Ralli Founder Allison Morrison Slays Triathalon Worlds With a Day Job While Getting Her MBA, Ugh

We could have interviewed Allison Morrison fresh off her World’s debut in Olympic distance triathlon as a UT MBA student and full time Meta employee. However this podcast has a strong entrepreneurial theme (you, reader, are about to feel inadequate), and sure enough, Allison made room for her startup, Ralli, on top of 15hr weekly training blocks, coursework and the day job. Ralli launched in 2022 as a web app to help athletes match with training buddies, and is expanding to include club messaging features with an imminent native app release. The special sauce in this episode is the LIVE AUDIENCE! We hosted Allison at the Meteor in Austin with 40 other guests, our first public event, and the authentic laugh track takes this podcast energy to the next level. Do not miss the second half which covers the audience Q&A, because the questions about righteous selfishness, scaling the app for critical mass and fundraising were WAY better than ours! Enjoy.

Hill Climbers is more than just a podcast, it's a growing business network for cyclists. You can tap into our event by following our Linkedin and Instagram, and subscribing to our newsletter.

Startuplandia.io Sponsors Hill Climbers Content & Free Beer

www.hill-climbers.com
Instagram
Linkedin

Theme Music: Summer Vibes by Rizik

Transcript

Sam Huntington (00:00)
And Allison, let's do another round of applause for Allison. Thank you so much for joining us.

has actually prepared an intro, so why don't you introduce Allison and then we can start talking about Ralli Of course, I'd love to. And Allison, please fill in here where I miss out because for those of you that don't know Allison, she's an incredibly accomplished person. Her journey starts with undergraduate at Harvard as a heptathlete. So for those track and field athletes out there, it's not track or field, it's both.

She's doing seven different events out there. She has a policy background, started her career in the Senate, and over the last five years here in Austin has been doing policy for Meta Along the way, as Sam has mentioned, Allison has been an awesome community member in the cycling scene, in the running scene, and everywhere in between. Most recently, her triathlon endeavors have taken her to the world championship stage where she placed as the third American in the Olympic distance relatively recently.

As if all of that wasn't impressive enough along the way she also Started Ralli which we're gonna be talking a little bit about today launched about a year ago And there's a even more exciting update that's coming out here in the next couple days, so I'll pause there Allison Congratulations, and thank you for being here and please let us know if there's anything you want to add

Just thank you. Thank you guys so much for being here and thank you Meteor for hosting. Thank you guys for thinking of me as your guest for your very first live podcast. I'm honored.

And yes, that was a very, very kind intro. So nothing to add. We can dive into the questions here. All right, great. Well, I guess broadly, can you just fill the audience in on Ralli, what it is, what your objectives are for it? Sure. So we launched Ralli on web about a year ago, and Ralli connects athletes with compatible training buddies.

And the new app, which is coming in the next couple of days, adds a bunch of tools for run clubs to communicate better with their members and serves as this run club and cycling club hub so users can get updates and information from all their favorite clubs in one centralized feed. And so we're super excited about that addition.

coming in the app. And what problems were you addressing? What kind of gaps in the market, in the services with incumbent apps? What problem are you solving?

Yeah, so obviously I think everyone in this room and probably folks listening to this podcast who are in Austin can attest to the fact that the endurance and fitness community in Austin is extremely vibrant and lively and I found it very easy to...

find groups of people to recreate with, but it was much harder to find people one-on-one to train with who were sort of on your same level, who were signed up for the same races. And I...

started training a couple years ago with Gilbert's Gazelles. If you don't know Gilbert, he's like a legend and icon in the Austin running community. He Gilbert's Gazelles is like the OG run club. They've been around for like 20 years. But he has this. I showed up because I was training for 3M half marathon. I wanted to break 130. Had this very specific goal. And after a couple training sessions, he connected me with a

another

girl that he was working with. He was also signed up for 3M, also wanted to break 130. She also happened to work at Meta and we connected, we trained together, we now have a great.

friendship and all of that sort of grew from that single connection that Gilbert made. And he has this amazing ability to do that with his athletes. But I thought that there must be a way to scale that. sort of that is how that was one of the, I think, important moments when I think back to why Ralli was, you why there was a need for a service like that. Yeah, great. And and I think let's take let's take a big step back

and talk a little bit about you and kind of your upbringing and getting into heptathlon and triathlon. Like what's the story? How did you find yourself in that sport, growing up and then in college? I was always like a very active kid.

