Startup Idea: Group Cycling Tracker and Performance Application
Every Saturday and Sunday morning, all across the world, people set off on bike rides with groups (often from local bike shops). These tend to be relatively well-off consumers (bikes aren't cheap) and often times, their enthusiasm for the sport extends to familiarity with cycling announcers and some of the more famous racers. Inevitably, during these group rides, packs break apart and reform as stronger riders pull off the front and work with other riders to gain time, and other groups form to work together to bring them back. Most of the time these groups have places where they regroup, but in the interim, nobody has any idea where the groups that have split apart are located. It'd be great if there was an app that everyone on a group ride could sign into the night before, and, for a very fixed period of time, the application would allow you to see where everybody else was on your phone. From a performance and entertainment perspective, there could be an audio module that gave you updates about how fast you're going, and when you can expect to catch the other groups around you (or, alternatively, how far away another group has gotten away from you). You could punch in the route the night before and then it could give you directions too (just like a normal GPS) and it could post the winners of portions of your route (much like strava). It could also have a safety aspect, because if someone got stopped because they crashed or were hit by a car, you'd be able to locate them relatively quickly. I'm not sure if that's too much for 1-2 developers, or how long something like that would take, but I'm sure it would have lots of willing buyers if it was every made. I haven't tried searching for anything like this, but there's no good solutions that are used on weekend rides right now, so there's just a lot of uncertainty once the group splinters.
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