The story behind COOPAH

WHY WE STARTED COOPAH

Pete created Coopah after losing his mum to a heart attack.  This led him to severe depression. His therapy? Running. Running gave him a purpose and challenge in life and transformed his physical and mental health.

Running clubs are intimidating to join though, they feel elitist and due to this it took Pete 3.5 years to benefit from running. When running clubs were too intimidating, he turned to the online plans but found these were too generic and hard to access, finally he looked at private coaches but they were too expensive. When 74 people turned up to Coopah’s first social run, he knew he wasn’t alone.

In 2020 Pete, Dan and Paul joined forces to inspire more runners who could be transformed by the physical and mental health benefits the sport can give. Coopah’s virtual run coach app was built to help runners easily access the right training for them and find a community to engage with.

 GET THE COOPAH RUNNING APP

MADE TO MAKE YOU RUN

 Why are we called Coopah?

noun

  1. The coming together of people to achieve more as a community and inspire hope in others

  2. Innovative new running technology company

origin

Coopah is an acronym which describes a story of the founders and how they came together. It pays respect and homage to Marilyn Cooper whose love for running and understanding of its power is the spark behind our mission to improve people’s mental and physical health with running and technology.

 THE FOUNDERS

Dan Strang
Co-Founder /CEO

Dan has ran all his life from being an obsessed 800m runner as a youth, to becoming Athletics Club Captain at Exeter University and Devon County Champion. He is now reluctantly accepting he has run further than 2 laps of a track.  

In building Coopah, Dan brings extensive experience in growing and exiting technology businesses. In his last role he built Xi to a 34 person global team and raised £1.65m.

Pete Cooper
Co-Founder /CCO

Since taking up running, Pete has challenged himself to compete in all types of races from World Marathon Majors to running a whole marathon in his living room during lockdown.  

Pete has 5 years of global B2B sales/partnership experience from SME to Enterprise at Expedia and GoCardless.  Pete leads all partnership, PR and events for Coopah whilst also sharing his story across a range of large enterprise brands.

Paul Henry
Co-Founder /Director

Paul started his running journey with Pete in Chicago and since has become obsessed with travelling the world and running races; he has run over 50 global races to date. 

Paul is an early-stage investor and ex-big four consultant with more than 10 years of experience helping businesses design and execute innovative projects and new ventures.