Challenge

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Triathlon's barriers to entry leave consumers stuck: unguided, uninspired, and unprepared. This creates a market problem beyond any single brand—the industry constantly needs to sell the sport before selling their product. While strong community sentiment exists in physical triathlon clubs, the top-of-funnel entry experience is fragmented. Consumers increasingly rely on social media personalities who may lack proper credentials.

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The Founders had launched an elite racing team but wanted to build something bigger: establish authority in triathlon, develop a leading B2C brand, monetize a digital community in North America, and create meaningful brand partnerships that drive revenue. The challenge? Building a passion business where both problem and solution were previously unknown.

Approach

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I led comprehensive discovery to validate the problem, its scale, and our ability to solve it:

• User interviews at local Vancouver run clubs
• Industry and competitor research into existing platforms and brands
• Interviews with brand partners already sponsoring our racing team
• Quantitative surveys with triathlon enthusiasts
• Product waitlist capturing user motivation, pain points, and engagement preferences

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I prioritized deep user understanding through a Jobs To Be Done framework. Without this, we'd waste resources building for assumed problems rather than real ones.

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Initial findings pointed toward a triathlon marketplace: an aggregator for clubs, events, and resources. The business case existed; North America lacks an effective aggregator. But the final research phase revealed something deeper: feeling unprepared and isolated was the bigger barrier to participation. I recommended we solve that problem instead. Building for this would create far more meaningful consumer relationships and serve a higher purpose in their triathlon journey.

Solution

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I designed, built, and launched a digital triathlon membership leveraging insights and partnerships from our elite racing team. Using no-code tools, I created a platform with three core pillars:

• Education: Training plans, exclusive content, and webinars from industry-leading coaches and our race team
• Community: Member forums, elite athlete access, team-branded gear, and pre-race events
• Access: Network of leading triathlon brands with member discounts

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My responsibilities spanned platform architecture, feature development, infrastructure setup, consumer and partner engagement, user testing, and partner integration workflows.

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Outcomes

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Bootstrapped with zero ad spend, the platform achieved:

• 18K yearly users with 42K content views
• 850 subscribed community members
• 150-person paid waitlist, converting 30 founding members in month one
• Full funding for our racing team entering its second season with 10 of Canada and New Zealand's fastest triathletes

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Founding members report significantly improved education, inspiration, and gear access for their triathlon journey.