Olympian MTB champion and Tour de France stage winner Tom Pidcock did a gentle launch final 12 months of a brand new biking app. Now, with the backing of Dutch buyers, Hyperlink My Trip is prepared for a world stage.
A social bike driving app known as Hyperlink My Trip has acquired backing from a Dutch funding agency, resulting in a world launch later this 12 months.
The app began because the brainchild of multidiscipline skilled bike owner Tom Pidcock and his former teammate Jacques Sauvagnargues. The pair envisioned a software that might assist cyclists meet and community all around the world. Hyperlink My Trip permits cyclists to search out biking golf equipment, meet fellow riders close by, and create or be part of social occasions, comparable to women-only rides.
Pidcock and Sauvagnargues managed a gentle launch of the app in 2021. (Pidcock was profitable his mountain bike gold medal on the Tokyo Olympics about the identical time.)
However with the July announcement of assist from the Dutch Sport Tech Fund, the app absolutely launches on the finish of the 12 months, Forbes reported. The Dutch Sport Tech Fund can also be a startup, based in 2020 by Mark Snijders, a former skilled footballer.
Pidcock and Sauvagnargues have huge ambitions for the app. They imagine it might turn out to be a competitor to Strava, which has about 100 million customers.
Biking as a ‘Social Sport’
In a Q&A with the Dutch Sport Tech Fund, Sauvagnargues mentioned he has all the time seen biking as a “social sport.” He went searching for an app that might join him with different cyclists “in order that we might journey lovely routes collectively.”
However no such app existed, so he began working along with his colleague and childhood greatest good friend Pidcock to develop one. Since launching, they’ve acquired quite a lot of constructive suggestions from cyclists, Sauvagnargues mentioned.
“Many professional cyclists I advised about Hyperlink My Trip reacted enthusiastically and shared a message about our app on social media, rapidly downloading the app 2,000 instances,” he mentioned. “Then we knew: there’s a demand for our resolution.”
Sauvagnargues mentioned he needed to associate with an funding fund that appears for brand new sports activities applied sciences.
“There’s additionally a pleasant overlap within the different startups wherein Dutch Sport Tech Fund invests and our firm,” he mentioned. “I, due to this fact, see many synergy advantages and alternatives to strengthen one another. We, due to this fact, hope to have the ability to use the ecosystem and assist one another develop.”
On its web site, the Dutch Sport Tech Fund units clear expectations for the app.
“The biking market will develop >20% per 12 months within the coming interval,” the web page for Hyperlink My Trip says. “[Link My Ride] desires to activate 250,000 customers inside 24 months through roughly 8,500 golf equipment and three,200 corporations. In 12 months 2, a revenue should already be made.”
A part of promoting the app to customers will contain the movie star endorsement of cyclists like Pidcock. That shouldn’t be an issue, contemplating that he simply gained the enduring Alpe d’Huez stage of this 12 months’s Tour de France.
