CrossFit as an Example for Open Source Software
Why CrossFit is a perfect analogy for open source software businesses. From picking a market to building an open source solution, community, and a successful business.
Unconventional Open Source: CrossFit
Here’s my assertion: the history of CrossFit is a near perfect example of building an open source software business. CrossFit touches on all of the key pillars you’ll need to consider and shows a path to success in a competitive marketplace.
This article is Post 2 in a series on Open Source Software Businesses, here’s a link to Part 1: An Overview of Open Source and please subscribe for more!
Grab your protein shakes and your Airdyne, because this is about to get interesting. Now I’m assuming you’re 🤔, but bear with me!
What is CrossFit?
For the uninitiated, CrossFit is “a branded fitness regimen that involves constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity.” (source) It’s known for its crazy community, tenuous relationship with proper weightlifting technique, and ridiculous variety of exercises (e.g.,: paddle-less paddle-board race).
1. The Market
The fitness industry is massive and competitive. Barriers to entry are exceptionally low. (🚨Sound a little like the software SaaS business?🚨). You can train by heart rate, by weight, with machines, with barbells 🏋️ or dumbbells. Want to be on a bike? Go for it. Want a bike that doesn’t stop spinning? ✅.
There are infinite choices! How can you compete in such a saturated market that already has so many options?
Lesson: Pick a big market.
2. The Problems with ‘Typical’ Fitness
Having done a reasonable amount of fitness programs, some standard problems emerge. CrossFit addresses these head-on.
Trends & fads
Fads and trends in fitness create noise (and confusion) for consumers who are already confused about what they should do. (5 sets with 10 reps or 10 reps over 5 sets?) and an article from 2005 on CrossFit captures it well:
The bulk of what you see in fitness are trends, trends to make fitness interesting or easier,” said John Velandra, a Fayetteville trainer and owner of Designs in Fitness, who uses CrossFit to help his clients. “But trends don’t address physical needs, and trends don’t hold up over time. CrossFit is not just a program; it’s a philosophy that stands the test of time.” (source)
CrossFit defines more than just exercises, CrossFit is a worldview. This is critical because it simplifies things for its devotees. Don’t focus on technique just do the workout of the day and you’ll be good. This gets followers closer to the value (being fit and healthy) that they want from working out with no thinking necessary.
Lack of Variety
Anyone that has done an exercise program for more than 6 months (or 3 weeks) knows that things can get boring. CrossFit solves this by varying workouts every single day. There’s something new with a variety of exercises. This remedies the dreariness of just repeating the same thing, day in and day out.
Lack of Intensity
Physical intensity is critical to CrossFit’s differentiation. Without intensity, your mind wanders during exercise. Ever see people at the gym, feet up on the exercise bike, scrolling instagram? It’s rampant. CrossFit’s intensity puts you in the here and now with challenging exercises.
Lack of Emphasis on Real Life Movements
There are certainly functional exercise programs but many programs focus on just going through the motions. CrossFit differentiates with variety and a focus on training for “real life” not for aesthetics. This motivates and justifies - that this is to help you be prepared for anything.
Lack of Community
Typically with weightlifting, you go at it alone. You work with a single personal trainer, maybe you go to a class, but ultimately you’re alone in the journey. There are opportunities for community (spin being a good example) but it’s not always the status quo.
Weaving in community is a critical aspect of CrossFit. A CrossFit Gym is called a “box” and these “boxes” ground the community.
Lesson: Find the problems with the status quo & iterate to develop your solution.
Note: CrossFit’s solution was not architected with some grand vision after divine intervention. The founder of Crossfit (Glassman) developed the ideas over decades, tweaking the ideas and approaches. He started incredibly small, out of his garage in Santa Cruz (seriously, how much more silicon valley startup could this sound). This is worth emphasizing, he did an immense amount of iteration to get to product market fit.
3. Not for Everyone & Challenging the Status Quo
CrossFit, as called by its creator, is “a religion run by a biker gang.” (source) "It can kill you," he said. "I've always been completely honest about that." (source)
"If you find the notion of falling off the rings and breaking your neck so foreign to you, then we don't want you in our ranks" he said. (source)
Does that sound like something that’s for the masses? No, but that’s the exact idea! You want to make something that is different, something that challenges the status quo and stirs controversy.
CrossFitters revel in the challenge. A common axiom among practitioners is "I met Pukey," meaning they worked out so hard they vomited. (source)
While all the exercises “scale” to various levels of physical proficiency, I can promise you my parents are not doing clean and jerks or “meeting Pukey” in their garage any time soon.
Glassman appeared to have no problem with this clearly calling out that CrossFit is not for everyone. In fact, the NY Times Article I’ve been quoting through this piece is titled “Getting Fit, Even if It Kills You”. I’m sure he relished this fact.
Lesson: Do not try and target the ‘average’ consumer, you will lose. Target a small community and be controversial. Challenge the status quo, choose your smallest viable audience, and focus, focus, focus.
4. The Open Source Workout
Traditionally gyms and personal trainers are going to try to keep workouts and training programming to themselves. They want to use programming to differentiate as proprietary information.
