Coopah, the Run Coaching App, today announced a £1.5m seed round fundraise. Redrice Ventures and Active Partners led the round, while London Marathon Events has doubled down on an initial investment into Coopah in 2023 by investing further. Also participating in the round are Amrock Ventures and Tom Singh (Rianta Capital), as well as notable pro athlete investor Alistair Brownlee MBE and athletics super agent Ricky Simms.
Coopah was created in 2022 after co-founder Pete Cooper suffered a family bereavement that led him to severe depression. Running was his therapy and gave him purpose and a challenge. It transformed his physical and mental health and made him understand the impact that running regularly can have.
Although running has never been more popular, 58% of new runners give up on the sport within 30 days of starting. Coopah helps solve this by offering personalised training plans, real-time AI powered workout feedback, and community driven motivational support. It syncs seamlessly with all of the most popular fitness devices and platforms and helps people to both develop a running habit and beat their race goals.
This funding round comes on the back of London Marathon Events (owner of the TCS London Marathon and many other races across the UK) leading Coopah’s pre-seed round in 2023. Coopah is now the official training partner for the TCS London Marathon which has helped spur the company’s growth in 2024.
The funds will be used to fuel Coopah’s growth and move the company towards its vision of bringing the medicine of running to everyone. Coopah will scale its marketing efforts and continue to invest deeply into its core product. Specifically, the company intends to make its training plans smarter and more adaptive (using AI), and more flexible and social (knowing that runners really like to plan and complete their training runs together).
Along with the fundraise, the company is also announcing that former Strava executive Gareth Nettleton, who previously served as a board member at Coopah, has now joined as Chief Marketing Officer. Nettleton led global marketing at Strava from 2013-2021 helping the company scale to 100m+ registered athletes.
Coopah CEO and Co-Founder Dan Strang commented: “We can’t wait to show the 500m existing global runners, and the thousands of people that start running every day, the power of Coopah. Securing these funds and bringing this group of high quality investors on board is giving us the opportunity to invest in new growth channels which will put Coopah in front of the global running world. Bringing Gareth on board to spearhead this growth effort is an incredibly exciting moment for the business. His passion for our mission and his wealth of knowledge on how to scale a consumer sports app make him a fantastic addition to Coopah’s leadership.”
Courtney Sawatzke, Investor at Active Partners added: “Coopah’s approachability and personalised approach, centred on promoting running as a means to improve mental wellbeing, sets it apart in the market. With its fantastic team, a partnership with London Marathon Events and new funding, we’re excited to work with Coopah to bring their community-first approach to runners everywhere.”
Gareth Nettleton, new CMO at Coopah added: “The world is in a physical and mental health crisis. Running is one of the things that we believe can have huge impact on that. It is medicine for both body and mind. I’m delighted to join Dan and Pete on this journey and look forward to scaling Coopah’s active community across the globe.”