I don't come from a religious upbringing, but my dad would always say, idle hands are the devil's workshop. so my parents. Sounds like that's stuck with what you're up to right now, wow. Well, I think back on it and I'm like, I think it makes sense why I fill my life with so many things.

So from a very young age, was doing piano and fencing and cooking and just an overload of extracurricular activities, which has its ups and downs. But yeah, I think I just have always been an active kid. I played soccer when I was young. I was fast on the soccer field. And so I naturally went to run track in middle school and then was still fast.

I was very small when I was, I'm almost six foot right now, but when I was a freshman in high school, I was five one, five two. I was also a five two as a freshman in high school. Yeah. No, yeah. Thank you, Mikey.

So I was never recruited to play sports that required any height. So no volleyball, no basketball, but continued with the running thing. And then I finally grew as like a 17-year-old and started jumping very high.

And that's when I got recruited to or when, you know, running track at a collegiate level was became an option for me. Wow. Late, late bloomer. That's that's incredible. Yeah. And then you've had a really exciting chapter recently with with Triathlon. can you fill in the story of how you went from your college career to to performing at this? And if you can just fill everyone in on on worlds and kind of what you know what you got

into a few months ago? as Franco mentioned, I competed in Spain at World Triathlon Championships in October, and I came in ranked as the 18th American left as the third, so closed a huge gap in the, a huge gap in the ranking. It was a great experience. I also got,

I got a tri bike like two weeks before the race and it took me way too long to get the tri bike. But I was like, I'm going to Worlds, I gotta get my bike.

I'm going to the only person without a tri bike if I show up without a tri bike. This is very interesting. You jumped 15 spots having just gotten your tri bike. So it sounds like there could be even more room for improvement there. Well, that's not the I mean, that's not the end of story. My bike ended up being like the worst. Like my worst leg. I heard the climbing was an issue with the bike. Well, yeah, I don't think I was properly counseled that it's very difficult to climb.

I'm in a tri bike and Málaga, Spain is extremely hilly. And so that was definitely frustrating. but I guess everybody else found it difficult to because. Amen. So anyway, since I got back from the race, I've been like.

very much taken a break from my intense training, because I was quite burnt out after that. So obviously you're in school, you've got a full-time job, you've launched Ralli How did you get into competing at the world's level for your age group? What was the series of events that got you training and qualified?

Yes. So you qualify for Worlds by placing in the top 18 in your age group at USA Nationals the prior year. And the way that you qualify for that race, I think, is maybe placing in your age group in some USA triathlon sanctioned race, which, know, CapTex try and most triathlons have that certification. So

I've been doing triathlon for about four years. Since I did not do it before I moved to Austin, it was very much an Austin It's not a very long time. No, not very long.

I trained for my very first triathlon with my college roommate and my teammate, who's my training partner at Harvard. And we did that Heptathalon together. we always joke that once we were old and washed up, we had to do another multi-event. And that was the triathlon. so.

I trained just kind of for fun for my first try, yeah, about four years, four or five years ago, and ended up just really liking the training, liking the racing, and so I stuck with it. And it's actually the reason that I met my fiance who's sitting here today as well. So it's brought a lot of very good things into my life. But yeah, that's sort of the triathlon journey.

one of the reasons I love triathlon is because the training is there's so much variety. And I know a lot of you are cyclists. I don't know how many of you enjoy running as well. But I've found that when I am cycling and also swimming, just cross-training in addition to running, I'm a lot healthier, a lot stronger. I'm getting less injured.

That's been a huge plus So let's talk about the training regimen over the last year or two. I'm going to rattle off all your jobs again, full time employee launching an app and also training and getting an MBA. How many hours a week were you training for this event? I was training probably.

13 to 15 hours, but that doesn't include

getting ready, recovering, eating, constantly eating, being stressed that I wasn't getting enough calories at every meal and I was gonna bonk in my next training session. that's a whole nother aspect. And rest is an aspect. I was trying to prioritize sleep, but the recovery was just not feasible.

especially when your schedule is packed. mean, it's just remarkable training 15 hours and all of those things, So yeah, this is a mostly cycling-centric podcast. So I wanted to ask, what sort of training regimen on the bike did you follow? How many hours a week on the bike? And how did that stack up with running and swimming? What do you like most?

