Dec 11, 2013

MyNextRun Picks up €170,000 with Strong Growth across European Running Events by Greg Anderson 14:35 CEST on 11 December, 2013 Runners rejoice, MyNextRun has raised a new round of funding. The Finnish-founded service that helps you find and sign up for running events has just grabbed a €170,000 round with new investors, including Dreadnought Finance, Reaktor Polte, a few angel investors, and Tekes. MyNextRun works as an event directory for running events. For some events, their directory will just lead you to their website so you can sign up, but for the 300 events across Europe they've partnered with, MyNextRun allows you to sign up to the event through their platform, see maps of the track route, find the participant list, and read reviews of the route and how the event was managed. Additionally MyNextRun can lead users to photos of the event. They tell us the new round of financing will be used to build up new social features for the service and to help expand their footprint across Europe. Today they have more than 300 running events using the service in 35 European countries. “MyNextRun’s goal is to connect runners with other runners and running events. Running events are social experiences and there is a need for a service to support that,” explains Sami Granfors, CEO of MyNextRun, who tells us they're enhancing the discovery search to make it more relevant to users. "We want to be a useful tool for runners to plan their races for the next year, and work with their friends to find events to participate in. " While their service caters to plenty of pro events like marathons and other higher distances, MyNextRun is also going after the consumer running market with more casual events, like 5 and 10k's. Running events are seasonal, so this winter they'll be putting together and releasing these new features before the next season kicks off. This winter Granfors also tells us they'll be aggressively acquiring new event customers outside Finland, with their eye on the UK market. "We're happy about how last season went, but we have a lot of work to be done to help runners find events to participate in, and there is room to grow," says Granfors. For runners looking for an upcoming challenge, searching through Helsinki there's the SnowRunFest this February which is part running event and part obstacle course. I think I'll be out there, in it to win it.