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The long and painful virtual road to recovery with Zwift

Thomas Ballard · November 6, 2020 ·

Last weekend I was racing my brother in the last race before lockdown no.2. We were racing an Aquathlon, 750 meter swim followed by a 5 km run.

We came out the swim separated by 2 seconds.

We started the run at the same time, pacing for a 17 min 5 km. On the 2nd lap I put my ankle in a hole.

My brother went on to win, I limped to my car.

Now I’m looking forward to 4 weeks of recovery. I’ll be using this time to get my Zwift miles up again. Zwift is online platform for cyclists. You explore virtual worlds using your bike and a ‘smart trainer’.

In September 2020 Zwift raised a $450 Million Investment; Series C Round Led By KKR.

During the start of the global lockdown Zwift saw record usage levels.

Having been a Zwifter since 2017 there have been highs and lows of the platform. From the virtual Tour de France in July to ongoing service outages.

Zwift CEO Eric Min has made no secret of his desire to get eSports and Zwift into the Olympics. Part of this investment will fund specialised hardware and software to support this.

If Zwift wants to make it to the Olympics the experience has to be perfect.

Zwift have been throwing hardware at their stability problems. Most technology issues are due to software or application bottlenecks, not hardware issues. The effect of adding hardware can be that you only move the bottleneck further along the stack.

This problem compounds in the cloud.

It’s not hard to imagine cloud cost profiles growing from $20m — $30m — $60m as a reaction to unstable platforms. These types of issues, while difficult to solve have huge benefits for long-term growth.

Solving these issues or not mean the difference between 6x or 10x EBITDA.

The tips on marginal gains from last weeks ‘unconsidered need’ could be useful here.

Marginal Gains. 1% in undiscovered areas that adds up to big value

Thomas

P. S My little brother is fast, last week he posted the 2nd fastest junior 3000 m running time in the UK this year.

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