My my tri coach is Natasha Vandermeever. She's she runs NVDM popular triathlon training group here in Austin. She has athletes all over the country, but she's local here and she she has a pretty intense training regimen. But it was it was very nice to have a coach and to have all of my work workouts pre-programmed every week in training peaks. My training peaks connected strictly

to my Zwift. did most of my cycling training indoor this summer for safety, but it was also just more efficient. So I usually did two, like one to two hour rides indoor on my Zwift and then one long ride on the weekend. And then swam Monday, Friday, ran.

Tuesday, Wednesday, then Friday, and then long run on the weekend. Yeah. Wow. I did not follow that at all. But you was the same every week, so you got into, it was nice because it was predictable, but it was also like, it got monotonous. And I think that one mistake that I made, this training cycle was just starting too early. I was like too eager to get going. And I-

And I wanted sort of structure. And so I started training in like March for an October race. And I burnt out like two weeks before the race. So

can you like give us a little play by play on the race? That's kind of important. how did they have how to go? Honestly, day of was the water was a bit choppy, but other than the other than some wind, it was like a beautiful day. Malaga is like on the south southern coast of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea like and Jimmy was there. My parents were there. Jimmy and I were like just standing.

in the dark on the beach, like staring out at the water. And I was just like, wow, I can't believe I'm here right now. know, being able to do this was amazing. So I tried to like soak it in as much as I could, but the...

the start was a beach start. So you start like 50 meters back on the beach from the water and they shoot the gun and it's just a dead ass sprint into the water and trying to fight for some water space. It's not like because it's open water, people kind of keep their space. But yeah, the start is always just very intense and you have the nerves.

in the water, it's you're going and the the swim was a bit I think the swim was maybe 300 meters longer than it was supposed to be. Had some zigzagging, but made it. And then, yeah, the bike, as I said, was very hilly. And I it's one of those things where after the race, I was like, if I had a road bike, I would have been so much faster and so much stronger.

But then if I was on the road bike, always would have wondered what it would have been if I would have been faster had I actually gotten a tri bike. So there was like.

I kind of had to do the tri bike. Otherwise I would have just been wandering.

So you have all this stuff on your plate and you decide like what made you decide to launch the app? like with everything going on, what made you decide to jump in?

I mean, I think that, as I explained earlier, I definitely saw a need for it. But I think I also was just craving to create something. I've always had just lots of little ideas and I sort of felt like I was in a place in my life where I had the time, the resources, and the perspective to...

kind of pursue something like that and invest a little bit more into creating. my fiance Jimmy is an amazing entrepreneur and so I was spending a lot of time with the entrepreneurial community in Austin and that was also inspiring to

see other people with creative control over what they were doing. And so I think that was a big factor. It's exhilarating to create something and put it out in the world, right? Totally, totally. there are lots of parts of my job at Meta that I love, but there are.

18 people every time you want to send an email that have to review and sign off on everything that you do. So the thought of being able to have complete control over the decisions that I made was enticing. And I think also just like make the pudding yourself, just just be the master of your universe, that that's been exciting for me just doing

doing content, putting it out, trying to get a response from people. I personally had been in business development for branding and marketing services for most of my career, but I never did any of that myself. So I think similar to you, there was an itch that I absolutely needed to scratch, and I'm so glad I have. let's get back to talking about some of the features.

so it's been mostly web based Can you dive back into the app launch and the drivers for what you think is going to be. the app's success or how people are going to use it differently. Sure so yeah we want launched on web a year ago let's Ralli dot com and really just in Austin I mean it's a website so.

We have theoretically like anyone anywhere can create an account and we do have some stragglers in random cities. But we'd focused our marketing, which was like all grassroots and basically just me going on a road show to all the Austin run clubs last fall and explaining Ralli to them and trying to get people to create accounts. And so that was that was a fun a fun way to get it out into the community. And there was super positive

about the idea of being able to find people one-on-one to train with. We got about 1,000 users in the first few months of, yeah, launched in October, and then probably had 1,000 users by February, March. But

I had spoken with some folks who had created apps and their advice to me was to, because mobile apps are very difficult and expensive to build, try it out on web first to sort of test the idea and see if there's actually need. then, so that was sort of the route that I took. I could tell that there was excitement over the concept, but.

