Dom Maskell and Ben Parker co-founded Runna, one of the world’s fastest-growing running apps.
Their partnership has totally transformed the landscape of digital running coaching. Here’s everything you need to know.
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How Ben and Dom met
Dom Maskell and Ben Parker first met as lacrosse teammates at the University of Southampton.
After graduation their career paths diverged, but the two remained connected by their love for running.
Dom entered the corporate world, joining McKinsey & Company as a consultant, where he honed his skills in business strategy and product management.
Meanwhile, Ben pursued his passion for fitness, qualifying as a personal trainer and running coach, building a successful online coaching business based in London.
Their professional relationship began when Dom, seeking to improve his 5K time and tackle his first marathon, became Ben’s coaching client.
Witnessing the growing demand for Ben’s coaching skills, Dom proposed automating and scaling the service, planting the seed for what would ultimately become Runna.
Dom told WellToDo: “Ben and I met at university. About three years after graduating, he helped me train for my first marathon as a running coach.
“I loved the personalisation, like exciting workouts with pace targets and comments, which helped me to develop as a runner.
“However, there wasn’t a single app that was remotely close to what Ben was able to offer.
“At the same time, I was paying Ben more than five times what a Runna subscription now costs.
“We founded Runna to put personalised running coaching into an affordable and accessible package for the 150million-plus runners worldwide.”
Runna
The duo initially worked on the project as a side hustle, developing a website called The Run Buddy, which delivered personalised running plans as PDFs.
In March 2022, after nine months of working evenings, they launched Runna and quickly saw traction.
Dom said: “Our first version put the ‘minimal’ in minimal viable product.
“We worked round the clock to develop the initial engine behind Runna.
There wasn’t a single app that was remotely close to what Ben was able to offer
Dom Maskell
“We personally paid for an ex-colleague, Walter Holohan, to deploy our engine to the cloud and output personalised PDFs.
“A user would come onto our website, pay £80 for a marathon plan and type in details about their running history.
“Our engine would then take these details, build them a personalised training plan, wait five minutes — to make it seem more complex — and then email the PDF to the user.
“We ended up selling over 1,000 plans and realised we really had something.
“From there, we were lucky to be joined by ultra athlete Joshua Patterson, who invested in Runna and joined the team.
“This gave us enough money to convince Walter to join us full-time, as well as Katie Goble, who built our marketing, partnerships, and more.
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“This early success led to the development of the Runna app, which has since evolved into a global platform offering tailored training plans for runners of all abilities — from beginners to marathoners.”
Runna’s growth has been remarkable. The app is now used by hundreds of thousands of runners across more than 180 countries.
The company previously raised over £8million in venture capital from investors including the fund behind Innocent Drinks — JamJar Investments.
Runna’s incredible achievements include its founders being listed in Forbes’ 30 Under 30, as well as ranking at number six on The Startups 100 Index 2025.
In April 2025, news broke that Runna was acquired by exercise tracking platform Strava.
The San Francisco-based company, which claims to have over 150million registered users, turned $275million revenue in 2023.
Chief Executive Michael Martin said: “Coming off Strava’s accelerated innovation and unprecedented growth last year, it was the right time to look for complementary businesses that could create even greater value for our users.
“Running is booming worldwide — nearly one billion runs were recorded on Strava in 2024.
“Runna’s mission to give every runner a personalised plan to achieve their goal is a perfect fit.”
