Running Stories is a first-of-its-kind platform. It combines entertainment, audio and fitness, while incorporating real-time data to create an immersive experience. It makes you the protagonist in a gripping story, your own ultimate personalised adventure.

Everyone knows Netflix, Spotify and running trackers, so this innovation is not in the tech, but the fact that it’s the first to merge these different technologies, typically made for passive consumption, into one immersive storytelling platform.

It aims to become a revolutionary format for entertainment on the go. The initial reviews by runners and press prove there is a huge market for this offering.

There is a market of 1.2 billion people who run once a week and have a smartphone. Yet few run regularly.

We saw an opportunity to create a product that goes beyond existing entertainment apps runners use to stay motivated (music, podcasts - all designed for passive consumption, neither personalized nor interactive).

Instead of selling the idea upfront to a brand, we decided to develop it ourselves in-house as a platform that later allows for brand integration in various forms.

The approach is to launch it as an open beta for runners to test to continuously improve the platform. Whitelabelling and first case uses with brands then fund the next development stages to ultimately build a pay-per-run platform.

Running Stories is a first-of-its-kind entertainment platform created to motivate couch potatoes to go running, and casual runners to run more often. Simply by ‘enter-training’ them.

It mixes storytelling, fitness and audio into one customized audio experience that casts you as the protagonist of the story by using real-time data. This is the ultimate personalized adventure.

The plot points in the story are triggered as runners pass GPS markers, such as landmarks, shops, streets and buildings, incorporating them into the story. As well as using other live data points like date, time and weather.

The result is an augmented audio narrative that integrates with your surroundings making them fully immersive.

Stories are based on distance, not on time (episodes range from 1km to 2km),

motivating runners to head out again and again. Plots are designed to train you by asking you to sprint or change pace.

Ideation & Prototype

November 2018 - First prototype

April 2019 - Alpha prototype

July 2020 - Closed Beta prototype

Launch & Pitches

10 October 2020 - Open Beta launched on iOS App Store (with a Singapore route)

13 November 2020 - Global PR launch

19 November 2020 - Start development of enhancements to include day, time, and weather for dynamic storytelling

December 2020 - First round of pitches to potential partners

13 January 2021 - Start of Android build

March 2021 - Final integration of weather, day and time APIs for more dynamic storytelling.

April 2021 - Android version launch.

Future Milestones

Q2 - Q3 2021 - Launch one-story-two-cities prototype in NYC and Singapore

Q2 - Q3 2021 - Scalable storytelling prototype powered by text-to-speech technology and artificial intelligence

Q3 - Q4 2021 - Bespoke whitelabelled applications with select brands

How it works: Stories are told on a route using GPS trackers that are in-built in all phones. We turned GPS markers such as landmarks, shops and streets into story data points that are seamlessly integrated into the plot of a story. Making what you hear what you see.

The Running Stories app controls the story experience through a CMS backend that pushes hyper-localised custom audio tracks each time you pass curated GPS markers. Runners will be treated to a tailored immersive experience through engaging storytelling each time they pass a GPS marker in real life.

Running Stories also pulls information from open APIs to incorporate the weather, date and time into the story.

- Devices: iPhone 6s or later

- Platforms: iOS 11.0 or later / Android version in April 2021

Running Stories has been covered by top international news and technology press, such as BBC, Mashable, GQ, Esquire, and also gotten positive reviews from top professionals in the tech industry.

We received interest from runners and running clubs globally - from London to Iowa, Oman to Paris. We are currently developing concepts for big international brands in sports, entertainment and technology that have expressed interest in collaborating and investing (see confidential info).

In the upcoming 6 months, we’re building a smarter app by integrating more APIs to pull live data, and developing text-to-voice tech - powered by AI - to make it simpler for content creators to generate runnable stories for any route anywhere.

We are planning for ‘multiplayer stories’, where runners play different characters and can interact with one another within the same story, and integration into wearable tech. These demonstrate the endless possibilities of this never-seen-before product.