When we get Komooted

https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/

by atakan_gurkan • 12 months ago

467 268 12 months ago

bikepacking.com

dist-epoch• 12 months ago

The owners’ assured their long-term commitment with the mantra “we won’t sell.”

Vaguely reminds me of some company with the motto "don't be evil"

Towaway695• 12 months ago

But Apple will never sell my data. They promised it.

BozeWolf• 12 months ago

I felt betrayed as well. Just paid €30,- the month or so before because I liked the app and the service, but I also needed more maps. It offered great value to me. If I knew 80% of the employees would be fired, inevitably leading to a degrading service, I would have never done that.

It is weird, but I do not trust the app any more in planning routes either. Sometimes i have the feeling bugs in the planning part already appear. The stability of the service for sure decreased.

Also there are more nag screens about the premium offer (dude I paid for the other great offer already!).

Very unhappy with this. I hope the komooters build an alternative. I’m happy to support them. I know that eventually I might get betrayed again.

For today I planned another route with komoot. If somebody knows an alternative? I like the komoot user photos because it gives an impression of the (gravel) roads. Plus the suggested routes and the planning ux are great. Im stuck with komoot for now.

dijital• 12 months ago

The article mentions one example: https://wanderer.to/. Haven't used it personally but seems promising (albeit less "social" than something like Strava).

_tbl6• 12 months ago

Less "social" would be a feature for me. I just want one that can plan routes, track journeys, and give me directions. I don't want to be worried that I'm accidentally sharing what I'm doing/where I am with the world.

prmoustache7• 12 months ago

One only need a web server to share gpx files really.

Planning routes can be easily done offline with desktop apps. Don't even start with mobile use, I have never seen a web based tool where you could plan a route by tapping on a smartphone screen without pulling your hair out of desperation.

zoobab3• 12 months ago

I organise an mtb event, always refused to use Komoot, Strava or other apps just to display an XML file on a map.

I have used brouter.de as a GPX editor instead of going on site to the route, and used Umap on OSM.ch to upload a GPX:

https://brouter.de/brouter-web/ http://www.vintagemtb.org/maps https://umap.osm.ch/

hommelix• 12 months ago

I've been using https://bikerouter.de/ to plan my ride and then import the GPX into OsmAnd~. Works quite well. It is possible to host brouter (which is what bikerouter is running) on your own http server.

In OsmAnd~ just remember to fix the track to existing paths, otherwise OsmAnd~ routing engine may have difficulty to guide you. I've never dig into it, but it looks like there can be a small offset between the GPX and Osm map.

ayls• 12 months ago

I am quite happy with Wikiloc app. Feature wise it is not that different from Komoot and the yearly subscription which allows me to use it on my watch was only 20 EUR.

politelemon• 12 months ago

I'm quite unhappy with it, in Europe. It defaults to the completely useless apple maps which is unsuitable for outdoors and rural exploration, and its clustering of routes near each other is difficult to distinguish and click on. All trails had nailed this well by showing clustered trails together in a single point and letting you page through them.

ChrisMarshallNY• 12 months ago

Friend of mine wrote this app[0]. It’s iOS-only (I’m not the target demographic, myself, but he works for a company that serves bikers, and is very much a fitness chap). It’s quite mature, and well-maintained. Personally, I know him as an outstanding engineer, so I’m sure it’s well-written. It’s been a labor of love for him, for over a decade.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/app/id605127860

maqnius• 12 months ago

I'm really happy with locus maps 3 classic in combination with brouter as a local routing engine with my own routing profile using my preferences.

In combination with downloadable map tiles, I can plan and ride my route completely offline which saves battery and keeps things running in the more rural areas.

The route planner is really nice. I actually plan all my routes in the smartphone and export to gpx if necessary because it's the most comfortable way to do it.

What I also really appreciate is, that it's not a subscription based payment model. So you pay once for downloadable tiles etc. and for the app and can just use it without worrying about updated terms etc.

BUT, and that's a major BUT, the version is deprecated and will be ended soon in favour of the subscription based locus map 4. I don't miss anything in locus map 3 and don't see any benefits. I'll just hope the app will work as long as possible without official support.

StrLght3• 12 months ago

I don't feel like I've been Komooted. There are alternative apps that I'll switch to.

However, it really sucks for employees. I know a guy who joined Komoot a few weeks before the sale, and who was among 80% fired right after the sale finalised. They've been negotiating the terms of sale and hiring people simultaneously -- that's just insane.

GlacierFox• 12 months ago

Recommend any alternatives?

lonelyasacloud• 12 months ago

RideWithGPS. No affiliation with them, but have been paying for service for years. Far less glitzy than Komoot/Strava and far less paid advertising, but for my money it's better for route planning - particularly long distance off-road - than anything else I've come across [0].

[0] a) For instance Komoot's exports for GPS head units were not accurate enough to be as helpful with picking/finding faint/overgrown trails b) RWGPS UI makes it a bit easier to work with OpenStreetMap's inaccuracies. c) Its auto routing seems to consistently work a bit better than Google's if I want to ride on a roads where car drivers are less likely to try and kill me. (not sure how well Strava does this)

insane_dreamer4• 12 months ago

RideWithGPS

IncreasePosts2• 12 months ago

It makes sense if you realize that there's no certainty a sale will go through and you don't want to pause all operations with the blind hope that a sale will happen

Having said that, if someone just joined before the sale and is laid off, they should get a generous layoff package similar to longer term employees since they may have just quit a job to go there and are now back on the market.

mr_mitm• 12 months ago

Ironically, German law says that the first six months are a trial period for both sides, and you can be fired during that time with a two week notice for no reason.

StrLght3• 12 months ago

Germany mandates two weeks' notice while person is on probation period, which is usually first 6 months. I haven't heard details about layoff package, but given sentiment I am not sure that it was great.

sneak5• 12 months ago

Why is that insane? A job this week is no guarantee, legally or practically, of a job next week.

To assume otherwise is foolish and naive. That’s simply not how employment works.

dakiol2• 12 months ago

You’re technically right. But it’s disappointing that that’s the normal state of affairs.

akdor1154• 12 months ago

A job this week is no guarantee, legally or practically, of a job next week.

It is in Europe - one or three months are the standard notice periods I believe?

yallpendantools• 12 months ago

A job this week is no guarantee, legally or practically, of a job next week.

If this is the case, I'm just gonna sit on my ass this week and take my paycheck. If there is no long term assurance, why should I even try?

StrLght3• 12 months ago

Komoot was located in Germany. Workers' rights are a bit better over here.

