Biography:Davis Kitchel
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Davis Kitchel is an American software developer and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Strava, a fitness tracking and social networking platform, and is credited with conceiving the platform's segment leaderboard feature.
Early life and education
Kitchel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1995 with a BA in Philosophy and Computer Science.[1]
Career
Prior to Strava, Kitchel worked as a software developer and was an avid cyclist and rower. In the late 1990s, inspired by informal hill-climb competitions on Wednesday night group rides, Kitchel began recording his times on strips of paper carried in his jersey pockets, tracking personal records across locally named climbs.[2] This practice formed the conceptual basis for what would become Strava's segment leaderboard feature.[3]
On 20 December 2006, Kitchel was introduced to Michael Horvath through a mutual friend. At the time, Kitchel had already been independently experimenting with GPS data to generate cycling training insights.[2] His technical work provided the foundation that Horvath and Mark Gainey needed to develop the platform they had long envisioned.[4]
In 2009, Kitchel co-founded Strava alongside Horvath, Gainey, Chris Donahue, Mark Shaw, and Pelle Sommansson.[5] He subsequently served as Director of Strava Labs, an experimental division of Strava's engineering team that released side projects built on the platform's GPS dataset.[6] One such project was Strava Metro, a service that provided anonymised GPS data to city planners and transportation departments. Oregon's Department of Transportation became its first customer in 2014.[7]
References
- ↑ "'Local Legends' and 'Kudos' Galore: Looking at Strava on Campus" (in en-US). https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2024/02/local-legends-and-kudos-galore-looking-at-strava-on-campus.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Report: Strava Business Breakdown & Founding Story | Contrary Research" (in en). https://research.contrary.com/company/strava.
- ↑ "Tuesday Chat with Team Strava: History of Strava - Week 2 | Community" (in en-US). 2022-10-11. https://communityhub.strava.com/general-chat-2/tuesday-chat-with-team-strava-history-of-strava-week-2-3726.
- ↑ Wallace, Wade (2020-05-07). "From the Top: How Strava was built podcast transcript" (in en). https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-culture/from-the-top-how-strava-was-built-podcast-transcript/.
- ↑ "A letter from Michael Horvath, Strava co-founder & CEO" (in en-US). 2017-10-30. https://press.strava.com/articles/a-letter-from-michael-horvath-strava-co-founder-and-ceo.
- ↑ "Strava Labs" (in en). http://labs.strava.com/.
- ↑ Kardashian, Kirk. "Improve urban infrastructure? There’s an app for that" (in en). https://fortune.com/2014/08/29/improve-urban-infrastructure-theres-an-app-for-that/.
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