Kilian Jornet announced on Wednesday that he has joined the running app Kotcha as an athlete founder, teaming up with Eliud Kipchoge, who already held the same role at the company.
“After many years of training, racing, making mistakes, learning from my body and trying to understand what actually makes a runner improve over time, I wanted to help build something that could share that knowledge in a useful way,” Jornet wrote in his Instagram post.
He was quick to push back against the idea that the app would simply hand users his own training plan.
“The goal is not to give people ‘Kilian’s training plan,'” he wrote. “Good training is about understanding your own body, finding your own rhythm, and building consistency over time, more than copying a rigid plan.”
What Kotcha Is
Kotcha is an AI-powered training app that promises plans built around a runner’s level, goal, and life. Its stated mission is to “make society physically, mentally, and socially healthier through the power of running,” and it pitches running as a team sport rather than a solo grind.
The product was built by three founders. Ben, a product expert and multi-marathoner, set out to build something he felt was missing from the apps on the market. Dim, a marketer, and Mac, a builder, joined him.
Trail plans in the app now draw on Jornet’s methods, including his approach to terrain reading and mountain strategy. The company frames itself as a rejection of “12-weeks fixed plans” in favor of structures that bend to the runner.
How It Came Together
The Kotcha team first met Kipchoge in February 2025 at his training camp in Kaptagat, Kenya, sitting down with Kipchoge and his longtime coach Patrick Sang. They planted trees together at the camp to mark the partnership.
After the London Marathon two months later, the team met with Kipchoge and Sang again to review early designs. The app launched in the fall of 2025 in time for Kipchoge’s first New York City Marathon.
Jornet came on board this spring. The Kotcha team traveled to Mallorca, where Jornet trains, to translate his methods into something the app could generate at scale. The work follows his States of Elevation project last fall, a 31-day linkup of all 72 U.S. fourteeners.
“Working on this alongside Eliud feels right,” Jornet wrote. “We come from very different parts of running, but we share values both in life and training.”
Questions About the “Founder” Title
Calling Kipchoge and Jornet founders has raised eyebrows. Athletes at their level are not typically sitting in weekly product meetings, and the setup looks a lot like arrangements where star athletes take equity in a young company in exchange for input and endorsement.
As Marathon Handbook noted in its earlier reporting on the Kotcha launch, startups often don’t have endorsement cash on hand. Equity stakes at the ground floor become a way to bring on a big name, and the “founder” title carries credibility a standard sponsorship deal doesn’t.
Jornet’s post described his role as supporting runners “with more awareness, structure and long-term perspective,” and stressed that the app “should not replace intuition or connection with the body.”
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