Moisés Jimenez on Building Vert.run
How a trail runner built a global coaching platform by staying relentlessly focused through COVID, banking crises, and constant uncertainty.
Entrepreneurship mirrors endurance sport: you put everything into it with no guarantee of what comes out the other side.
Moisés Jimenez lives this every day. He’s a North Face–sponsored trail runner orignally from Venezuela, now based in Boulder and the co-founder of Vert.run, a coaching platform that has now served more than 170,000 athletes worldwide.
From camping at races in Europe to avoid hotel fees, to surviving COVID shutdowns, to rebuilding his entire product around AI, Moises has built Vert.run by doing what he does best: staying afloat, solving problems, and staying focused when everything feels like it’s breaking.
This is a story about resilience, restraint, and why “focus” might be the most underrated skill in business.
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From Patagonia to the Summit
Moises was born in Venezuela and raised in Chilean Patagonia. As a kid, he stared at mountains and wondered what was on the other side. He wasn’t gifted athletically. What he could do was endure.
Basketball didn’t come easily, but he could run the entire game. In college, buried in math and physics, he needed an outlet. Twenty minutes of jogging became thirty. Then he saw a video of someone running up a mountain.
He grabbed a bottle, ran the nearest hill, and stopped halfway.
The next weekend, he made it three-quarters.
The weekend after that, he reached the top.
That was it.
By 2015, he was racing in Europe. He camped to save money. On race night in Italy, he packed up his tent so he wouldn’t have to pay for another night. He finished top ten at Lavaredo. That’s when he realized this wasn’t just exploration anymore.
It could be something serious.
“Being an entrepreneur and being an athlete are the same. You put everything into it, and you have no idea what comes out the other side.”
Performance, Partnerships, and the Boulder Boys
Moises’s sponsorships didn’t grow by accident. He treated them like relationships.
Three pillars shaped everything:
Perform at a global level
Communicate consistently
Create meaningful projects beyond racing
For The North Face, that meant FKTs, creative challenges, and mountain stories that inspired people. It wasn’t just about podiums. It was about giving the brand something real to stand behind.
That same energy became the Boulder Boys podcast. What started as Tuesday and Thursday night runs with friends turned into 90-minute conversations about contracts, races, and life.
They recorded them.
Not to monetize. Not to build a media empire.
Just to keep showing up for each other.
The podcast pays for pizza. That’s the goal.
And it works because it’s honest.
The Birth of Vert.run
Trail running and digital innovation rarely meet.
ITRA’s interface lagged for years. Ultrasignup is powerful but clunky. Moises and his co-founders, Max and Kirsten, saw a gap: trail running deserved better tools.
Moises was coaching one-on-one. He could handle maybe 50 athletes. That was the ceiling.
Trail running is complex:
Elevation gain
Terrain
Weather
Non-standard distances
Limited trail access for most people
They started in 2019 with a landing page and free weekly plans via email. When 7,000–8,000 runners were opening them every week, they raised $100K from friends and built a simple platform.
They launched in 2020.
Terrible timing.
Surviving COVID and Everything Else
Trail runners buy coaching when they have races.
COVID erased races.
Subscriptions stalled. People canceled. They stayed lean.
Then Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Vert.run banked with SVB.
Suddenly, no access to cash.
Moi didn’t dramatize it:
“That’s just entrepreneurship. The only thing that’s constant is how much stuff can go wrong at the same time.”
They stayed afloat. Joined an accelerator. Raised a small seed round. Became the UTMB World Series coaching partner for 12 races.
They kept shipping.
In 2025, they rebuilt the entire platform and launched AI coaching trained on years of real coach-athlete interactions.
The AI Pivot That Changed Everything
Before AI, every customer required a human coach.
The product was good, but it capped scale and pricing.
They split the product into two tiers:
Vert Pro – $19/month
Fully automated AI coaching trained on 170,000 athletesExpert Tier – $45/month
Real human coaches with onboarding calls and deeper support
Then they did something simple and bold:
They offered Vert Pro annually for $119.
Annual adoption jumped from 3–5% to 50%.
That single decision reshaped the business:
Cash arrives upfront
Customer lifetime value stabilizes
Churn risk drops
Growth becomes predictable
The AI isn’t generic. It’s trained on real conversations, real adjustments, real coaching behavior.
And Vert.run athletes finish their races at a 90%+ rate.
The Free-User Trap
One of Moi’s clearest lessons:
Most free users stay free.
The people who will pay usually convert within the first week. If that window closes, it rarely opens again.
Strava proves the challenge. With more than 150M users, only a small percentage pay. Once someone builds habits for free, it’s incredibly hard to change that behavior.
Warm leads need value fast.
Why Focus Kept Them Alive
Vert.run could monetize gear recommendations. Coaches already suggest shoes, packs, and nutrition thousands of times a day.
They could chase that revenue.
They don’t.
The team is small. The product is young. Weekly releases are coming. Every distraction dilutes energy.
Focus is what kept them alive.
Their upcoming algorithm (V3) builds fully customized plans during onboarding by reading training history and race goals. It adapts in real time. It accounts for reality: most trail runners live in cities.
Trail running is more identity than geography.
“You’re a trail runner because you identify as one. Most people train on roads.”
The Path Forward
Vert.run is breaking even.
Not flashy.
Not overfunded.
Alive.
Their team spans Latin America and Europe. Costs stay sane. Innovation stays central.
Moises isn’t building a growth machine just to raise capital. But he sees opportunity in partnerships with brands like Hoka, where product and platform amplify each other.
Success to him isn’t a headline.
It’s this:
Training hard
Working hard
Supporting ten full-time salaries
Traveling
Racing
Being present as a father
He isn’t waiting for success.
He’s living it in small, daily wins.
Top Takeaways
Focus is the ultimate survival skill.
Vert.run survived COVID, banking crises, and constant chaos by refusing to chase every opportunity.Free users rarely convert later.
The conversion window is short. The people who will pay usually do so in the first week.AI built on real expertise scales quality.
Vert.run’s AI is trained on years of real coaching interactions, not generic logic.Aggressive annual pricing changes behavior.
Offering 50% off annual plans moved adoption from 5% to 50%.Trail running is identity, not geography.
Most trail runners train on roads. The sport is about aspiration and lifestyle, not daily terrain.
TL;DR
Moises Jimenez built Vert.run the same way he runs mountains: slowly, honestly, and with relentless focus.
He survived bad timing, lost cash access, and a sport built on uncertainty by staying lean and saying no.
Vert.run now coaches 170,000 athletes, runs AI trained on real human expertise, and is breaking even without chasing hype.
Entrepreneurship, like endurance sport, is about staying upright when everything wobbles.
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