A conversation with Troy Busot, Founder & CEO of Athlinks (a LifeTime Company)

In this next episode of Tech in 26.2 podcast - I sat down with Troy Busot, Founder of CEO of Athlinks (a LifeTime Company) : the premier platform for race results and athlete data that holds ~400 million race results and counting. As a triathlete and serial entrepreneur, Troy recently launched iLoomi, an expert biographer for writing a life story. Some of the key focus areas of our conversations were:

🎯 Founding journey of Athlinks and pivots to find product market fit
🎯 Figuring out generating revenue (through advertising) and retrospectives on mistakes
🎯 How to build a company with exit in mind from day one?
🎯 Power of networking and finding a suitor to sell Athlinks

🎯 Selling Athlinks to LifeTime Fitness and figuring out how to get things done at LifeTime

🎯 Events leading to launch of iLoomi - celebrating magical moments of life

Podcast Outline

0:05 Introduction

3:21 Founding Story and finding product market for Athlinks

12:36 Getting first paying customer through advertising

16:00 Endurance industry trends that helped survive 2008 recession

20:30 Transitioning into being an endurance athlete and building fail fast muscle

25:45 Building Athlinks as cog in a bigger machine and finding potential buyer for exit

31:48 Selling Athlinks to LifeTime Fitness

33:21 Learnings from building Athlinks - Make the experience magical for end users, celebrate their experience, deeply connect with community; half ur assumptions will be wrong,

37:09 How you build a company with exit in mind from day one?

40:07 Figuring out getting s**t done - life at LifeTime Fitness

56:54 Transitioning out of LifeTime Fitness

1:02:02 Launching iLoomi - celebrating magical moments of life

References

• Athlinks - https://www.athlinks.com/


• iloomi - https://www.iloomi.com/


• USA Triathlon - Splash & Dash - https://www.usatriathlon.org/get-racing/youth-splash-and-dash-series


• Mapmyrun - https://www.mapmyrun.com/


• Lifetime Fitness - https://www.lifetime.life/


• Chronotrack - https://chronotrack.com/


• Product Market Fit - https://www.productplan.com/glossary/product-market-fit/


• Faster Forward Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faster-forward-with-troy-busot/id1538652099

Podcast production tool credit:
Planning - Notion
Research and show notes - Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot
Recording - Zoom
Transcription - Restream.io
Media editing and mixing - Canva MagicAI

Episode info:

• Youtube - https://youtu.be/GQRWbMY_jWs


• Apple Podcast link -


• Spotify podcast link -

Transcript and Show notes:

Enjoy the episode!