There comes a time in every startup\u2019s life when the leaders and stakeholders have to seriously start thinking about the endgame: What to do when you\u2019ve raised<\/a> $150 million in VC cash over 15 years en route to building a 100 million-plus community? And how do you go about executing that next step to ensure that you not only survive, but also thrive?<\/p>\n This is the predicament that Strava, the social fitness app and community, finds itself in. At a crossroads, of sorts, where it has reached meaningful scale driven by the grit typical of many founder-led businesses, but where it has now hit an impasse to scale further.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat got us here will not be exactly the same as what will get us there,\u201d Michael Horvath, Strava co-founder and then-CEO, said as he announced his imminent departure<\/a> in February 2023. \u201cI have decided that Strava needs a CEO with the experience and skills to help us make the most of this next chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n That next chapter started in January, when Strava announced that its new CEO<\/a> would be former YouTube executive and Nike digital product lead Michael Martin<\/a>. Six months into his new role, Martin has already given the first clues as to where his head is at in terms of both business and product, revealing plans to use AI to weed out leaderboard cheats<\/a>, as well as new features to broaden its demographics.<\/p>\n Over the past few weeks, Strava also introduced a new group<\/a> subscription plan, while it finally gave its users the feature they\u2019ve been asking for more than any other: dark mode<\/a>, a glaring omission that had frustrated many through the years<\/a>.<\/p>\n For context, YouTube has had dark mode since 2018<\/a>; X (formerly Twitter) since 2019<\/a>; and everything from WhatsApp<\/a> to GitHub has long offered dark mode<\/a>, too. <\/p>\n So what\u2019s the deal, Strava? <\/p>\n \u201cIf you were to build the Strava app now, or even in the last two or three years, turning on dark mode would have been very straightforward,\u201d Martin explained to TechCrunch. \u201cBut Strava is not a new app.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Strava app has evolved over the past 15 years, it has been added to, layered upon, and cobbled in a less-than-congruous fashion that made it difficult to introduce what, to the outside world, would seem like a fairly simple update.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of flipping a switch, it was the exact opposite,\u201d Martin said. \u201cThere were hundreds of screens that had to be updated, thousands of UX (user experience) controls, each one of them individually coded. And so it took far more work than people would assume, but I understand why you would think it would be an easy thing.\u201d<\/p>\n For dark mode to happen, Strava overhauled the user interfaces to adhere to a more \u201cmodern, modular\u201d ethos.\u201dHonestly, dark mode is just a nice benefit of doing all that additional work,\u201d Martin said. \u201cGoing forward, every feature will be faster.\u201d<\/p>\n While it may have been a hotly anticipated feature, dark mode is the least of Strava\u2019s concerns. It\u2019s a nice-to-have, but it won\u2019t make or break the business. TechCrunch sat down with Strava\u2019s new CEO in London for a wide-ranging interview, delving into what the company is prioritizing and what we can expect in the future as the company embarks on its \u201cnext chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur product development is finely focused on two things right now,\u201d Martin explained. \u201c\u2018Building for her,\u2019 which is really just our lens for making sure that we are doing everything to make Strava more inclusive. And the other is AI and machine learning.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Strava's](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Strava_Dark_Mode_Product_Large-e1720798479177.webp?w=680\")