Why the ‘Strava for Women’ Pivoted to Basic Safety First

Former four-time British Champion pistol shooter Anna Rehfisch realised early in her athletic career that sports programming, nutrition, and coaching were entirely built on male defaults. When she set out to build Joyna (envisioned as the "Strava for women") her initial passion and primary goal was to integrate menstrual cycle analytics into training, helping women optimise their performance and understand periods of high injury risk.

However, through customer feedback, Anna discovered a much more urgent demand. A need for basic safety. Too many women avoid exercising outdoors for fear of harassment or worse.  

Recognising that existing fitness apps base their routing on male-skewed user activity, where a route might be deemed "safe" simply because a group of men ran it, she made the decision to pivot the product roadmap. Joyna delayed the cycle analytics to prioritise building a first-of-its-kind algorithm that generates well-lit, low-crime, and low-isolation routes from scratch, empowering women to exercise outside with confidence.

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