Person attributes
Other attributes
Mark Gainey is the chairman of Strava, a social fitness company he cofounded in 2007/2008. He has also served on the boards of Clari, Woodside Priory School, BoardVantage, OCSC Sailing, Alter-G, Inc., Daum Corporation, and GlobalSight, and was a trustee for Coaching Corps (aka Team Up For Youth). In 1996, he cofounded and became CEO of Kana Communications (now Kana Software), and, from 1991 to 1995, he was an associate with TA Associates, a global growth private equity firm based in Boston.
Stanford Seminar - How Strava Found its Niche, Mark Gainey co-founder & executive chairman of Strava (February 2020)
On an episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Gainey stated,
Everybody that knows me knows that I always refer back to the 3 Ps. The 3 Ps in my life have been patience, persistence, and perspective”
Mark Gainey is the chairman of Strava. He cofounded the company in 2007/2008 with his college friend Michael Horvath, whom he met on the crew team at Harvard. Horvath is Swedish, as is strava, which means "strive." Strava is a social fitness platform with more than 100 million users in over 195 countries.
Mark Gainey - British GQ
The two men founded the fitness company with an initial focus on cycling. In 2008, they launched a website where cyclists could map and monitor their rides and compete with riders across the country. Strava has since expanded to include running.
Gainey was the initial CEO of Strava but stepped down in 2010 due to personal reasons. Horvath took over as CEO until 2013, when he also stepped down to spend more time with his wife who was battling cancer. Gainey again became CEO of Strava at that time. In 2019, Horvath returned as CEO, while Gainey remains with Strava as chairman.
In January 1996, Mark Gainey cofounded Kana Communications, now Kana Software, with his same college friend, Michael Horvath. Gainey named the company after his rescued shepherd-husky mix dog, Kana. Gainey served as its CEO and president from January 1996 to June 1999 and chairman of the board of directors from April 2000 to June 2000. Their company reached an over $10 billion valuation in 2000 on the NASDAQ. He exited Kana in the summer of 2000 and sold $17.1 million in stock.
After graduating from Harvard, Mark Gainey aspired to train for the 1992 Olympics in lightweight crew. However, he had a back injury on a rowing machine at home in Reno within two weeks after graduation and could no longer pursue that dream.
He began applying to jobs, and in April 1991, after several rejections, he was offered an entry-level position within TA Associates in its San Francisco Bay Area office "dialing for deals." He would search daily newspapers and call entrepreneurs looking for investment opportunities. He stated that he learned about business by talking to entrepreneurs during his nearly five years with TA Associates and took away three major themes for business success from those conversations: attention to detail, focusing on the customer, and building great teams. During his time with TA Associates, Gainey had the opportunity to talk with Jim Jannard, the founder of Oakley Sunglasses. Gainey considers Jannard one of his mentors.
Mark Gainey earned an AB in general studies from Harvard University in 1990. His focus was art history.
Gainey went to Reno High School, where he competed on the cross-country running team. His school's team won the state championship three years in a row during his sophomore to senior years, and he won the state championship as an individual his senior year. The Harvard coach recruited him, sending him a personal letter encouraging him to apply to Harvard and join his cross-country team, which he did. However, he had a stress fracture as a freshman and could not run. He was later recruited to join the lightweight crew team, where he met his future business partner, junior rower Michael Horvath.
Mark Gainey is divorced from his wife Lisa, though they remain good friends. They have twin boys together. Gainey had a bicycle accident in 2002, resulting in eleven surgeries.
Mark Gainey was born in Denver, Colorado, and grew up in Reno, Nevada. His father was a physician, and he and his partner took over a practice in Reno, causing him to move his family from Denver. Gainey's mother was a stay-at-home mother. Mark Gainey worked his first summer jobs in Reno, pumping gas and grinding the bottoms of boats at a local marina at Lake Tahoe. He enjoyed the outdoors and played youth soccer, in addition to running cross-country in high school.