I agree that insane isn't exactly the right word for this. More like "assholish" -- this person has just switched jobs, and now they have to go through all this stress over again. This could have been easily avoided.

littlecranky67• 12 months ago

To be fair, komoot already had plenty of dark patterns in place to produce growth and conversion.

Eavolution• 12 months ago

Such as what? I found it a very fair deal, you can have functionality for your area for free, which will likely be good enough for 70%+ of people, but if you want larger regions you have to pay. It seems to me a totally fair and transparent pricing structure, without resorting to filling the app with ads.

The people who need the paid portion of the app are also likely enthusiasts, and in that light the pricing seems fair too.

skrebbel• 12 months ago

I’d love a founder perspective on this. If they kept saying “we won’t sell” and then sell, is that just plain breaking all promises and selling out, as this article suggests? Or was there more going on?

baq6• 12 months ago

30M euro each is a lot of money. Do you need more reasons?

IncreasePosts2• 12 months ago

Any time anyone says they will never do X, they are saying they will never do X unless they are presented with a very very compelling offer. This is generally true in life and not just in business.

Terr_2• 12 months ago

Even if they did break a promise, and there's some contractual oomph behind it... the company responsible is separate from the former owner.

prmoustache7• 12 months ago

Promises only engage those that believe them.

Towaway695• 12 months ago

Everyone has their price. Was the promise legally binding? Was the promise making money?

Just another example of degradation of trust within the western economies. Trust only money and you’ll be on the right side of history - unfortunately.

Trust, moral responsibility and kindness aren’t profitable - in terms of capital.

tietjens• 12 months ago

Bending Spoons strikes again.

xandrius2• 12 months ago

I don't think enough people know about them and their profit-squeezing strategies.

serendipty01• 12 months ago

HN Search: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Etheryte• 12 months ago

That's actually both funny and sad, I recently used WeTransfer and wondered when their product got so bad. Turns out Bending Spoons bought them about a year ago.

thrance2• 12 months ago

From the article:

I’ll argue that Komoot is neither a moral failure nor an outlier but the capitalist system of value extraction working exactly as intended for the platform owners.

If it wasn't for Bending Spoons it would have been another private equity firm. It's not about them being particularly evil, it's about living in a system that makes their existence inevitable.

jml7c5• 12 months ago

Podcast with them from October of last year: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/twisting-the-rule...

(Transcript available, search for and hit the "transcript" button.)

I wonder how they'll do long-term.

croemer2• 12 months ago

Takeaways: The CTO of Bending Spoons found it completely normal that each team decides on their approach to testing: e.g. more mature products have a lot more automated tests like unit, integration, UI tests in place. New products or less mature ones will still have less.

No shit

hermitcrab2• 12 months ago

Just look at what private equity did to British Water companies, Toy'R'Us and any number of other organizations. Do private equity companies perform any useful social purpose? Or are they all wreckers, asset strippers and carpet baggers?

Erikun• 12 months ago

Freaconomics had a podcast episode on private equity a while back. I don’t quite remember the conclusions, probably mixed. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-pl...

Guvante4• 12 months ago

Private equity can sometimes save failing businesses unfortunately there aren't a lot of businesses that go public out of private equity so it is difficult to measure their effectiveness.

Since after all the only time private equity is interested in going public is unicorns.

dzink3• 12 months ago

In the 80s the abuse was concentrated in the management layer of companies - executives would store cash and buy private jets and lavish properties for the “company” leadership to enjoy. Private equity trimmed that fat at the time.

hermitcrab2• 12 months ago

But presumably all that fat instead went to the private equity company instead?

Mistletoe• 12 months ago

Are there any examples of private equity improving a company?

pentamassiv• 12 months ago

Next years article: When We Get Bikepacked

Never believe a company that you are part of a community if the content you create for them cannot be exported and published somewhere else. I am especially sceptical if someone says they never sell.

thrance2• 12 months ago

bikepacking.com doesn't look like it's a for-profit company, in their about page.

blitzar2• 12 months ago

bikepacking.com looks like it's a for-profit company based on their about page.

aembleton• 12 months ago

The owners could still sell it though

prmoustache7• 12 months ago

It is. And it is a media company, not a "community".

navane3• 12 months ago

The users were always the real service provider. All the value is in what they tell each other through their data. All Komoot does is aggregate it, supply the infra structure.

The only way to stop owners pulling the rug underneath all this community given content is by keeping the content open source. Promise the users you will do best with their data by keeping it out in the open so that if you don't, someone else will. Keep the door ajar.

Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that humanity seems unable to do.

Zeebrommer• 12 months ago

Is someone even trying to open source that type of content (routes, pois)?

skeeter20203• 12 months ago

This happened to pinkbike.com when they sold out; you need to view these sites and communities as vectors. https://bikepacking.com is good right now and there are a lot of legit contributors who really care about bikes. This will change so engage how you want with open eyes.

zoobab3• 12 months ago

About Pinkbike Trailforks, I submitted some trails to their platform to find out users needed to be logged in to download the GPX, also to discover they had edited the GPX XML to force/steal their own copyright on top of mine.

baq6• 12 months ago

Just yesterday there was a thread about startups, compensation and what happens to promises when real money enters the picture.

Your best bet to keep a social platform for a long time is a coop. You’ll never get investors, which is the point, but you also aren’t a foundation or a nonprofit with shackles (unless you get to OpenAI levels of creativity.)

Terr_2• 12 months ago

Somewhat related: How bankruptcy laws mean many promises like "we won't misuse your data" become void in the name of extracting value for creditors. (The potential outcome affects decisions even if bankruptcy doesn't happen.)

So there's a system that needs to be reformed, it's not so much a matter of executives' personal attitudes.

ndsipa_pomu• 12 months ago

Sounds like some kind of GDPR law is required so that companies don't get to treat people's private data as their own. It's ridiculous that in a bankruptcy they can sell off the data that belongs to others - companies should be treated as merely protecting PII data and can never own it.

poisonborz• 12 months ago

The base premise was already bent: sell access to community-uploaded material. I know Google Maps does this on a much grander scale but at least the data is more or less accessible for everyone.

I wonder why there aren't popular free/open projects that do what Komoot does. What they did above the contributions seem to be doable by a dedicated group or a nonprofit.

jona-f• 12 months ago

There is openstreetmaps of course and osmand as a navigation app. There is also a biking specific project related to openstreetmaps. None of it is as polished as komoot of course. Far from it. This sell-out was totally predictable. Why the outrage? Do people never learn? It's so frustrating.

Guvante4• 12 months ago

I think it is fair to be annoyed that crowd sourcing is used to enrich a select few.

Honestly the best course of action is to let it die. $300M is enough money that losing the user base would be enough for similar things to stop happening.

andrewshadura• 12 months ago

I’ve been using https://cycle.travel for a similar purpose. I may not be quite as polished, but it does its job, and it’s developed by a person from the OpenStreetMap community.

