Bruce Leishman - Founder - KitUp

Breakfast with an Iron Man 🚴‍♂️ On Tuesday I met with Bruce Leishman

Bruce is the founder of KitUp, a platform to rent outdoor equipment for your next adventure! KitUP helps connect people to equipment hosts and renters.

Growing up around a diving school and business, there's no surprise Bruce has taken to the world of outdoor sports. 

We spoke about:

- Cycling in London and cycling in general! The fun of long distances, cool cycle routes and even the UK's most current topic... potholes!

- The impact of Netflix and sports-based documentaries on the awareness of outdoor sports to the mass market. 

- Creating a newsletter mailing list of people in anticipation of launch as well as the importance of following through with the list to understand how to get users from signed up to active.

Understand user behaviour to understand how best to improve platform utilisation.

- Building a rental marketplace business and the challenges that come with building the critical mass of supply and demand. How to find acquisition channels that stay away from the 'There's not much on there' or 'There's not enough demand for this'. 

- Leveraging partnerships and B2B2C play to encourage usage of the platform. We discussed understanding user behaviour to understand how best to improve platform utilisation. Do outdoor users plan in advance, rely on the weather, book an Airbnb first and then equipment? These sort of questions help understand

- Building and enabling groups of people to try new activities removes the barrier to entry of outdoor sports which can sometimes feel difficult to start off with. I could totally relate as the sort of person that would turn up to my first triathlon with a mountain bike, no goggles and a pair of old trainers.