[rglullis]

> Unsustainable growth is not just ideology but an imperative, and it’s blatantly unsustainable. In a 2023 interview, Hallerman revealed that Komoot’s revenue was roughly split between recurring subscriptions and new users making one-time payments for map regions, with ad revenue making up a small remainder. That means they had to keep signing new users and expanding into new markets to stay in business. Komoot relied on continual growth in a finite world—an impossibility. What cannot continue forever is, by definition, unsustainable.

Relying solely on "community" to build and maintain these spaces is equally unsustainable. I worry that people will look at this and think that the alternative is to reject all forms of businesses, when the problem is simply of scale.

[Doctor_Fegg]

They had 250 employees, plus paid influencers, for a (predominantly) cycle routing app used in Europe. That’s why it was unsustainable. A realistic sized business would have been sustainable.

[rglullis]

Which is why I mentioned the issue of scale. Seems like you are agreeing with me?

[Doctor_Fegg]

Absolutely yes. Just expanding on the point that the "scale" in question was how Komoot chose to run their operations, not the size of customer base addressed. Bending Spoons have, quite adroitly, figured that they can serve 90% of the customer base with 10% of the operations costs.