Doctor_Fegg4• 12 months ago

*waves

(I've just commissioned a designer for a bit of a refresh, so it should get a _little_ more polished soon!)

NoboruWataya2• 12 months ago

I wonder why there aren't popular free/open projects that do what Komoot does. What they did above the contributions seem to be doable by a dedicated group or a nonprofit.

Well, there are still costs involved (not just financial but also labour), and someone has to pay them. We are lucky to have a number of great open source and community-driven projects where people do contribute time and money to make data freely available to everyone, but it's not guaranteed. If there aren't enough people who are willing and able to contribute, or the costs get too great, the project will founder.

OpenStreetMap seems like it is already doing this to an extent, or at least is a good platform on which something like this could be built. Hopefully this saga encourages more people to contribute that way.

stef25• 12 months ago

Welcome to the capitalist world I guess. Not only does this happen all the time, it's the goal of most tech founders.

atemerev2• 12 months ago

More than that, you won't succeed and your company will probably go in the dustbin of nice failed projects unless some scalable explicit monetization is the goal.

Towaway695• 12 months ago

But on the other hand it makes business sooooo much simpler: have an idea, create much hype and excitement using marketing and social media, hire some influencers to promote your product, create website that promises a life changing difference if you use my product, hire a bunch of people to build something, wait and the sell to the highest bidder.

Being caught at a concert with the head of HR can be easily turned into a PR success, just add money.

No long term goals necessary, no employee retention programs, no social responsibility. Just pure and beautiful monies in the bank.

xandrius2• 12 months ago

Whenever you read that your favourite app got purchased by Bending Spoons, run away as fast as you can.

There should be a tracker specifically for this.

Ezhik• 12 months ago

Oh how I miss the old Paper by FiftyThree. Even have their stylus which is no longer supported by the app.

avhception4• 12 months ago

As someone who always rejected Komoot and stuck to OpenStreetMap, and had to justify that decision multiple times: I'll play them the world's smallest violin.

mnmalst• 12 months ago

I am the same. I use osmand and sync the recorded tracks with syncthing to my desktop. Works for me but not comparable to sites like komoote of course.

tonfa• 12 months ago

Also there can be some really great country specific apps.

E.g. in Switzerland there's the free official Swiss Topo app with all the official maps incl. all the trail data. Can easily create/import/export tours.

oreilles• 12 months ago

This article is about people who liked their company and their job and lost it all. It's something to lack empathy, but I'm always amazed that there are people so full of themselves that they will go out there and proclaim that they don't give a shit about other people's fate, as if it was something to be proud about.

avhception4• 12 months ago

Okay, you're right, and I actually do give a shit about the employees. The comment was coming from the perspective of interacting with users and the app, and I didn't think about the employee-side of the story when I wrote it.

probably_wrong• 12 months ago

Counterpoint: I used Komoot during the pandemic because it was the only app that would recommend new, interesting trekking routes every week in the small corner of the world where I was at the time. For my SO at the time, who was losing their mind due to cabin fever, Komoot was a literal lifesaver. No other app that I know of offered that.

I am therefore thankful to the old Komoot Team and I'm sad for them.

dewey• 12 months ago

That's a bit like saying you don't need a guide book because you have a globe at home.

prmoustache7• 12 months ago

replace globe with a complete set of detailled maps.

ramon156• 12 months ago

The more I see Bending Spoons in the news, the more I realize how shitty of a company it aims to be.

I once applied to their job listing. I adored the idea of working there. Now all I can think about is "I'm glad they rejected me"

ImaCake• 12 months ago

I mean they own meetup which is one of the worst platforms that has failed to die in-spite of how terrible a product it is.

mooreds• 12 months ago

Network effects + inertia are a hell of a drug.

bonzini• 12 months ago

Say what you want of Bending Spoons, but they know what they're doing. They buy companies with a faithful user base that are losing money, and jack up prices to force the user base to show if they really are faithful. Then either they make money or they close the service, but it turns out it's the former more often than not.

For example, Evernote was losing money on server costs and after almost 20 years of existence did they really need a generous free tier to build up a user base? All that BS had to do for Evernote to make a profit was nerfing the free tier.

pqs• 12 months ago

I agree. And Evernote has improved a lot since then.

fuzzfactor• 12 months ago

Without 20/20 hindsight, it's hard to be so sure about the dividing line between one epoch and another as time marches on.

For instance it took until about 2010 to confirm that we were already headfirst into the Garbaceous Period by 2005, but it was just not that obvious at the time.

Before you know it the Enshittocene crept up without fanfare but the type of extinction it foments might not have been possible without the decline in conditions that came before.

sneak5• 12 months ago

I will never understand why businesspeople consider it a betrayal when business happens.

If it’s not in the contract, it’s not something you should rely on.

Guvante4• 12 months ago

Who says it wasn't in the contract? If they had a terms of service that promised to never sell and then revised it to remove that clause is that legal? Probably not but good luck fighting it.

The problem is legal suits over complex contract law are way too expensive for impacted people to legitimately seek enforcement in cases like this. Especially since courts hate non-monetary enforcement and so at best would allow some pittance of money as a replacement.

RamblingCTO2• 12 months ago

The article is really really well written, beautiful! Thank you for making it available freely.

I'd say it's about time for the komoot folks to organize and create a coop and stick it to komoot. A coop would probably be even more compatible with the dirtbag lifestyle!

croemer2• 12 months ago

Visa sponsorship isn't really a thing in Europe the way it is in the US. Article is written by a US person with limited understanding of Europe.

RamblingCTO2• 12 months ago

Joshua Meissner is a young writer, photographer, and engineer who tours in ever-widening circles around his home in Berlin, Germany.

I don't think that's true. Not even sure what your point is

jabiko• 12 months ago

Here is a bittersweet video of the self organized goodbye meeting of the ex Komoot team: https://youtu.be/qLJkK4Wn1HI

dakiol2• 12 months ago

Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted their lives to commit to the outdoor lifestyle and the dream job. Suddenly, they were left scrambling for new work and visa sponsors with just a few months’ pay as severance. The six bosses, meanwhile, pocketed an estimated 20 to 30 million euros each.

That’s why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work the minimum.

For dreams and craft, I have my side projects.

lycopodiopsida3• 12 months ago

There is nothing unethical about: you are doing the only sane thing in this system and economics. Morons, who work themselves to death believing bosses shit-talk about “our mission” and “we are in this together” will learn it the hard way.

benterix2• 12 months ago

Try saying that on LinkedIn and watch the reactions. There is a huge difference between what you can feel and do, and what you can say.

michaelt• 12 months ago

In principle, we can imagine jobs that contribute positively to the world.

