Komoot Team Says Goodbye

Through the magic of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, it gave a flyer and suggested the above video to me. It’s a quick recap of the vast majority of the Komoot team throwing one last party, after being told they don’t have jobs. As you may remember from about two months ago, Komoot was sold to Bending Spoons, an Italian investment company. Both my discussions with people familiar with the deal, and others elsewhere, have put the sale price at about €300m.

As is the case with virtually all Bending Spoons acquisitions, they promptly fire almost all (if not all) the staff within a few weeks. That happened here as well, with roughly 85% of the staff being let go within the first two weeks, upwards of about 150 people. Generally speaking, the operation profile of Bending Spoons post-acquisition is to raise prices with minimal feature updates, focusing more on the long-term gravy train.

In any case, the above three-minute film is a short look at what seems like one last weekend get-together from the team. Komoot had previously done large all-company events out into the wilderness. While the company was based in Germany, many of their employees were spread out across Europe. That’s because the company had previously preferred employees to be closer to outdoors/hiking/etc, allowing them to better understand their products and customer base. From the photo above, it looks like approximately 100 people were at the event.

What comes of Komoot as a platform going forward remains pretty unclear. Though what’s clear is that when you fire 85% of the employees, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to see substantial new features going forward. Of course, that doesn’t take away from what Komoot as a platform is today, which is still a fantastic resource for finding trails/routes (especially in Europe). But again, what manifests in the future in terms of updates is very very unclear.

Hopefully, all those employees who lost their jobs can find work they enjoy, either inside or outside the sports tech industry.

Thanks for reading!

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34 Comments

  1. Seb

    Not too worried about not getting features, but what about simply keeping up with updates of Android, iOS, Garmin firmware…

    And most of all: will the maps be updated promptly? If not, that’s simply the end of Komoot… their strong point for me was being able to see the type of path/road/… I would be facing. If that’s not up to date, then it’s useless.

    • That’s mostly (if not all) pulled from OpenStreetMap. There may be a bit of curation here and there, but pulling from OSM should be a pretty straightforward, automated process, so I don’t think there’s much to worry about there.

  2. Pavel Vishniakov

    Hopefully Garmin Trail will pick up the data pieces, even if it’s just trails themselves. I’ve been a loyal Komoot customer for years but with BendingSpoon it’s only a matter of time before it’s “optimized” into being an overpriced crap.

  3. bremnet

    Regardless of whatever shiny PR spin Bending Spoons has for their future plans, I’m out. As a longtime Komoot customer, watching them fire the very pioneers who built the platform without even bothering to understand their talent, vision, or hard-earned expertise was beyond insulting. It screams corporate arrogance and tone-deaf leadership. I won’t be renewing my subscription, and the app’s headed straight to the deletion bin. Loyalty goes both ways and clearly Bending Spoons missed that memo. I anticipate they’ll gut everything that made Komoot special and re-imagine it into a watered-down, soulless version packed with features no one asked for. Good luck with that. I’m no longer going to support a company that treats its people like this.

    • Mr. T

      Yeah, but they owners made the ultimate decision to sell. No one “forced” them to sell to Bending Spoons. Perhaps some of your “anger” should be reserved for them, but few people (you included) would turndown a huge payout.

  4. Michael Robinson

    I took a look at the other products owned by Bending Spoons and one of them is Evernote, which has an almost annoyingly large number of regular updates for it, so they don’t seem to have cut that back.

    • VCE

      Evernote was such a great app until Bending Spoons got hold of it. The updates that introduced more and more bugs and added useless functionality came at the expense of the core functions and any sense of reliability.

    • Michael Robinson

      Yes, I still use Evernote but the annoying thing is too many updates rather than not enough…

  5. Ethan

    I hope they band together and create a new mapping app, like komoot but better, user driven, not investor.

  6. Todd Giorgio

    Terrific video, thanks for sharing. Inspiring in a reverse sort of way.

  7. JA

    It’s amazing that Komoot needed such an army of people , where as https://cycle.travel is run by just Richard Fairhurst!

    • fiatlux

      cycle.travel is an interesting alternative. Heavily focused on UK though, and as far as I can tell biased towards picturesque but sometimes significantly longer routes.

