The RunKeeper crew has been up to some really fun things lately. These come from the Reach the Beach race that a few of us ran last weekend. More stories to come!

We just wanted to give a huge shoutout to the two RunKeeper team members who are running the Boston Marathon on Monday: Jason our CEO, and Margaret, one of our awesome software engineers! 

Together they’ve raised more than $20,000 for a charity called Camp Interactive, which teaches leadership skills in outdoor activities and technology to inner-city kids. You can still donate to this awesome organization here, if you’d like. 

And as if that’s not enough, they actually have to go out and run the 26.2 miles on Monday! Be sure to follow their course on the race via RunKeeper Live here and here. You can also keep track of Jason at @jjacobs22, as he tweets and posts pictures along the way. And definitely give them a huge cheer if you see them from the sidelines! 

Congratulations again you two! We’re so proud!

Anyone else out there racing? Did you raise any money for a charity?

Happy Friday! Here’s another in our “Meet the RunKeeper Team” series, which we hope helps you get to know the hardworking people behind RunKeeper on a more personal level. Up today is Jim, who cranks hard every day on answering the questions our very passionate user community has. So next time you send a note to support, feel free to address it to Jim!

Name/Title: Jim Redding, Community Support Specialist

RK nickname: The Support Sheriff

iPhone or Android: Android All Day!

Proudest/favorite memory using RunKeeper: Crushed my Yuletide 5K run with the help of RunKeeper!

Big problem I’m trying to solve at RunKeeper: How to make an app that encapsulates all of the users’ great feedback and suggestions!

Favorite partner app: Zombies, Run! What can I say, I just can’t get enough Zombies.

Fun fact: I used to be a DJ at my college radio station, WMUA 91.1FM Amherst.

Nutrition philosophy: I don’t do greens…except for lettuce…on my cheeseburgers.

Guilty pleasure: I love really terrible movies. And Romantic Comedies. And Terrible Romantic Comedies.

2013 Fitness/Health Goal: I want to run more! Wait…I feel like I’ve said that before. Oh well, still applies.

The RunKeeper team has grown quite a bit over the last year, and we think it’s about time you get to know the hard-working, scrappy, smaht, and, um, whacky people that make it up. We introduce to you the first of many installments of our “Meet the RunKeeper” team, with a spotlight on Kenny, our Android-toting, tea-loving software engineer, who can grow a mean mustache for Movember. And yes, he’s shaved it off since this picture was taken (sadly). 

Name & Title: Kenny Adorisio, Software Engineer

Nickname/Unofficial role: The toolman. Senior keg technician.

iPhone or Android: Android

Big problem I’m trying to solve at RunKeeper: Provide a fun experience that motivates users to improve their health and meet their fitness goals.

Fun fact: I drink tea like it’s nobody’s business.

Nutrition philosophy: Eat good, local, whole foods.

Guilty pleasure: Ice cream. Period.

2013 Fitness/Health Goal: Complete two marathons. Do a century at Harvard stadium.

You can keep up with Kenny as he chases down that goal here, and on Twitter here. 

As we we wrap up 2012 with 35 awesome people on staff here, we can’t help but be excited over how much we have grown over the years (especially this last one). 

We wanted to celebrate that boom visually, so we put together this slideshow, which takes a historical look at who came aboard and when. We hope you enjoy it! 

We wrote back in September about how we have been busy laying the foundation for aggressive growth, and had hired Doug Williams, the former Zipcar VP engineering as our new head of engineering.  We’ve been busy since that announcement, adding another 11 people to our growing team.  Today, I am pleased to announce another big one – Fareed Mosavat has joined us as our new head of product. 

Fareed was most recently the GM of Zynga’s Boston office, a 50-person game studio that was responsible for such titles as Indiana Jones Adventure World, helped launch Farmville 2, and led the teams building multiple in-progress mobile titles.  Prior to Zynga, Fareed spent 6 years at Pixar Animation Studios, where he was a Lead Technical Director.

I have known Fareed for quite a while, and was thrilled when he made the decision to join our team.  In addition to being a great product leader and human, there is also a ton of overlap between the data analysis and other skills he acquired launching/operating hit games at Zynga and the ones required at RunKeeper to help people get/stay motivated to live healthier lives.  It doesn’t hurt that Fareed has been an avid RunKeeper user, and made the app a big part of his aggressive plan to get back in shape earlier this year. Go Fareed!

Please join me in welcoming Fareed to the RunKeeper squad!  You can learn more about his decision to join, in his own words here.

Jason

Things have been quite busy in RunKeeper-land.  There are over 12m users in the RunKeeper community now (almost doubled in the last year), and the partner calls to our API have grown 15x during this same period (hundreds of millions of API calls per month).

We’ve also been busy rolling out new features, like the ability to set goals, free training plans, and exciting partnerships like the one we recently announced with GymPact.  The faster we grow the more there is to get done, and it has become clear that there is an opportunity to build RunKeeper into a significant, enduring company.