When a builder builds a house, or a doctor mends a broken arm, the community has one more home and one less broken arm - and the community is left richer even after the builder and doctor have been paid.

That house will be keeping a family warm and dry 20, 40, 100 years into the future, and the patient will be using that arm for the rest of their life.

I can see how a person with a job like that could take pride in the fact they've contributed to their community, in addition to the fact they've gotten paid.

Of course, a lot of jobs aren't that way, but have tricksy bosses who will try to convince you they are. Which is what it sounds like happened in Komoot's case.

bjackman2• 12 months ago

I'm gonna copy paste a comment I wrote yesterday that I think fits perfectly here:

As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are:

1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work.

2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open source and has some value/community outside of your employer.

3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5 years of your career.

If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely misdirecting your energy.

---

It sounds like the staff here thought they were in case 2, but they were not. I think that the article explains the reason why nicely: the thing they were building was not part of the commons.

A_Duck2• 12 months ago

This is a shame though. We should work towards a world where most people can find meaning in what they do.

For now it can work better to be a contractor and have your 'meaning' be a positive reputation in your industry.

More like being a medieval blacksmith. You don't mind what you're making, but you're known in your village by the quality of your work.

pjc50• 12 months ago

I'm reminded of the Vshojo collapse just recently, where a whole load of people were convinced that not getting paid on time was a temporary necessity for growing the business.

Which promptly imploded, taking stolen charity donations with it.

valicord• 12 months ago

4. Golden handcuffs

Simon_O_Rourke2• 12 months ago

That’s why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work the minimum.

That's not unethical at all, in fact I think that's a highly intelligent strategy to look out for the little guy (namely you) in the bear pit of tech capitalism. Anyone buying into the "we're more than a company, we're family" schtick is just another sucker to be worked remorselessly to line the pockets of the VPs and C-suite.

My previous employers included me in their Director/VP meetings, and the family schtick evaporates pretty quickly when they start talking cuts. One VP in a meeting, quite literally, proposed laying off an entire team of veteran engineers (most with young kids) and the very next thing that came out of this doucebag's mouth was "are we ordering in some lunch?". They do not care a whit about you and once you realise that then you should just look to yourself first and foremost and forget accepting below-average salaries just for some "mission".

They will happily kick you to the curb for any of the following reasons, which I have personally witnessed in the past few years,

- Their pal is looking for a job that's currently occupied by someone else. So they fire and hire.

- They want to deflect blame for their own failures, so they fire a bunch of folks who had nothing to do with the failures.

- They want to appear 'ruthless' to the CEO, so fire people to enhance their own image.

- They do a clear out of their previous incumbents staff once they replace someone and bring in their own crew.

tdiff2• 12 months ago

For dreams and craft, I have my side projects.

In very infrequent cases can you achieve any noticeable (for society) results without being part of a large org.

Xylakant• 12 months ago

That depends on what you consider noticeable. A lot of things are noticeable (and noticed) on the local level. The folks that organise reading sessions with the kids a my sons school. The people managing the local hockey club. People doing local education in IT. Organizing the neighborhood meetup. The people that do hack and tell. Blog about what they’re doing by as fun projects.

They may not be known beyond their local communities, but they have impact on society. Most of them are contend with that. If you’re looking to change the world, then that’s likely not good enough, but then again, if you’re looking to do that it’s unlikely that you will achieve that as a rank and file employee in a corporation.

benhurmarcel• 12 months ago

There’s some maturity in being happy doing things that are not significant for society.

bremon• 12 months ago

As a warning: every time I’ve pushed hard, then had to rein it in and do less, I’ve gotten fired.

There’s nothing you can do that makes you irreplaceable, even if you’re the only one in the world that can do it.

It’s fine if you want to stay in your happy place as the only one that can do X and then keep selling them on the value you provide and how you’re doing big things. But, nothing lasts.

Don’t burn out, but sitting on your ass is a bad strategy.

ponector• 12 months ago

The goal is to not push hard from start, to set up moderate expectations.

The recipe of success is also to do a little bit more (15%) than your colleagues, be reliable and punctual.

baq6• 12 months ago

Don’t do that then. Work on 90% with bursts of 130%. Don’t work on 120% all the time because it’ll be assumed you’ve gotten lazy when you just need to slow down.

zzzeek• 12 months ago

Yup, when headhunters reach out with all these idiotic startups that I know full well are just playing the game of "see if you can bullshit long enough for someone to buy your useless company" I don't even laugh anymore, just shake my head. If you have real life obligations and can't afford to hop jobs every year, never work for a startup.

mellosouls• 12 months ago

This approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for (say) public service organisations.

There's also the argument an abundance of cynicism - as well as being occasionally aimed at a misjudged target (eg you work for bosses who do try to do the right thing) - is corrupting to the self and wider society.

carlosjobim• 12 months ago

Of course the argument works for everybody who works in public service. You do the duties you are paid for. If you think that's not enough you are welcome to volunteer for free.

astrobe_• 12 months ago

This approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for (say) public service organisations.

This remark is specially apt with regard to the leitmotiv of TFA; one sees, indeed, an entirely different picture when the goal of an organization is something else than growing and making profits.

NoGravitas• 12 months ago

Somewhat disagree. If a public service organization is demanding more than that approach, it either needs to hire more people, or manage projects more effectively. I'll take a lower salary for public service, but it doesn't help anyone for me to burn out.

010101010101• 12 months ago

I like to remind those I mentor that The Company’s sole goal for their employment is to extract more value from them than they are paid - not because The Company is evil, but because that’s just what’s required in a capitalist endeavor. But, what it does mean, is that you shouldn’t feel like you owe any company anything - the goal of any for-profit corporation is to extract more value from you than they give back to you, period.

javcasas• 12 months ago

it was a mission and purpose

Is this "we are a family here" for the people that don't fall anymore for the "family" con?

atoav• 12 months ago

Bosses always want workers who treat their job and the company like family, but when it comes to them treating their workers like family somehow it is all about the numbers and they barely even treat them like people (if the law permits it).

It may seem over the top, but my feeling is we as a society need to stop accepting, excusing or even applauding behavior like this for our own good. This should be a stain on their names for the rest of their lives and the rest of society might consider treating them as outcasts.

I know this is an extremely unpopular position to take on a platform where half of the people dream of creating a company, pretending it is the mission of their lives, just to sell it to the highest bidder and live a life in luxury after. Everybody has to watch out for themselves they would say. If your goal is to leave the planet worse off than before that is the sure way to do it. This is a model for a society of sociopaths who kill everything good and it is time we start putting up some resistance.

izacus2• 12 months ago

This is the approach that most workers took in our eastern European countries during socialist era.

