Strava vs. Garmin – Strava sets the record straight. (Except it doesn’t)

Strava recently visited Spades-R-Us and stocked up big time. You know, they dug themselves a hole and jumped in, then someone handed them one of the newly purchased spades, and they kept on digging.

Tongue-in-cheek Backstory

Firstly, Strava realised it was running low on money and didn’t have much scope to expand and grow its business further above and beyond the natural growth in the market. Its investors were likely getting uber nervous. They’d sunk all that money into it with little prospect of turning a profit and ever paying it back.

So the obvious call is to go for an IPO, effectively offloading the investment to other poor, unsuspecting souls, including us as private shareholders. Who knows who would buy the stock? Would you buy it now, knowing that the company relies on one other organisation for its existence? I wouldn’t.

IPO Playbook 101

In business school, the first thing you learn about “How to Ace an IPO” is that you have to frighten potential investors and give them a realistic belief that you are fully capable of destroying your new user acquisition funnel and predominant source of revenue with a few carefully chosen words or actions.

The classic play here is to sue your best partner.

Strava did that. They sued Garmin for two cases of patent infringement and another for breach of contract.

It’s an incredulous move because the two patent cases are just nonsense. Bringing such cases is from the Legal 101 playbook, where you try to hack the judge off as soon as possible and get the case dismissed before it’s even heard.

Unbelievable.

the Curious Case of the Bryant Safety Match

Luckily on the way back from Spades R Us, Matt Salazar (Strava’s CPO – Chief Platitudes Officer) called by his local Exxon station and filled up a spare can.

“That should come in handy for my next PR move,” Salazaar smiled assuredly, toying with a box of Bryant Safety matches in his left pocket.

Looking on in disbelief, industry commentator, dcrainmaker, muttered to his partner, “I’m not sure he understands what gas (petrol) does, I did a review on that stuff last week. It’s not to be messed with.”

There’s so much going on that it’s hard to know where to start.

• Will Strava dig itself into a deeper hole?
• Does Strava really understand that gas/petrol does not put out fires and destroys stuff?
• WTF, what have you got a backup Bryant Safety Match for? Just throwing gas/petrol on a fire is enough.

Mixed metaphors always seem like a good idea at the time, but never are.

Back to the Reddit Post

Salazaar took to Reddit, confident that his pass in Year 1 at Business School would stand him in good stead.

Reddit is a dangerous place for PR at the best of times (he hasn’t started the digital media course yet, so doesn’t know this). Typically, the sports product subreddits are inhabited by people who care about the brand. They generally have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on and a good collective memory. Mess here at  your peril.

Salazaar messed there.

The image at the top shows that within 18 hours, Salazaar had racked up 960 comments (now well over 1k). That’s good going—really good going. Remember that only people who are ‘bothered’ will comment; far, far more will just read it and either tut or get angry but avoid wearing out their fingers on the keyboard.

Yes, 960 is a good level of interaction, and it will go into the thousands by the end of the weekend. Except, here’s the rub: It’s best to get good interactions rather than bad ones. Who would have thought that? As you can see from the full subreddit, this particular thread is almost entirely negative.

Sorry, I lied. It’s entirely negative.

But then it’s back to business school, where Marketing 101 tells you that “Any Press Is Good Press.” It isn’t, unless you work for Stupid Company Inc.

Salazaar then implies that his company’s legal cases are without foundation. He specifically says that his actions are because Garmin has told Strava to include the Garmin logo on all activities synced from Strava. Yep, read it. That’s what he says.

Fair enough (kinda, I’ll come onto that in a minute), being told what to do is annoying. But the legal cases have nothing to do with that. They are about patent infringement and breach of contract. In this case, telling you to put a logo on something is akin to crediting the source.

Hypocrisy 101

Kettle | Pot | Black – use those words to make your own sentence. There might be a prize for the winner (there won’t).

I’m guessing that Americans are similar to Brits and don’t like hypocrites in positions of power, i.e., people who tell you not to do something that they have already done themselves about three thousand times. That’s one of the more obvious reasons politicians get a bad rap.

From the Reddit thread, here is a selection of 10 quotes demonstrating Strava’s Hypocrisy

1. Independent-Job-6132: “So how do I get rid of the Strava logo when I want to share my data on social media?”
2. YDYBB29: “Seems like blatant advertising…..hypocritical much strava?”
3. rcuadro: “Hasn’t Strava weaponized their API against others already? “
4. snowystormz: “You can sit there with a straight face and say this after f*ck1ng all the API integrations we had with data (data you consider to be OURS) that doesn’t belong to you.”
5. toiletclogger2671: “i’d almost think you care about us if you weren’t massive hypocrites about API use.”
6. Joatboy: “So why does our data show ‘Strava’ when exported to a 3rd party website?”
7. tkc2016: “Because Strava requires it themselves: https://www.strava.com/legal/api > You must comply with Strava’s API Brand Guidelines and display the provided Strava logos and links where you use Strava data in your application.”
8. EditingAllowed: “So now it’s our data? Is this your final answer?”
9. rieymers: “All of the sudden Strava is concerned about displaying a data source, while simultaneously forcing all Strava API users to display a ‘Data from Strava’ tag or similar.”
10. suuraitah: “But you ask from other companies do the same – indicate that data is from strava if it is from strava. Even though major part of ‘strava’ data is actually from garmin.”
11. suddencactus: “So can we take the obnoxious Strava logo off the Strava relative effort datafield? Can Veloviewer stop using the ‘Powered by Strava’ header? You’ve got a huge double standard.”
12. SingleUseBaggage : “How do I get rid of the strava logo when I share to IG? If you’re against blatant advertising can I expect the pop up to sign up to premium when my membership lasted to disappear?

Sorry, that’s 12. I can’t count. There’s plenty more in the thread.

My Opinion

I think Strava’s patent infringement cases are probably nonsense. The breach of contract case might have some merit; a friend is getting me a copy, but even then, I won’t know the facts to litigate it in my head. That’s one for the courts.

Today’s extra nonsense from Strava is odd. They are weaponising unrelated legal cases to settle an issue with Garmin. Strava doesn’t want to correctly attribute the sources of the sports data it uses to Garmin (and to us, the real owners) because it sees attribution as advertising. There is some merit to that argument as the source of the data IS already in Strava as evidenced by the device name, so adding a Garmin logo on top of that is advertising of sorts.

However, Stava’s integrity and argument are fatally compromised because it has forced other companies to do the exact same thing it is complaining about.

I have zero sympathy for Strava here.

Strava: You deserve what you get from this.

the5krunner.com © 2010-2025

tfk, the5krunner
Sports Technology Reviewer and International Age Group TriathleteWith 20 years of testing Garmin wearables and competing in triathlons at an international age group level, I provide expert insights into fitness tech, helping athletes and casual users make informed choices.

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