How not to build a cycling platform

Lessons learned creating the GCN app and GCN website

There’s a new cycling venture in town. Domestique. If anyone has been on Twitter over the last few years you’ve probably seen their live Tweets of most races. Now they’ve got big plans. They intend on providing a place for cycling fans which will provide us with everything we could ever want, all in one place. A new platform. A new community. And it’s free.

This is what they are promising.

We’ve been down this road before. I was personally on this exact road every day for four years. It wasn’t just GCN+ that got thrown in the bin in December 2023, it was the GCN app too - a one-stop-shop for fans.

From late 2019 when I joined GCN until late 2023 when we shutdown the GCN app, I was a member of the software team, and later head of that software team, which designed and built it. Some aspects of the app I was really proud of, others made me wince.

I hope this Domestique idea works, I really do. If they are to succeed in this venture, perhaps I can provide some insight into a similar venture which ultimately failed.