Davis Kitchel

Kitchel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1995 with a BA in Philosophy and Computer Science.^[1]

Prior to Strava, Kitchel worked as a software developer and was an avid cyclist and rower. In the late 1990s, inspired by informal hill-climb competitions on Wednesday night group rides, Kitchel began recording his times on strips of paper carried in his jersey pockets, tracking personal records across locally named climbs.^[2] This practice formed the conceptual basis for what would become Strava's segment leaderboard feature.^[3]

On 20 December 2006, Kitchel was introduced to Michael Horvath through a mutual friend. At the time, Kitchel had already been independently experimenting with GPS data to generate cycling training insights.^[2] His technical work provided the foundation that Horvath and Mark Gainey needed to develop the platform they had long envisioned.^[4]

In 2009, Kitchel co-founded Strava alongside Horvath, Gainey, Chris Donahue, Mark Shaw, and Pelle Sommansson.^[5] He subsequently served as Director of Strava Labs, an experimental division of Strava's engineering team that released side projects built on the platform's GPS dataset.^[6] One such project was Strava Metro, a service that provided anonymised GPS data to city planners and transportation departments. Oregon's Department of Transportation became its first customer in 2014.^[7]