Most of the Step Stories on this blog are about walking: walking with friends, keeping a habit going, starting a group. This one’s a little different. It’s about us, the people building Strideora, and why we’re doing it together.
We’re a small family team of three: Neil, and his two daughters, J and F. When you read “we” on this site, that’s who it means.
A big year of finishing things
This year, J has just finished university and F has just finished college. That’s a big moment in any family. There’s pride, relief, a few celebrations, and then the question everyone asks: “So, what’s next?”
For a lot of young people right now, that question is harder to answer than it should be. The entry-level job market is really tough at the moment. Getting that first proper role, the one that’s meant to get your foot in the door, isn’t as simple as it once was.
We could have spent the year sending off applications and hoping. Instead, we decided to try something else as well.
Using AI to build, not just to worry about
There’s been a lot of talk about AI changing the jobs market, and entry-level jobs in particular. It’s one of the reasons that first step on the career ladder feels so wobbly right now.
We decided to look at it from the other side. If AI is the tool shaking things up, could it also be the tool that helps us build something of our own? That’s what we’re doing with Strideora: using AI to help a small team build a real business, instead of waiting for someone else to offer us a place in theirs.
In practice, Neil uses AI deeply for the coding side, working in Cursor, and uses Grok Bot to help with design. As we haven’t launched yet, the marketing is only just beginning, and for now J and F are doing it the old-school way, by hand. We plan to bring AI into our marketing and social media later on. Customer support works the same way: every message lands in one helpdesk, and for now J and F answer them by hand while we get our processes sorted, with AI coming in after that.
Who does what
Every team needs a bit of a division of labour, and ours is fairly simple:
- Neil does the coding. The app, the website and everything that makes the steps add up behind the scenes.
- J and F do the marketing and customer support. That means telling people about Strideora and being the friendly faces who answer when you get in touch.
So if you ever send us a message, there’s a good chance it’ll be J or F who replies. If something’s not working behind the scenes, it’ll be Neil who fixes it.
Building something that’s ours
Here’s the heart of it. We want to build an asset that belongs to all three of us. Not a job someone can take away, and not a career that depends on the whims of somebody else’s company. Something we own, grow and shape together.
Along the way, Neil is teaching the girls entrepreneurial skills: the know-how it takes to start and run a business of your own. The idea is that J and F won’t ever have to depend on a bad boss to make their way in the world. They’ll have the skills, and the confidence, to make their own opportunities.
Why a walking app?
Neil walks a lot himself, so walking was never far from our minds. When the three of us sat down to brainstorm ideas together, we threw plenty around, and a walking app was the one that stuck.
What we love about it is that it’s something genuinely good to put out into the world. Strideora is all about encouraging movement and health in a fun way: less telling people off for not doing enough, more cheering each other along.
What we’re building
If you’ve read the rest of Step Stories, you’ll know the basics. Strideora is a social walking app for small groups, made to be kind and fair:
- Everyone has a private daily step goal. Nobody else sees your numbers.
- The group score is a team effort, not a leaderboard. It’s the share of member-days where people hit their own goals, so everyone counts equally.
- Every month, a new peak to climb. Monthly league challenges give the group something to aim for together.
- Cheers, not comparison. The activity feed is all about encouraging each other.
Those values feel very “us”. A family team that’s trying to lift each other up has ended up building an app about lifting each other up. We don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Why we’re telling you this
Partly because we think it’s nice to know who’s behind the apps you use. And partly because, if you’re a young person staring at a tough job market, or a parent wondering how to help, we’d love you to know there’s more than one way forward. Ours is just one of them.
We hope to share more of the journey here as we go.
Come along for the walk
Strideora isn’t in the app stores quite yet, but we’re getting closer. If you’d like to be one of the first to try it, and to support a small family business while you’re at it, join the waitlist on our coming soon page. We’ll email you as soon as it launches. Members join free, and organisers get their first month free.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of our story. From all three of us: see you on the trail.
