Inbox Collective as “the newsletter for people who make newsletters.” 

With a minimalist but text-heavy design, it’s not much to look at, but that won’t matter once you dig into interviews with other newsletter writers, growth strategy advice, and some quick hits from Oshinsky’s own reading list.

It’s also great if you don’t want to subscribe to a dozen newsletters about newsletters — Inbox Collective ticks a lot of boxes, with interviews, industry news and updates, a job board, and expert advice.

👉 Author: Dan Oshinsky, formerly the Director of Newsletters at Buzzfeed and The New Yorker.

👉 Frequency: Every week

👉 Cost: Free

👉 Sample subject line: Three secrets I’ve learned about great newsletters

⭐ Recommend if you like: real talk, clear advice, making newsletters

___ 

I’m only including four out of Laura’s 23 because my inbox is a bit of a mess, and I can’t subscribe to all of them (sadly). 

Now you go check out the full list and find out your own favorites! It would be kinda cool for you and I to end up on the same audience list... 

🗂️ OPEN TABS

📱Scroll: How the "addiction economy" came to be and how to escape its grip

🥥 From X: Sometimes the best ideas do just fall out of a coconut tree

👀 Who's who: Meet the influencers shaping the 2024 US election

🤹 Watch: Business tricks from gamblers, pickup artists, and Feynman