How can club leaders grow a running community without stitching together chat, spreadsheets, and bank transfers?
An all-in-one platform for running community leaders. Publish your club, run events, manage memberships, and take payments, while runners find sessions matched to their pace.
Project frame: Runite: one platform for running clubs to grow, run events, and get paid
Role
Founder & Product Designer
Year
2025
Platform
Web · Owner Hub & runner app
2 apps
focused audiences
A leader hub and runner experience share the same product model without crowding each other.
Stripe
payments foundation
Ticketing, memberships, and platform fees are built into the product from day one.
Reconstructed artifact · Runite club platform
01 — Context
The problem
Running clubs are some of the most engaged communities there are, and some of the worst served by software. Leaders were stitching one together from a group chat, a spreadsheet of members, and a bank transfer for fees. There was no simple way to publish a club, run ticketed events, match runners to the right session, or get paid.
02 — Evidence
What shaped the direction
Community-leader journey
Mapped how leaders announce runs, track members, collect money, and answer repeated questions before and after events.
Runner confidence
Runners needed difficulty, pace, route, timing, and social context before committing to a session.
Pace-model design
Difficulty labels were grounded in real running paces instead of vague organiser guesses.
Business-model constraint
Subscriptions and event fees had to support club growth without creating payment admin for volunteers.
03 — Process
How it came together
The brief
Running clubs are high-trust, high-frequency communities, and badly served by
the tools their leaders actually use. The job ran on a group chat for
announcements, a spreadsheet for members, and a bank transfer for fees. Runite's
bet was that publishing a club, running events, and getting paid are one
problem rather than three, and that solving it well could make a leader's whole
week lighter.
Reconstructed artifact · Runite club platform
The Owner Hub: a club leader's communities and events in one place.
Two apps, two audiences
Leaders and runners want very different things, so Runite is built as two
focused apps over a shared API: an Owner Hub where leaders create communities,
schedule events, and manage billing, and a runner app where people discover
clubs, book events, and pay. Splitting them keeps each surface focused, so
neither audience wades through the other's controls.
Matching runners to the right run
The sharpest design problem was ability. Show every event to everyone and
beginners get scared off while fast runners get bored. So every event carries a
difficulty (beginner, progressing, intermediate, advanced) and Runite
infers it from real paces (5k through marathon) rather than asking an organiser
to guess. A colour-coded badge lets a runner self-select a session that fits in
a single glance.
Reconstructed artifact · Runite club platform
A runner's event view: difficulty badge, location, and one-tap booking.
How money moves through the platform
Money was a first-class concern. Runite runs on Stripe Connect, so leaders
are paid directly for tickets and memberships while the platform takes a small,
configurable fee, with Club and Club Pro subscription tiers for owners
on top. It all ships from one lean Vite/React/Chakra monorepo on Firebase and
Render: runner app, owner portal, and API in a single codebase a small team can
move fast in.
What shipped
Runite turns a pile of disconnected tools into one platform a running community
can actually run on, with discovery, events, memberships, and payments in a
single loop.
04 — Craft
Decision trail
01Split the product into two focused apps over a shared API: an Owner Hub for club leaders and a runner-facing app, so each audience only carries the surface it needs.
02Inferred event difficulty from real running paces (5k through marathon) and surfaced it as a colour-coded badge, so runners self-select sessions that fit instead of guessing.
03Built payments in from day one with Stripe Connect. Owners get paid directly for tickets and memberships, the platform takes a small fee, plus Club and Club Pro owner tiers.
04Kept the stack lean and shippable with a Vite/React/Chakra monorepo on Firebase and Render, so a small team runs the runner app, owner portal, and API from one codebase.
05 — Impact
Outcome
Runite reduces the operational load on club leaders while giving runners a clearer, safer way to find sessions that match their pace and intent.