It was shitty. Pretty much all services were terrible since people just did the minumum.

I've noticed US going down this path for a few years now and I can't figure out why in the frigging world would you cheer on towards such horrible society.

All the best places I've lived at were great because people cared about the jobs and other work they did.

twixfel2• 12 months ago

There’s nothing wrong with caring about your job and what you do. Just don’t buy into any of the horse shit about missions and so on. The bosses are ruthlessly capitalist so it’s immoral to expect the workers to be any less self interested.

vachina• 12 months ago

Well that sucks for the users too. If i knew this would be the outcome i wouldn't have contributed anything to the platform.

prmoustache7• 12 months ago

But you should have known given it is such a common pattern.

thomasahle• 12 months ago

Other than entirely community-driven projects (like https://wanderer.to/ mentioned in the article), are there company "forms" that legally protect against this kind of sell-out? Like non-profit or public-benefit-corporation?

If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they should have a way to hold the owners accountable.

Guvante4• 12 months ago

Honestly it can be quite difficult, generally speaking the best you can do is release the data in raw machine readable format with a permissive license.

Unless you already have large interested parties "bribing" (not technically of course) the group of controlling members tends to be a weakness of anything crowd sourced.

Especially since it is rarely cut and dry. If the finances aren't working out is it better to sell and keep the site online or not? Are intrusive pop ups begging for donations a better option? There isn't a singular true best option.

NoboruWataya2• 12 months ago

There are non-profit corporations which seem on their face to address the issue, but not knowing much about how they work, it seems to me that it is often too easy to convert them to for-profit corporations, as happened with Raspberry Pi. I think in Europe a lot of open source organisations are "foundations" which seem to operate on similar principles.

IMO non-profit or charitable status is a must for sustainable, open, community-driven projects. One of the dumbest takes I often hear is "this for-profit corporation was good and kind before financial capitalism came along". Financial capitalism was always there, the for-profit corporation is pretty much a pure product of financial capitalism. Don't believe any for-profit startup that tells you it is all about the social mission, it is not. Even if the company is European.

bombcar• 12 months ago

I’d you do some research into non-profits you’ll find there are tons of entirely legal ways to milk them for profit, legally.

Easiest? Pay yourself a nice fat salary and use most of the rest of the money to hire “nonprofit management companies” which may or may not be you or your friends in a cheap costume.

greenpenguin• 12 months ago

In the UK a CIC (Community Interest Company) is an option, which can legally oblige the company to act in the interest of "the community they serve". I think in the USA a benefit corporation might be similar.

Alternatively if Komoot was a worker co-op a sell-out would only be possible with consent from the employees. Consumer co-ops (where users can vote too) are also an option but with more caveats.

jtbaker• 12 months ago

Wow, this is awesome! I had seen the little Strava plug-in, but didn’t realize it was something that was self host able!

zoobab3• 12 months ago

First you would need a Data license of the GPX files (like Creative Commons) that prevent corporate sell out.

blitzar2• 12 months ago

Feature not a bug, ticket closed.

rglullis2• 12 months ago

Unsustainable growth is not just ideology but an imperative, and it’s blatantly unsustainable. In a 2023 interview, Hallerman revealed that Komoot’s revenue was roughly split between recurring subscriptions and new users making one-time payments for map regions, with ad revenue making up a small remainder. That means they had to keep signing new users and expanding into new markets to stay in business. Komoot relied on continual growth in a finite world—an impossibility. What cannot continue forever is, by definition, unsustainable.

Relying solely on "community" to build and maintain these spaces is equally unsustainable. I worry that people will look at this and think that the alternative is to reject all forms of businesses, when the problem is simply of scale.

Doctor_Fegg4• 12 months ago

They had 250 employees, plus paid influencers, for a (predominantly) cycle routing app used in Europe. That’s why it was unsustainable. A realistic sized business would have been sustainable.

rglullis2• 12 months ago

Which is why I mentioned the issue of scale. Seems like you are agreeing with me?

cloudbonsai• 12 months ago

I think that the stylized picture here is:

1. Bending Spoons (BS) is an itallian conglomerate, who is specialized in acquiring marginally-profitable software companies.

2. After an acquisition, BS attempts to cut the cost structure agressively. This normally involves massive axing of employees.

3. BS also raise the pricing agressively, which would shock long-term users.

4. Now the acquired compnay is cashflow-positive.

5. Using that cash flow, BS proceeds to acquire another company.

Based on this playbook, Bending Spoons has acquired Evernote, Remini, Meetup, WeTransfer, Brightcove ... and now Komoot.

So in short, Bending Spoons is a roll-up vehicle for software business, pretty similar to what Brad Jacobs (who founded United Rentals and XPO) has been doing for decades.

padjo• 12 months ago

Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose.
Unusually, none of the employees held stock in the startup

Sigh. Even with equity I’d question tying your purpose to the company like that. Without equity it’s just very silly.

klabb32• 12 months ago

Yes. Equity is ownership. Basically:

A for-profit company, owned by a few founders, takes your data and provides no data licensing terms or contractual guarantees. It’s legally speaking their data. Everyone else has basically no legal rights to anything on the ”platform”.

Then they attract both employees and users due to their good mission, ”we will never sell”. Surprise! They sell and leave everyone hanging.

From a EU perspective I get it. This is upsetting and surprising even. But from a US perspective this is just business as usual.

That privately owned data is a pile of gold that grew by the day, eventually big enough to buy out even the most passionate and stubborn founders. The company was never what the author expected it was, even before the sale – it was a projection of what they wanted it to be.

I applaud the efforts to fix the business model and lack of data sovereignty. The more people that ”wake up” and understand the flaws of current system, the better chances we can fix it.

dostick• 12 months ago

Until capitalism is fixed or replaced with a better system (not communism) it will happen. This is a very popular area of interest for general public, with millions using it. Such service should be run by government. And everyone laughs. But that’s the idea behind government and society. Not just collect taxes and provide basic services. the ineffective and outdated democratic system that needs update for modern times.

dzink3• 12 months ago

Any accumulation of power, especially government, becomes a target of corruption. Every single country and post has eventually proven that. The real innovation would be to prevent abuse of power systematically, and thus restore trust systematically. Anything else is just promises waiting to be broken.

uludag• 12 months ago

Reading this, I was getting vibes from another book I read recently: "Less Is More" by Jason Hickel, which I can recommend. A lot of the topics in this article like enclosure are covered in the book, with complementary conclusions drawn.

proactivesvcs• 12 months ago

I was also Komooted - by Komoot. They brought out ViewRanger, who I had paid money to provide a service. Month by month they removed the features and access that I had paid for, and made the app less useful. I am not sure I can feel any pity for Komoot, an organisation that met a fate down a path it seemed to choose.

subpixel2• 12 months ago

I think that’s Outdooractive which is a Komoot competitor

raffael_de2• 12 months ago

I've been using Komoot a lot for bike tours in Germany and never have been particularly happy with it. It served the core purpose of telling me where to go but there were so many obvious flaws about it that I sometimes wondered if the people at Komoot actually even use it themselves.