Meanwhile, our friend Doug Williams was coming off a 6 year run at Zipcar as VP of Engineering & IT.  He grew the engineering team from 3 to 40+ during a period when the company grew to several hundred employees and publicly traded.  Doug was looking for the opportunity to help build another big, successful consumer company here in Boston, and I am excited to announce that he’s joined RunKeeper as our new VP Engineering to do just that.  Doug will work closely with Joe Bondi, our CTO/co-founder, and the rest of our team to help scale the engineering organization to keep up with our rapid growth.

The fact that we were able to recruit someone of Doug’s caliber is a huge testament to the team and to the product that we’ve built.  It is also a testament to the magnitude of the opportunity that is in front of us.  I couldn’t be prouder of the team that we’ve assembled so far, or the company that we’re building.  Doug’s addition will only increase our probability of success.

For anyone that was around in the early days of RunKeeper, you remember that we used to play an incredibly active role in the support forum.  Listening to your feedback.  Fixing bugs/issues as they arise.  And keeping you informed on how we are thinking as the company continued to grow.

Well, we are taking another step forward in our quest to get back to our roots!  We are pleased to welcome Chas Wagner as our new Community Manager.  He sent this video with his job application, and we were sold.  Chas has a big job in front of him.  He will be engaging with you in the support forum, on twitter/Facebook, and wherever else RunKeeper discussions are taking place.  He will be making sure that bugs/issues get identified and fixed in a timely way.  He will be keeping you informed about where we’re heading as a company.  And most importantly, he’ll be your advocate that is keeping a pulse on the needs of the user community and representing your interests internally with the rest of the RunKeeper team.

So the long and short of it is:

1)   We are SUPER excited that Chas is here!

2)   You should be too, because it is another step towards us re-engaging with our user community and proceeding as the collaborative unit that we set out to build in the first place.

3)   Be nice to Chas!  He works his butt off on your behalf, and being a Community Manager can sometimes be a thankless job.

Help us give Chas a warm welcome!  He is chomping at the bit to dive in, so we’ll stop stealing his thunder and let him engage with you guys directly going forward.  Make it happen, Chas!  And have fun with it too.

To learn more about Chas, check out his RunKeeper profile, personal blog or follow him on Twitter @chaswagner.

The RunKeeper Team

We have humble beginnings as a mobile app to track your runs, walks, and bike rides.  As one of the first 200 apps in the iPhone App Store, we got in early and have been constantly improving the app experience ever since.  We’ve added new functionality, expanded to other smartphone platforms, and more recently, launched an API so other apps/devices could integrate with RunKeeper as well.

We’re very proud of the large, passionate user community that has rallied around RunKeeper as we’ve grown.  We recently crossed the 10m user mark, have assembled an incredible team of 23 employees strong (and growing), and recently raised $10M from a terrific group of investors so we can grow even faster.  Thanks to our user community, because without you, there is no way we could have made it this far.

With all of this good stuff happening, we wanted to write this post because we feel like we owe you an apology.  You see, we have always prided ourselves on being a user-driven company.  A company that cares about your feedback.  A company that makes decisions with you, our users, in mind. We feel like recently we started to stray from those values.  We spread ourselves too thin.  We had too many initiatives going on at once.  And most importantly, we stopped listening to our users as much as we should be.  As a result, improvement to our core product (i.e. the reason you are all here), began to suffer.  Scaling a company is hard, and we made some missteps along the way.  We are not here to make excuses.  Rather, we are here to tell you that we are sorry that we took our eye off the ball and that we are committed to making things right.

Since we came to this realization, we’ve started doing a bunch of things differently around RunKeeper HQ. We went back to the drawing board to better define our company’s mission, vision, and core values.  We completely overhauled our development process so that we can react faster to your feedback.  We hired a full-time community manager (welcome Chas!), and we implemented ‘Support Sundays’ where a bunch of the RK squad handle customer support for the day to interact with the user community directly.  Most importantly we took a long hard look at our product roadmap and trimmed or got rid of anything we believed was only serving our interests, and not yours.

So what does this mean for you?  It means that, hopefully, the RunKeeper that you came to love will be back again.  It means we will run the company in a transparent and accessible way.  It means that, while we can’t always incorporate your feedback, we will do a much better job of listening and keeping a pulse on your needs.  And most importantly, it means we will be building the kind of product over time that you can love and that we can be proud of!

It may take us a little while to regain our footing, but we are feeling great about our progress and momentum, and we can’t wait to show you everything that we’ve got in store.  It’s going to be an exciting 2012!  In the meantime, if you need us for anything, just ask :)

The RunKeeper Team

The RunKeeper team in the new office space.  Let the fun begin!

Jason - always seems to look like he just finished a run

Joe - hanging ten as if he is still on vacationTom  - Either mixing a new music track or working on the next super duper top secret RunKeeper featureAaron - We weren’t sure at first why he said he didn’t need an office chair.