    • ArT

      Thanks, I didn’t know this wizard. It builds routes very fast and most importantly it even determines correctly for a road bike. Too bad the steet view is not as direct as in ridewithgps.

    • qpop

      Another shout out for cycle.travel – amazing app. I just wish it was more integrated with rides I did do, as well as rides I plan to do.

      He’s moving it that way with his hex idea, but currently requires the app running while you ride, whereas I’ll always send to a head unit.

  8. Youp Melone

    One of their first users, lifetime member and paying.

    The paying will stop, the recommending as well.

    Vote with your feet

  9. David

    Remember how they killed Evernote with their price increases?

  10. William Short

    Komoot is my go to app for bike touring and planning. Let’s hope that greed and incompetence don’t feck it up. But it doesn’t look good🤑🤑🤬

    • William Short

      I forgot to mention. It’s only my opinion but why did the original owners have to sell it and cash in. Knowing what bending spoons would do to it. They effectively threw all there loyal staff under the bus for greed and money. Shame on them

  11. Chris

    No more Komoot for me. Would like to support remaining staff, but so sick of private equity killing things

  12. Joop

    Capitalism reigns the free world. I hope the employees did have shares themselves in the company, so that there is a form of compensation for suddenly being fired after years of loyalty

  13. Troy

    All private equity firm employees should be thrown in jail. Would be a net positive for the whole world no question

  14. Christina Engelbrecht

    Hello. It’s a disgrace that Bending Spoons fires the entire Komoot staff group. I use Komoot to find the appropriate cycling roetes and hiking trails for my activities. I will now no longer use Komoot and will definitely not use any Bending Spoons products. To fire all resources from a company after acquisition is stupid. You firing all of the companies IP and expect users to pay more for little upgrade changes. That’s is CEOs with no integrity and heart. Cycling and hiking adventures are close to the athletes hearts. Dealing with a company that doesn’t show the same is an absolute disgrace. Shame on you Bending Spoons.

  15. Christina Engelbrecht

    I truly trust you will continue being a team to create a new application that will outshine Komoot. Families stand together ❤️. Keep up the PR for your new adventures 💪🏻 👏🏻 ✨️. Waiting in anticipation for your new adventures and PR updates.

  16. Matt

    That’s sad news, speaking as a Komoot user, not an investor. But good info – thanks: nudged me to cancel automatic subscription renewal so I can make a deliberate choice about whether to continue or move next year.

  17. ArT

    Ufff maybe fewer institutions will now create routes in komoot. Where anything I wanted to download a route I had to buy additional regions. Hopefully the 300million will be distributed to employees and they won’t have to work till the end of their lives. From this photo I think they will because everyone is happy.

  18. Hugh

    Hopefully some of these employees had some equity. I also hope that they take their experience with Komoot and use it to ignite the fire in other sport tech startups. From the ashes Phoenix may rise…..

  19. Rafa

    Oh well.. that’s a good reason to stop using it.

  20. Ib Erik Soderblom

    Komoot is lost.
    Bending Spoon has only simple greed as its goal.
    Sadly people doesnt have the insight to understand, and just blindly continues to pay more for less.
    Choosing to sell Komoot is a moral choise, that previous owner have to live with.
    But they where clearly morally weak and too much embedded in the narrow US money focused culture.
    Goodbye Komoot.
    A new door will open.

  21. Viktor

    My small revenge: turned off activity upload in garmin connect. This way they receive a tiny bit of less data.

  22. X

    How are they able to “fire” these employees? Germany has some of the strictest employment laws in the world.

    • As a general rule of thumb, in most EU countries, if an office is being closed and/or relocated to another country, there’s very few employee protections.

  23. Peter

    It’s sad, but Komoot people shouldn’t be overhyped now. When reading the changelog of the iPhone app, they won’t released something interesting in the last 2 years. Always “fixing bugs”.

  24. Chris Capoccia

    we’ll see if they actually want to work on getting more users or just holding on to their existing users. i’m a paid strava user and don’t really see any reason to switch to komoot. i think strava would have to start really failing and komoot would have to start hitting home runs before i would bother to switch. i don’t think i even know anyone using komoot. it’s all strava and ride with gps near me.