Then there is the obvious Geschmäckle of taking advantage of OSM (a free open source project) while not providing a way to give back to it. For example marking a bridge or path as no longer functional or existent.

The main feature of importance for me was a convenient way of visual representation of the trip on a map + being able to easily take pictures and have them added into the tour route visualization. This is provides for a really neat trip summary. Maybe someone has an app or service suggestion for such a feature?

Couchsurfing, Reddit, Twitter, and many more were similarly komooted.

I'd like to add another company to the list: carpooling.com aka mitfahrgelegenheit.de

Capital does not invent interesting new ideas like gravel and bikepacking. It swoops in from the outside to appropriate.

That seems a little warped. Bikepacking (isn't new) is as old as the bike and gravel biking is pretty much a capitalist rebranding of bikepacking. Selling the idea that you need a "gravel bike" to for bike packing. Pretending that the tried and tested way of laterally attached baggage is not good enough anymore and now has to be attached medially and you need those special tires yada yada

klabb32• 12 months ago

Then there is the obvious Geschmäckle of taking advantage of OSM (a free open source project) while not providing a way to give back to it. For example marking a bridge or path as no longer functional or existent.

Something something paradox of tolerance. I don’t know exactly what type type of conditions should apply to open source data, but this shouldn’t be permitted by the license. I’m leaning more and more towards that permissive licensing (and their popularity) is basically destroying open source ”public goods”.

I’m not anti market by any means. You could provide a service and get paid for well… good service. The problem is the ”digital enclosure” where they own the data, and the social graphs. If the value of the service goes down, the value of their accumulated data remains, and can be sold as private property.

Now that copyright is near dead, due to the fair use loophole for AI, it’s getting much more adversarial, fast. Data will become much more fragmented again.

sorenjan2• 12 months ago

The main feature of importance for me was a convenient way of visual representation of the trip on a map + being able to easily take pictures and have them added into the tour route visualization. This is provides for a really neat trip summary. Maybe someone has an app or service suggestion for such a feature?

Strava has this.

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216917387-Addin...

subpixel2• 12 months ago

Poor one out for local Mitfahrzentrale!

raffael_de2• 12 months ago

And ze Mitesszentrale [1]

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBKu6r-fn7k

navane3• 12 months ago

The users were always the real service provider. All the value is in what they tell each other through their data. All Komoot does is aggregate it, supply the infra structure.

Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that humanity seems unable to do.

renox• 12 months ago

Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that humanity seems unable to do

Not all the time, see the success of GPL software. But yes, each community has to relearn the lesson: promises don't matter what matter is whether the data are 'open' or not.

Towaway695• 12 months ago

Thanks to the GPL and open source software movement, we have these hype-capitalist FAANG corporations that reduce everything down to making a profit as fast as possible - or just dump it.

No long term goals, no guarantees for users, no job security, no ownership in a renters economy. Just take the data and make as much money with it as possible.

But that’s just one interpretation, perhaps it will have a happy end. If not, I’m sure there will be an app to fix it.

dan-robertson• 12 months ago

What a bizarre article.

Even as someone who thinks big private equity acquisitions tend to go badly, I’m not sure this article makes very good points. In particular, lots of blame is levied against bending spoons but not much against the founders, yet the founders arranged to not give employees equity, the founders reneged on their ‘never sell’ promise, the founders did not try to negotiate better severance for the employees that would be let go after the sale, and the founders set the business direction before the sale.

I do feel like there is something to the idea that one should be suspicious of some ‘social good’ messaging from companies as it can often be a way to allow or hide existing inequities, eg paying everyone the same (in cash but not equity) or claiming they don’t need equity as you won’t sell the company (except you do). Amusing that it is the relatively left-wing prosocial German startup scene where the workers get fucked over rather than the SF one though maybe this is outliers or startups choosing employees in Germany with things the other way around in the US.

I think the article also seems to misunderstand the emphasis on growth. The expectation is not for profits to continue growing forever. The expectation is that the growth will happen roughly logistically (until some outside force causes a loss/increase of market share), so under this model a slight slowdown in growth implies that the maximum is nearer, and this maximum has a big impact on the value of the business. If one is hoping to sell the business then maintaining growth is important because it implies something about the size of the market and therefore the valuation. It was the founder’s desire to sell for a high price (alternatively to try to gain network-effects advantage over competition) that drove the growth, not the existence of private equity firms.

Some other thoughts:

As a user, I don’t particularly care about the particularities of how employees in developed countries are treated. The company gets some choice in how it divides its equity and how much revenue goes to paying staff and in what proportions. These things tend to be negotiable for engineers working for software startups (maybe not in Germany??) and these employees negotiating themselves relatively poor contracts isn’t really something I blame on private equity.

I feel like the article implies that capitalism necessarily leads to the way that private equity seems to destroy the communities run by the companies it acquires but I’m not sure that should be true. It seems to me like it ought to be more profitable in the long run to be less destructive (though some of this can look bad to users if they see layoffs as a focus on growth is decreased or the removal of loss-leading products that users like for obvious reasons).

skeeter20203• 12 months ago

A similar thing happened with the mountain bike-centric mapping app TrailForks. It was created by pinkbike.com and, while a decent app, gets msot of its value from the huge set of largely community sourced GPS data. They then went subscription for most functionality as PinkBike sold to the Outside media company. This happened quite a while ago but a large part of the community is still very upset - including me.

jq-r• 12 months ago

I'll never forget this. Tons of riders uploaded their rides, charted trails, routes, uploaded pictures... Without any of that data the app would have zero value. And if any of those riders knew that they'll do a rug pull later nobody would've upload anything. So they had to do it with a secret plan to introduce subscription abruptly, locking pretty much everyone out with a subscription and trying to justify this with "data costs money". Then they've packaged this data, along with pinkbike.com and and sold this out to outside.com. I would understand if they've say contributed the user trails to eg openstreetmaps or allowed it to be downloaded, but no, they've just taken what was yours and sold it.

This stuff should be illegal. And f them for doing it.

jraph• 12 months ago

Caveat: I'm not very familiar with Komoot. I only see it as something that locks seemingly valuable data behind a login and a proprietary application.

