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Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

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Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#121

Post by smoyer »

onion2k wrote: post #30
rjtavares wrote: post #6

> Q: Is there anything about being CEO that you don’t like, that you like to delegate? > A: Finance. Our CFO does 99% of finance. I engage because I want to know how we’re doing. But to say I don’t add value to her operation is an understatement. You can also say the same with technology. Our CTO doesn’t get any help from me. I’ll go sometimes months without talking to our CTO, which as a CEO of a technology company,…

As someone who's been a CTO at times in the past, I wish I'd worked with a CEO like that. There are few things worse than having a leadership team who don't trust you to deliver the tech that drives the company's ideas.

Having your CEO change course every two months is definitely worse - just let me finish something! (it was a hardware company so there's not really such thing as a pivot)

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#122

Post by klelatti »

enaaem wrote: post #110
klelatti wrote: post #54

Open question. How easy would it be for Apple to build a Peloton competitor from scratch? Are there any real barriers to entry?

They would probably make something like FitnessKit similar to HomeKit, so that your iPhone can adjust settings on your fitness device. Fitness device makers can then make apps to give you exercise programs and track your progress. It might already exist. I don't know.

A bike that you can attach your iPad to seems like one way too. They probably don’t want to make iBikeOS for a new class of iDevices!

Seems to me that management bandwidth is probably the main issue given Apple’s structure.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#124

Post by q-big »

ansible wrote: post #106
mizzao wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is just humility / delegation coming off poorly or an actual disengaged CEO. I also think it can be helpful to self-deprecate a bit as a leader but I'm not sure why all these statements got published in public.

At the very least, it shows poor communication skills. If you have a fantastic CFO, that's great. Just say that. "I'm very confident in person X." or "We have a great team who's been doing a great job." Things like that. You don't say: "I don't add any value." That makes you sound like an empty suit. Also the "I haven't talked to my CTO in months" sounds really bad. How the eff are you planning new product launches?…

This might be a cultural bias, but for me (being German) what the CEO said sounds much more honest and trustworthy than what you suggest.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#125

Post by dhaulagiri »

mysterydip wrote: post #123

Does anyone here actually use Peloton equipment? My spouse wants one of the bikes but I'm wary of having a subscription to a company with questionable future longevity.

My wife has a bike and absolutely loves it.

We’ve recently tried to purchase one of their treadmills and it’s been a complete joke of incompetence actually trying to get it delivered. Combined with this news it does make us nervous about investing even more money into their ecosystem even though the bike experience has been so positive.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#127

Post by janekm »

klelatti wrote: post #54

Open question. How easy would it be for Apple to build a Peloton competitor from scratch? Are there any real barriers to entry?

From the pure technology point of view not too hard, but there are business and logistics challenges. Apple is highly optimised to hold minimum stock near the customer and use a lot of just-in-time delivery, but this depends on a high product value relative to weight and volume of the parcel. Treadmills and exercise bikes are only really cost effective to ship by ocean.

It's also doubtful that the addressable market of an expensive treadmill or exercise product is large enough to be worth going after for Apple (even in the bumper year 2021 Peloton turnover was $4bil, not a viable business unit for Apple).

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#128

Post by dagw »

hvidgaard wrote: post #49
olliej wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of people who argue about whether Netflix is a tech company - certainly their infrastructure is non-trivial but are they meaningfully different from HBO? For Amazon though, it's incorrect to refer to them as a bookstore - AWS is a huge portion of their revenue. On the other hand you have Google and Facebook that people call technology companies, but their core business is advertising. I think at this po…

There is two sides to Netflix. One is the content side, which is much like HBO, and the other side is the infrastructure side, which without a doubt is a tech company. They could contract out their infrastructure and they would surely not be a tech company, but as long as they develop that, they are a tech company in my book.

Does HBO develop its own steaming infrastructure?

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#129

Post by dymk »

mysterydip wrote: post #123

Does anyone here actually use Peloton equipment? My spouse wants one of the bikes but I'm wary of having a subscription to a company with questionable future longevity.

Now is probably the best time to buy a bike, with the company down 82% since last year. Probably won't go much lower than that.
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