I thought that in order to meaningfully scale it and create like a product that, I mean, people's...

We're on our phones all the time, obviously, and they're amazing apps. so the user expectation for... It's high these days. So high. If anything takes more than two seconds to load, someone gets impatient and it's not...

Good enough. Right. so and those things are really hard to achieve on Web. I also think that people there was a lot of people who were creating accounts. They were maybe spending some time on it on the Web site. Maybe they matched with a couple of people and then met up with those people. But then once they found their training partners, they didn't really have a reason to come back. And so it needed to make it a little bit stickier. Did you have a decent amount of those kind of success stories already? Because that's that's great. Yeah, it was all.

Well, my analytics were not as good as I wanted them to be, so I couldn't really tell what was going on on the website. But anecdotally, had lots of people coming up to me and sharing stories of people that they met on Ralli and started training with and then became friends and all that. that was obviously very rewarding to hear. I knew that...

there needed to be something a bit stickier for it to.

scale and for me to feel confident, expanding beyond, beyond just Austin too. And so one of the main, new features of the app is to sort of capitalize on obviously this like swell of, of, of run clubs that we're seeing. I just saw Strava's year in sport today, like 60 % increase this year in run clubs on Strava just this year. Yeah. Which is crazy.

And it's hard to describe and it's very, very unique, but like the energy around sort of run clubs is, yeah, is something that I think is going to be captured in a lot of different ways and products are going to be built to try to insert themselves into that energy in some way. So,

I have noticed that the communication.

tools are very dispersed right now, decentralized. Some clubs use Instagram, some use WhatsApp, some use Slack, some use email, and there's no really centralized hub for you to go to get all of the updates that you care about from all your clubs. And so that's what we're trying to build with Ralli, really serve as that hub for clubs in given So it is a pivot. It's not as much focused on one-to-one athlete pairing. I would say it's just

another leg of the stool. The athlete pairing is still like a front and center feature, but we now have a way for.

users to engage more with the clubs that they like and also a way for clubs to organize and engage their communities more effectively. you all had the hinge problem, which is a successful dating app is going to end up in the couple no longer using the app anymore. So introducing new features makes a ton of sense. I mean, we avoid that a little bit because you don't need like an exclusive trading partner.

Like you can have lots of training partners and that's not taboo. So that is true. It's a little bit different. And I think that I know, though, but like, don't know if you're going to have a training buddy. It's accountability. That's true. But there's also like different there's different seasons, right? Like there are, you know, I might match with you to train for the Austin half marathon. But when I'm training for, CapTex tri the next spring, you're not training. And so I need

to find somebody who's signed up for the same thing, same schedule. One of the other things I'm super excited about in the app is like we're

adding more granular preferences for people to match on. So your injury status, your parental status, like if you're a new, like an expecting mom or a new dad and like, or you're recovering from an injury or you are injured, you can find people who, find people who are basically in the same boat and we're hoping that those matches will be higher quality.

Yeah, that's super awesome. Allison and I actually wanted to ask about how you're doing the matches like I know when we chatted before this conversation a little bit. My background is a little bit on the tennis side. And so in tennis, for those familiar, there's basically a self rating system where, wherever you go across the country, it's pretty easy to figure out, hey, these people are kind of in my bracket, reach out and you can play with them. So outside of some of these categories that you're saying, how are you thinking about matching athletes from the get go? And how has that kind of evolved over

time. Yeah, so my technical co founder is here Thomas. He made the algorithm. But we prioritize your

your sport and your, upcoming races or your schedule. Those are like the most heavily weighted categories. And then from there, your goal times for those races, your location, your, and then sort of get into these more like granular categories. But yeah, I think that that's, I think that the, the algorithm, matching algorithm,

and the efficacy of that is gonna be a big indicator of whether people like or are happy with the app. So I'm sure we'll continue to iterate on that over time.