I spoke with a few longtime employees in the aftermath, who described it as a rough and cruel betrayal. Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose.

If the data and the code is not open (and thus does not truly benefit everyone), and can vanish at a company's whim, it doesn't seem worth it.

Many had accepted below-average salaries

I reluctantly accept to be paid less if it allows me to have a job that does not go against my values (but will leave as soon I as I find something paid better). What made Komoot so special that you'd accept below average salary?

I hope that, again, some initiative that values open stuff will save the day and make up for the void this event creates.

Fade_Dance• 12 months ago

The generative AI argument seems flawed.

Much of the article is waxing poetic about the commons and the corrupting influence of monetization and capital, yet the main thrust against genAI is training on data from walled gardens and expanding access. As far as I can read it, it's a fairly pro-capital angle as well, in that a nonprofit AI outfit who was training on copyrighted data would also be vilified. Seems incompatible with the rest of their article. But I suppose one has to have a strong stance against AI these days.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Copyright walled gardens/publishers are some of the most flagrant examples of walling off the cultural commons. It's also necessary in order to support livelihoods of individuals, but it can incentivize "bad" behavior like changing the mission in order to pursue mass appeal and profit. Likewise, completely disregarding the fact that 150 employees is something that is funded by growth isn't a fair representation of the whole story here. A group of hikers doesn't magically create a service like that from thin air.

Maybe what the author is trying to advocate for something like a corporate structure with capped profit? Regardless, their arguments need work.

Doctor_Fegg4• 12 months ago

This is half right IMO. I'd agree with the first part of the article: when you have a growth-at-all-costs company, which is then sold to someone who wants to control costs to crank out the maximum profit, then users are inevitably going to lose out. It was always entirely predictable that this was the way Komoot would go - lots of us commented way before the Bending Spoons acquisition that 250 salaries (never mind the influencers) was a lot to pay from a routing app.

But even as someone pretty left/liberal fully signed up to the open source gospel, I think the conclusion is unconvicing and rather handwavy:

Promising projects such as the Mastodon social network, Matrix chat, and Pixelfed social photo sharing are reviving the diversity and abundance of the early, independent internet before it was enclosed by tech giants in the 2010s. More than singular platforms, the Fediverse represents a growing ecosystem of open protocols and distributed services that guarantee freedom of movement for users and data and push back against capitalist enclosure—a diverse and resilient digital commons.

No. You don't get performant consumer-level routing without lots of fast servers, and the Fediverse doesn't really have a way to pay for lots of fast servers. Ok, you can run hobbyist projects like Brouter on low-spec hardware - and don't get me wrong, Brouter is absolutely awesome in its own way, and for a certain type of cyclist it's all they'll ever need. But if you want something that appeals beyond the hardcore cyclist - in the way that Komoot does, and in the way that Google and Apple Maps do for motoring (and, increasingly, city cycling) - there has to be some sort of way of paying for the servers. "Open protocols and distributed services" don't fix that.

Entirely personally (and you would expect me to say this), my view is instead: support your local artisan. Your local artisan framebuilder will build you a fantastic bike. Your local artisan bike shop will repair it much better than a chain like Halfords will (or whatever your country's equivalent is). These guys aren't practising "enshittification". They're doing what they love, and being paid for it so that they can feed the family and pay the mortgage. Sure, maybe it's still "capital", but not in the same way that Bending Spoons does it.

So if you're happy going to an artisan bike shop, consider going to an artisan routing/mapping site, rather than a growth-then-sellout project. There are plenty of these - I'm obviously going to plug my own site/app, cycle.travel, but there are many others.

(Incidentally, I hold no brief to support Komoot - quite the opposite, because they've ripped off a bunch of my content - but the bit about "leeching off the open-source commons" is not entirely fair. Komoot developed one of the most popular OpenStreetMap geocoders, Photon, and released it as open source. They're paid-up members of the OSM Foundation. Sure, there's more they could do and some other companies do more, but it's important to recognise what they have done.)

m0llusk• 12 months ago

This piece ignores some potentially critical points. Having large amounts of capital to carelessly throw at organizations that do not have sustaining cash flow is a recent thing. Zero interest rates are casting their shadow here. Also, with modern analytical tools it is relatively easy to see, for potential investors if not the general public, roughly how profitable or not any given entity is. This makes growth dependent plays hard to hide.

On a more robustly positive note, ongoing progress with solid legal frameworks for benefit corporations may address much of this. Such companies serve stakeholders instead of shareholders and have employee ownership as foundational.

Leaning back and declaring Capitalism as flawed isn't good enough. If you have property rights and ability to sell labor then you have Capitalism. Corporations are a new innovation that we can hone. Large, shared allocations of capital will continue to be needed for essential endeavors so we need to figure this out.

awjlogan• 12 months ago

Do users share some “responsibility” (for want of a better word) as well? If people were happy to share their experiences to personal, or at least smaller, groups rather than with some implicit desire to be widely acknowledged then a portion are of the use of these platforms would not exist. Keep a blog of your routes, shared with your friends - others can stumble upon it (obviously less easily these days) - or even go with your friends and don’t bother sharing it to the rest of the world. Your activity might not be the best by some metric, but who really cares? Some of my favourite trips have been those that have gone completely wrong, as compared to the original plan, and enjoying that with the people who care about you is far better in the long run.

Towaway695• 12 months ago

Users are humans, you might as well say do humans share some responsibility.

As a user, nothing much will probably change. You will still be able to share your personal data with the world.

It’s a little overreaching to say because users did this , they are responsible for making the company popular and then getting sold off to a make money for the founders and then these users are responsible for the blight of the employees (who were also “users” probably).

the_wolo• 12 months ago

I seriously didn't expect to find one of the best critiques of capitalism I've ever read on a site about Bikepacking. It's got almost everything one needs to know about the enclosure process and the relationship between platform companies and their users, all nicely described through an example that the Bikepacking community can really feel by just having been owned.

kensai• 12 months ago

The manifesto reads very leftish with many radical weasel words, as if the alternative is fantastic. Without a capitalistic structure they would have been long ago been headless chicken.

Now, don't get me wrong, it sucks majorly for the employees and it is painful; but particularly for the long-running ones, where is your equity? Komoot was once a startup, why did you accept to work there without equity.

Last but not least, indeed, never believe the bosses, unless you have (almost) the same end-game privileges.

johnecheck• 12 months ago

I am not a lawyer, but don't employees (and maybe even users) have a breach of contract claim here?

At least in the US, if you tell me 'We'll never sell out' and I take a job with no equity because of it, that's a verbal legal contract and I have grounds to sue if you then sell out.

