75. Robin Thurston, CEO of Outside

Fitt Insider

Today I’m joined by Robin Thurston, CEO of Outside.

Outside, or Pocket Outdoor Media, as it was formerly known, is a platform for active lifestyle content and experiences.

In this episode, we talk about the acquisitions, rebrand, and $150M funding round that helped turn Pocket into Outside. Robin shares his vision for a recurring revenue bundle across all aspects of an active lifestyle. And we discuss the challenges and opportunities brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

More from Robin

Robin Thurston is the CEO of Outside, the world’s leading creator of active lifestyle content and experiences. Formerly known as Pocket Outdoor Media, Robin acquired Outside along with other companies such as OutsideTV, Gaia GPS, AthleteReg and Peloton Magazine in February of 2021. Across web, print, podcast, social, video, and TV, the brand engages with over 70 million of the most active and influential consumers in the world every month. Under his leadership, Outside is reinventing how athletes consume content, participate and engage, increase knowledge, find gear, and ultimately perform in their sport.

Before joining Outside, he ran a consumer genetics company called Helix in Silicon Valley before returning to his home state of Colorado. Prior to Helix, Robin co-founded and built MapMyFitness into one of the world’s largest open fitness tracking platforms. Following the acquisition of MapMyFitness by Under Armour, he joined the innovative sports apparel organization and served as Chief Digital Officer, where he led the overall strategic direction of the company’s Connected Fitness and eCommerce business.

Robin spent the first ten years of his career building a mutual fund classification and ratings platform at Lipper (a Thomson Reuters Company), as well as a risk and compensation platform at both American Century Investments and Wellington Management. He graduated with a MS in Finance from University of Colorado at Denver and lives with his wife and three children in Boulder, Co. He is a lifelong cyclist who started riding and racing in the early 1980’s.