Great, yeah, I guess we definitely wanna save some time for Q &A. Franco, before we wrap up and hit the lightning, we also have a lightning round. Are there any more questions you have about Ralli before we start to wrap things up? one question would be, as far as the club feature that you're saying is kind of a big thing coming here, pitch Sam and I on why Hill Climbers should be one of the first and right now,

use a combination of Strava and Instagram. I'd say the sticky part from Strava is that a lot of our athletes, some of that are in this room, use it already.

Yeah, pitch us on why we should merge into Ralli. Yeah, I think a lot of the fitness apps that exist right now, and especially Strava, is very much like performance first. The core functionality, the core features are performance based. And I think that they've struggled to build more...

more seamless social features and Ralli really is going to be social first and so that experience is going to be a lot smoother updates your home page is your is your club feed so it's not flooded with Instagram you know your friends Instagram posts or your friends rides and runs it'll be

a feed of all the clubs updates and information. And so there's just a lot more directness there. And then we are also borrowing. You guys all have used Partiful because our RSVP was on Partiful, great app. But we are borrowing one of their features, which is the text blast. And so as a club lead, if there are like urgent updates that you need to get out about weather changes or route updates that you

don't want to put in the feed, you text blast all of your members, which is basically just everyone who's following you on Ralli. so I think that because we are building the experience with these kind of use cases in mind, it's just going to be a lot more user friendly than.

maybe some of the apps that are performance first, social second. And I think that's a great point because you want to be encouraging and welcoming to athletes and get them on board to train with a buddy for their first race or whatever. yeah, social first, I imagine, would provide that environment to encourage people to do that. also, I don't want to put you and Thomas on the spot.

But when should we expect the app to launch you can give us ballpark and do you want to share? With the audience just how to get involved with her out Ralli sure so we were trying so hard to get the beta Launch it's okay. You guys today Thomas. Don't cry. It's fine nobody's Thomas has been sending me messages on G chat at like 330 in the morning

Please go to bed, it's fine. We're gonna get it done. So we are, within days of our...

of Ralli being on test flight, which is, if you haven't used it, is the app store's beta testing environment. And we would, for those of you who, I know several people here actually already do have Ralli accounts, which is awesome, and you guys will be notified of our beta launch. But if you don't have a Ralli account, you can go to our website, letsralli.com, which is this QR code right here.

And scroll to the bottom and just subscribe for updates. And you'll get on our beta launch list. And in the next few days, we'll give you a notification about signing up for that.

Lightning round. Lightning round. OK, These are meant to be fun, not necessarily cycling specific. And Allison has not been briefed on them prior. So here we go. Allison, what book are you reading right now? I have no time to read. be honest. No surprise.

No, I read like three pages a night before I go to bed. That's like the only time I can read. But I'm switching right now between the invention of power.

which is like the backstory of basically the creation of Western civilization. Very late time reading. then the book of Joy, which is a very feel good book about the friendship between Desmond Tutu and.

Great answer, thank you. Very interesting. All right, what is the most used app on your phone besides Ralli, of course? And why do you love it or hate it? The most used app, like Instagram, the Weather app, and podcasts.

So you told us a little bit about your ride in Malaga, which sounded difficult but beautiful. My question was going to be, what is your dream ride and why? So either one you've ridden or like on your top of the bucket list. I really want to ride around Lake Tahoe. I have not done that. I've done that one. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. That's that's top of the list.

And then my parents went on like a six day, bike track in Tuscany where they biked like 30 miles a day and drink wine. And that sounds pretty nice. So maybe something like that. Not too shabby. OK. If you had a time machine, would you rather go to the past or into the future? Definitely the past.

probably like six years ago and put all my money in a Nvidia What a practical answer. OK, what is the best concert you've ever attended or your favorite artist? My dad took us to the I think it was twenty twenty one when the Rolling Stones played at COTA and that was that was sweet. I was not really I mean, I was expecting a great production.

But I don't think I was expecting to be as overwhelmed by Mick Jagger's just legendariness. That's not a word. My man is not getting younger. It's remarkable how fit he is. my god. It was like a three hour show. he was sprinting back and forth with no breaks. And I didn't see him take a sip of water. I was.

