“Community is our core,” he says. “People say they don’t download Strava, they join Strava.”

The secret was to never lose sight of the company’s original mission. “You have to have a North Star,” he says. “Success at Instagram has come from a discipline. It’s been an ever-present discipline to keep things simple … and that has meant a number of choices of what not to put in the app.”

“It’s very hard to build a product or a service or community that people love. That’s what great founders and entrepreneurs do,” says Quarles. “However, it’s equally hard to turn those great ideas into long-lasting global companies.

“If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen.”

We want to be the place where Strava becomes the home for your active life

“We’re not profitable at the moment. That’s intentional. We think growing the community and becoming the most engaged community of athletes in the world really is the immediate priority, because it creates such optionality for us to build a great business,”

“I do a habitual 10 or 12 miles [16-19km] on a Sunday morning, and I love watching my improvement … how I’ve been able to just get more fit.

World records recorded on Strava in 2017