In theory, at least, our legal systems discourage/prevent this sort of lying and backstabbing. In practice, perhaps not.

jagged-chisel• 12 months ago

You’ll have to hire a lawyer, and then hope yours is at least as tenacious as their expensive team of lawyers. It becomes quite a gamble, and one that can drag on for years costing you more and more until you’re broke.

smallpipe• 12 months ago

I see a lot of love for Komoot but for me that died when their "top 10 ride in <region>" had a bunch of auto-generated routes linking points of interests, that tried to take me through horrible paths or 4 lane roads.

bglazer• 12 months ago

The author directly addresses this in the article. This was engagement farming driven by growth metrics.

insane_dreamer4• 12 months ago

Yeah; though I've always just ignored that and used it to create my own cycling routes and sync with my Wahoo bike computer. With this news I'll switch to Ride with GPS for that.

dudeinjapan2• 12 months ago

Founder here of a 300 person startup. It's appalling and infuriating to read stories like these.

I started my biz because I wanted to make products that people love, that create value and timesave for others (specifically restaurants). I've always thought that if I do that and have a good time doing it the money will take care of itself.

I would be horrified if some PE firm rug-pulled our users and screwed our employees. Any such takeover would have to happen over my dead body.

hiq• 12 months ago

How many offers have you rejected so far? What were the amounts?

When founders sell, it's rarely to end up making the same amount of money they would make if they kept ownership. And once you've sold you have no control.

dudeinjapan2• 12 months ago

I've been doing this for 13 years. You can use your imagination :)

baxuz2• 12 months ago

I interviewed at Komoot some 4-5 years ago and the people there were probably some of the worst I've ever interviewed with.

The task was to create a React app with no other dependencies other than vanilla Leaflet, which would allow you to draw routes on the map, and it should allow you to export the route as a GPX. I had 8 hours to do it.

They kept shitting over my solution for a good hour on the call for god knows what reason. Snarky remarks the whole time. If you're so dissatisfied, there's no point unless you take joy in doing so.

Knowing better today, I should've just thanked them and left the meeting.

baxuz2• 12 months ago

The more I see how businesses work, the more I think that every employee should be guaranteed a certain amount of shares on selling out, without an end date, and not requiring the employee to be working in the company at the time.

Not monopoly money options, categories, valuations etc, but a guaranteed percentage of the entire price. The same privileges that the founders & C-suite has.

ndkap• 12 months ago

In getting komooted, we feel the pain of not being represented in the companies we work for and the platforms we use. Komoot was supposed to be special, the darling of the German startup scene. A unicorn not only in terms of prospective valuation but also in its good working conditions and a progressive mission of enabling access to the outdoors.3 The owners’ assured their long-term commitment with the mantra “we won’t sell.”

Is there a legal way to ensure that a company adheres to claims like "we won't sell"? It seems that trusting companies with their word without any underwriting is foolish

alexey-salmin• 12 months ago

A practical observations independent from the komoot future.

In the past I switched to komoot from osmand because it produced better trail running routes. In both apps you set some anchor points to get a gpx, but osmand often sticks to the shortest path between them (often boring roadways) while komoot chose scenic trails where available. Also osmand heats up my phone significantly both then when doing pathfinding and when just drawing a complicated piece of terrain.

I recently discovered a new feature in the Strava subscription: you just "draw" a route how you like it and the app glues it to the nearest available track. Even though komoot may have resolved ambiguities better, the strava ui is just faster to get what you want, so I switched to it.

IMO the Strava UX overall is not pleasant, I don't like their business model, and this is the second useful feature in the subscription ever since heatmaps. But it's genuinely good and I'll stick to it until a better alternative comes around. I still pay for osmand though and I hope it survives. Strava doesn't work offline for one thing so the first thing I do is exporting the gpx to osmand.

epynonymous• 12 months ago

tried komoot and strava, there's a flood of subscription pop upswhen you use the app, i want to use it first to see if there's any value in purchasing it. evernote is another example of this desperation to get revenue.

donmb• 12 months ago

In my opinion, all the criticism surrounding Komoot is just envy. The founders worked hard for over 15 years and have now made a well-deserved exit. People are just jealous. Period.

smsm423• 12 months ago

That's why I am so reluctant to participate in "community-driven" projects anymore. I don't even mind people making money from my free contributions. But if they eventually sell it to a bunch of private equity piranhas, which would just cannibalize it for spare parts, suck out all the brand value and leave the carcass rotting - why should I be a part of it? I am glad to contribute my work to the society, with no compensation but feeling good about it. But enriching some random private equity dude and then letting it all burn - why bother?

farfromrefuge• 12 months ago

If anyone is interested i develop a free and open source alternative to komoot. I am currently using it for a 6 months trip in Europe : https://github.com/Akylas/alpimaps The idea of it is to be able to do everything offline, from map browsing to route computing, elevation profile... I am 99% sure i use the same library for route computing which is the amazing Valhalla computing framework. It propose multiple routes likes komoot, can show route stats, compute elevation profiles. But it can also do much more like compute different ascents or show slopes percentages without online data.

To use the full potential of AlpiMaps you need to generate your maps. I can generate them but i dont have the fundings to host the maps on a server (would need a lot of space and computing power to regularly generate maps per country, per regions ...). Instead i explain how to generate the maps for any region you see fit.

Also AlpiMaps has a very small user panel right now so it had many bugs i am sure (especially on iOS which i dont use daily). I am though 100% willing to fix/improve/add any feature. Just share/explain on github.

I am not often on HN so if you have any question please use github

insane_dreamer4• 12 months ago

The key feature for me -- and one reason why I've used Komoot, is to sync routes with my Wahoo bike computer.

yladiz2• 12 months ago

I use Garmin so it may be different, but if Wahoo is like Garmin, you should be able to import a GPX file into their app and then tell it to sync to the computer, without needing Komoot to do the syncing. A bit more work but then you don't rely on Komoot directly to handle this for you.

demosito666• 12 months ago

Can someone explain me this: the article is basically about the dedicated employees who now feel betrayed by the company. But why would anyone be emotionally involved with a for-profit private company that appropriates user-generated data? Outside of specific cases and normal employer-employee relationship, I can understand being dedicated to something if it contributes to a "greater good" in some form. Condition for this in this case is that user data is open (at least for private use) or the app is open.

insane_dreamer4• 12 months ago

"Join us as we build ... to do ...! Our mission ..."

There is no effing mission. Build, sell, get rich. That's the "mission".

I've been a long-time Komoot user; not anymore.

thefz• 12 months ago

I never understood the appeal of "social" trail discovery when everyone can open up a map of the area and plan their own route.

When we get Komooted

Related Stories