Overnight Success is a new podcast about the entrepreneurs, personalities, and passionate people who make up the sport of cycling, and the inspiring stories behind the icons they’ve built. The title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that any lasting business takes years to build.
This month we’ve got a different episode for you. For a long time now I’ve been asked to share the origin story of CyclingTips in this podcast, but I always knew there was more to come in this journey. But now that the story is complete, I figure this is a good time to tell it.
Instead of this being a monologue, I asked Mitch Docker (from the Life in the Peloton podcast) to host this episode. Mitch’s journey with Life in the Peloton is similar to my own in many ways, and I’m enjoying seeing him take his own path and making a success out of it.
It’s hard to say if CyclingTips was a success or not. It depends on how you measure it. Like countless other media brands, CyclingTips is no longer in existence. Media is a tough business these days, but that’s not the reason it died. At one time it was a daily destination for cycling enthusiasts around the globe, and had a strong place within the cycling community that we were proud of.
The version of CyclingTips that died a quick death was a very popular one. Each year millions of people visited the site. There were thousands of paying members. We ran events. We supported local events whenever we could. We contributed to charitable and social causes. We tried to give a voice to those who didn’t have one. We weren’t the biggest, but we liked to think that we made an impact in our little corner of the world.
From the outside it might have looked like a straightforward path, but as you’ll hear it was anything but…
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What did you think of this story?