However, CrossFit turned that on its head. It made workouts and programs free and posted them on the internet. “In fact, almost everything about CrossFit is free, which also sets it apart from other fitness crazes. A new ‘Workout of the Day’[WOD] is posted on the website each day.” (source)
You can look at WODs back to 2001 on the CrossFit website. Here’s one from October of that year.
While functional fitness has existed for nearly all of civilized human time, Glassman’s approach didn’t catch fire until he started the website and started posting the workout for free. (source) Open sourcing the workouts brought together a decentralized community from around the world.
Lesson: You’ve got to share your methods to lead and grow an open source community and create your movement.
5. The Zealot Community
Calling CrossFit nearly religious is an understatement. You’ve got a quasi-divine leader (“Coach”), churches / chapters (“Boxes”), you’ve got methods and practices (“WODs”). The list goes on. “Glassman’s followers call him Coach and share a cultlike devotion to his theories.” (source)
“We are all drinking the Kool-Aid,’ said Eugene Allen, a Tacoma SWAT team member. ‘It's hard not to catch Coach's enthusiasm.” (source)
Now communities are not one directional. The community contributes by posting their own workouts and ideas. They record and share their progress and cheer one another on. There is certainly organized competition (online and in person), but the majority is a community and personal progress.
"When I first started the program, I could barely do a pull-up, so I was embarrassed to post," Mr. Kassum said. "Now that I can do 20 or 30, I'm on there every day. People on there are animals." Online, where some participants record their workout progress, people cheered him on as his upper-body strength increased. (source)
While elements are competitive, it’s all about individuals pushing their own limits and becoming better. Competition has its place, but much of it is about lifting one another up. Imagine Mr. Kassum (in the quote above) as someone filing a bug report or commenting about their success with your open source library - you want to cheer those folks on!
Lesson: Community is critical to open source. Be deliberate about being inclusive (without watering things down) and helping users share their win, no matter how sophisticated.
6. Community Innovation and a business
CrossFit started out with an online community but grew to “boxes” and in person communities. These gyms paid a fee to affiliate with CrossFit and join the official community. These are regional or city groups that seed innovation and best practices.
CrossFit captures community methods (remember the online and open source nature) by providing an open watering hole online to share. An example of innovation is specialized adaptations and programs for pregnant women, seniors, and other specialized groups. These “adaptations” are the evolution by the community, not the original goal.
From a monetization perspective, CrossFit boxes pay a fee to brand themselves as CrossFit affiliates. In addition to gym affiliation, CrossFit has a huge branded merchandise operation and requires a somewhat ridiculous amount of different gear to ensure variety in the workouts. These are all revenue opportunities. In 2015, CrossFit was valued at $4 billion, so this isn’t a small business.
Lesson: Community will provide significant innovation in open source, be ready to leverage it and provide avenues for sharing.
Note: monetization is probably the element with the least crossover to open source businesses, so I haven’t focused on it too much in this post.
Bringing the Fanatics Together: The Summit
Of course, you can open source your methods and you build a decentralized community on the internet. However, at the end of the day, people need to feel a part of the larger movement. They want to see social proof from others. The CrossFit Games is that event and brings hundreds of competitors and spectators. It has individual competition as well as team events.
Additionally, this provides immense social proof. People can see with their own eyes the power of CrossFit and its ability to create “the fittest Man and Woman on Earth.”
Does this sound familiar? Something like Data + AI Summit or Open Source Software Summit? They’re nearly the same.
Lesson: Online makes for a great community but there’s no substitute for bringing people together physically. This provides immense social proof about how big and exciting the movement is.
Conclusion
I propose the following high level structure for building an open source business:
Picking a (big) market
Solving for problems in that marketplace
Deliberately building for a small, exclusive audience (not building for everyone) and using that community to validate your product
Open sourcing your solution
Building a zealotous (but inclusive) community
Leveraging innovation in the community and building your business
This transfers almost completely to open source based businesses.
As a quick example - point by point:
Apache Spark joined the data analytics community and rejected the status quo of MapReduce and on disk data flows.
It made writing data flow programs easier, cheaper and more performant solving critical problems in the community.
It was built for a small audience (at first) and built in partnership with folks at big companies struggling with these problems.
As an open source project, it leveraged social proof with community events and meetups to seed solutions in the community and teach them how to succeed.
Apache Spark grew a strong online community through MOOCs, trainings and community events. The github was very welcoming to new users (as I can attest at the time).
As the community innovated, Apache Spark allowed users to share those innovations as packages. This site became a simple way to share libraries written on Spark.
Think about your favorite open source project! How have they done the above?
In follow up posts I will dive deeper into each section and break down examples of open source businesses for each section and how they succeeded, struggled, or went against the grain!
Please reply with any feedback📝 or drop comments🤺 below. I’m a little concerned that this post is a bit abstract for folks and so I’d love to hear your thoughts. Whether you liked it or you didn’t!
Some closing notes: (1) I’m not a strong advocate of CrossFit, like everything it’s got it’s positives and negatives. (2) Glassman (founder of CrossFit) has made inappropriate comments and was ousted as CEO of CrossFit for doing so. This article makes no endorsement of his previous statements.