I was very impressed. He's a vampire. Incredible. OK. And last one before we open up to Q &A here. What is your favorite sport to watch and why? tennis. Tennis is my favorite sport. Who's your favorite player? probably Coco right now. Easy answer. Yeah. I feel like it's just so like the mono, mono sports are especially if you're watching on TV, like so much more engaging. So and I also feel like

I was supposed to be a tennis player. know, when you were like, if I would have molded or if I would have been invested in some sport or activity from a younger age, I could have been, you know, What was the new Zendaya movie? Do you guys know what it Yeah. It's decent. I'm now going to... Challengers. Challengers. Yeah, I watched so much. Yeah, yeah. That was good.

All right, y'all, I know Mikey has a question. Mikey, what do you got?

I'm gonna give you the mic.

Hello, Al-Pal. Great Hey, Mikey.

By the way, guys, this is awesome. You guys are killing it. Congratulations. The idea is to create for your

first Super Bowl television ad, like three training people, like me and Steve, we show up to a run and there's another partner, training partner that Steve is already hooked up with and they're like, who's this? And like make it like the exclusivity part of it, be like, not with Ralli, threesome are allowed or something like that, I don't know.

So, my question requires setup So, you know the three pillars that I live by, the second one being surround yourself with good people. You've obviously done that.

the third tenant is leave the world better than you found it as a Near professional athlete you've created something that helps eliminate the barriers to entry in a sport that can be increasingly intimidating and Especially in Austin when there's this many run clubs around like it's hard for one person to show up to all these Clicks that have formed already and so you've created

pathway for that and I think that's brilliant. So you're obviously leaving the world better than you found it. But the first one, the most important that we've talked about is to be positively selfish. Which means making sure that you're whole without preventing someone else from being so.

Knowing that you're dealing with an MBA and working full-time at Meta and creating this app and training. What are the things that you do to be positively selfish? What are your non-negotiables that to keep Allison Allison you have to do every day or at least once in a while to keep you going? That's a good question.

I mean, I feel very selfish doing everything that I am doing. Like, I feel like they are all, in pursuit of my own goals and I feel like I'm in a unique position in my life right now where I have the luxury to be selfish.

The way that I am filling my cup and the way that I feel grateful to be able to feed all these different parts of my identity to me is selfish. In terms of what do I do to stay sane, guess it's I mean, it's exercise. It's not intense training and now that

Yeah, I mean training is therapy for me, mean, the Spain race really did burn me out, and so I have been trying to work out in a way that is completely for me and just every, know, what feels good that day and do it, and that's actually been an amazing shift for me in the past couple of months, so.

I'm gonna keep doing that. Mikey, that's such a great question, thank you. And by the way, I did ask Allison before the interview, I'm like, okay, you're on this schedule, do you ever just crash and burn? And you said you do, there are days where you're just utterly exhausted and that happens not frequently, but it does happen. So I just wanted to share that with the audience

Allison does have some down days here and there. Totally. I mean, I also think that it's a lesson in like we all have the capacity to do so much more than we do. I mean, there's a limit and I think I have found the limit. But if you fill your plate with more stuff.

you very quickly adapt to figure out how to do it. And I think a lot of people find that they are actually more productive the more that they have to do and the less time that they can waste.

Does anyone else have questions? We've got Dr. Steve here. So thanks for doing this. This is really fun and educational and motivating.

most probably feel lazier than you sitting in the audience. I've had actually two questions come up if that's OK while listening. One relates to critical mass on a platform like this, and then the other one relates to travel. So with critical mass, I use apps like Turo or Uber a lot. And if there's two hosts and two users, platforms don't work, and they don't function how they're intended.

So do you have like an aim or a strategy to get, mean, I guess you have a thousand accounts already, that's really impressive, but like as you expand to other cities and this gets bigger, is there a plan to get cities to critical mass quickly? And I'll let you answer that before I... Yeah, so that was the most intimidating part of the website. was like, it took, was so much effort to get those thousand people in Austin, and it wasn't scalable because it was just...

you know, it's based off of my relationships and me going around and talking to people. and with a matching app, it's like you do have to have, your expansion strategy does have to be geographical because.

the whole point of matching is to meet up in person and those people have to be in the same place. But the one of the other advantages of this of adding the run club capabilities is that you really rely on the clubs to start using the platform and using them as like the hub to get all of the all of the people that show you know all their members onto the platform. And so the number

like the people that you need to start buying in, that number becomes a lot smaller when you rely on the club lead. So I think that for scaling, that's gonna be a huge advantage. And then, you know, once a.

once a critical mass of clubs are on, and that is the place to go, which our vision is for, in five years for Ralli to be basically the run club hub and the place to go to meet fitness, you know, to meet people in fitness in your community, then it'll be like something you can't not be on, I guess.

