Cyclist: Plume is your tech company, PlumeStrong is its CSR program, and Tadej Pogačar is PlumeStrong’s ambassador. You’re both busy guys – one a billion-dollar tech entrepreneur, the other one of the greatest cyclists of all time – so how did it all begin?
Fahri Diner: Honestly, we were lucky. We started the PlumeStrong initiative during Covid. At Plume [Diner’s tech company] we were trying to be healthy, active, eat well, because nobody knew anything about this virus, right? So a bunch of us started riding in this informal way. That somehow morphed into the first PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge in 2021, but here’s the thing – although we’re based in Silicon Valley our European headquarters are Ljubljana in Slovenia. We have a lot of Slovenians in the company, so we talked to Tadej [who is of course Slovenian] about supporting us, and here we are. He has his own initiatives helping people in and around where we work, and so he just resonated with our cause.
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This year that cause is Street Child, with whom you’re working to raise money to build 15 secondary schools in rural Sierra Leone. By our reckoning you’ve raised £650,000 and counting this year, nearly £2 million cumulatively, and much of it through the PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge – what’s the deal with that ride?
Every year I kind of crank it up a bit, so this year it was 824km over five stages, 2nd-6th September, from Zurich to Venice, with over 15,200m of climbing. Look at the course and it has a roughly 2% average gradient across the whole thing, so it looks a lot like what they do in the WorldTour. We do it slower, obviously. But the challenge is serious and people really train for it. This year we rode over the Stelvio, Pordoi and Zoncolan, and that’s just the bigger ones.
We did the first stage with Tadej, part of which was a recce for him for the Worlds. Riding on his wheel was amazing, even though I was redlining.
What is the driver behind starting PlumeStrong? It’s not like you don’t have a lot on your plate as CEO and co-founder of Plume…
Listen, first, it’s zero profit. So Plume, our company, is there to make money for our investors, we’re a capitalistic endeavour, but what’s unifying for our people – inspiring – isn’t just to make money for our investors, it’s to do good. So we’ve jokingly said we want to be the 'goodest' company around, which is where PlumeStrong comes from. We’re in Silicon Valley, we’re kind of living in la la land, but there are people everywhere all over the world with needs, and we need to help.
Last year we raised money to rebuild high schools in the earthquake-impacted area in Turkey, and those schools will be finished this year. In 2024 it’s Sierra Leone. You see a lot of people in Africa that, when they raise money, they spend it on young kids, elementary school. That’s great, but then what happens after elementary school? So our idea, with Street Child, is to build secondary education centres so these girls and boys can go on to further education.
When do you manage to sleep in all this, or are you one of those four hours a night mad people?
No I need a solid eight hours! But the secret is you have to integrate your work, your life, your being healthy. We’re living and working in a 24/7 world. Every day I wake up to gazillion emails and you can easily get sucked in to answering them and before you know it, it’s been four hours and all you’ve done is respond to people – they’re controlling you. You have done no work really. So it’s a choice, and I encourage everyone to make that choice, whether it’s running, swimming, cycling – make time for it, because it’s thinking time.
That’s a wonderful philosophy to share with our bosses when they ask why we’re out riding bikes on a Tuesday afternoon…
But it’s true, you’re way more valuable to yourself and everybody around you if you’re healthy, getting oxygen to your brain and having clarity of thought.
In the US we call it a ‘Dr Phil moment’, you know he’s this American TV psychologist, and it’s that moment when you feel vindicated in your position, and I get my Dr Phil moment when I go for a ride. I can go out with that feeling of ‘The world is my oyster’ or sometimes ‘oh God everything is going wrong, it’s going to implode’, and then through the highs and lows of a bike ride, it kind of clips those highs and lows in my brain. So when you’re feeling really, really good you remember things are not really that good – which is a good thing, it grounds you – and when you’re down you come back from a ride realising it’s not as bad as you think.
Then there is another aspect that’s connected – exercise is one of those curious places where it can feel like you have perpetual energy. So my advice is to block out your calendar, for you or for others, and make cycling or any exercise a priority. And set a challenge, a goal that gets you out when you don’t feel like it and it’s raining.
You know, the PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge 2025 could be a fantastic one of those...
To find out more about PlumeStrong and to find out about how you can donate – or even sign up to next year’s cycling challenge yourself – head to plumestrong.plume.com or search #PSCC24 on Instagram.
To find out more about Plume’s work with Street Child in Sierra Leone, head to street-child.org.