Cool. And that actually segues perfectly into the second part of this. So five years from now, let's say Sam and I take a trip to Asheville, North Carolina on bikes or on foot, whatever it may be. And we show up and we want to know how to integrate into the cycling or running culture in that community. Is there going to be features where, hey,

a city that's not your main city here are ways to connect into events or clubs in the area. Yeah. So you would change your you would update your location if you are traveling and the way that our sort of club recommendation engine works right now is that you get suggested clubs that are that are near you. So if you're in Asheville you update your location to Asheville and your recommended clubs are are all there and you can.

navigate and see who's meeting when and where. And then every club page has all of the members listed or linked at the top. And so then you can start building a network that way or seeing who's in that club and requesting to Ralli with people who are in Asheville.

Yeah, this actually reminded me of a conversation we were having with another founder, Scott Baldwin, who's in our audience right now regarding Front Pack. how interesting is it that, like, even here in Austin, despite having dozens of clubs cycling, running, there isn't just a calendar that you can look at that aggregates the seven different run clubs on Thursday morning, the seven different ones on Saturday morning. And so just a simple calendar feature, highly recommend. Noted.

Are there any more questions? All right, JB. Thank you.

I have some experience building an app, getting it funded and scaling it. It's daunting. It's noisy out there. But my question is, sometimes I invest and maybe somebody in this room or listening does. The idea is great, but more importantly is the person behind it, you're impressive. So my question is, where are you funding wise?

Are you taking investment, angel, or are you past that? I find it an interesting, very interesting idea, and I'd love to put it out to some people I know. But where are you on that front, if you don't mind sharing? Yeah, no, we are fully bootstrapped. Self-financed and bootstrapped, There's obviously a lot to be considered when you're...

thinking about raising money and I want to get rallied to a place where I I mean, I think that I can get it pretty far bootstrapping and maintaining control and ownership over it and I want to make sure that if and when I get to the point to raise money, I know exactly where where that's gonna go and where where where it's gonna take the the app in the business.

And so at this point, just waiting for that sort of right time. But no, we haven't raised any money yet. But we can talk after. you. And I guess a follow on a JB's question. What are the initial plans for commercializing and making money? Yeah, so the premium account is is is a big one. So both for users, but also for clubs. So.

You know, lot of clubs don't have any any revenue, but some clubs are now big enough where they have sponsorships from shoe brands, from fitness brands. so giving clubs the opportunity to sign up for a premium version that would give them, preference, you know, higher recommendations or.

more tools to manage their membership and stuff like that. And then now that we have a feed, we will consider feed-based ads as well. But Ralli is free to use and download and will continue to be until we are confident that we have a premium experience that's worth charging people for. Great.

We've got a room full of people here who will hopefully use it. But y'all, thank you so much for being a fantastic audience and showing up. Allison, thank you for being with us and sharing so much about your company and your world. Thank you guys so much for having me. It was so fun. Yeah. I'm gonna try something here. I have the list of attendees. We're gonna do some giveaways and I'm just gonna close my eyes

and point to one. And whoever is closest is gonna get some Saps Electrolyte swag. And then we've also got some Ralli hats that think I'll just, Allison, you can give those out. So we'll do two prizes. Prize number one, we got Vanna White here, is the T-shirt and the case, we got case of 12 Saps.

And I am going to point.

The closest is Isaac, Isaac, winner winner.

This is so high tech right now. All right.

Will Derrick, number two.

One case of Saps to you, sir. All right, and shout out to Saps. They are actually our first sponsor and gave us some awesome product to give away to you folks. So another local Austin-based entrepreneur. Thank you, Jordan Wilson. And that's a wrap, y'all. Thank you so much. Yeah, we'll do a round of applause for Allison. Round of applause for the meteor, too.