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Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

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171–180 of 280 posts

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#171

I wonder how Peleton imploded while iFit (owner of NordicTrack and other fitness brands) has been humming along for years offering the same hardware+ streaming combination.

iFit unfortunately is not humming along. Amid plummeting home fitness equipment sales (particularly bikes), they postponed their planned IPO, laid off tons of people including engineers in December, and at their current burn rate, they either need to find new capital, slash costs to the bone, or be acquired. The situation there is not as dire as Peloton, but I wouldn't be surprised if they got acquired by end of year.

The main strategic error that both companies made, was to assume a certain level of permanence when home-training equipment sales exploded during the beginning of the COVID era. People are now (rightly or wrongly) returning to gyms and buying less home stuff.

I'd love to see the same company acquire both Peloton and iFit, and hopefully preserve iFit's library of high-production-quality workouts and charismatic trainers and perhaps combine it with Peloton's charged competitive live workouts.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#172
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Office Space" reference for anyone wondering[0]. Another Mike Judge's gift to us. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNuu9CpdjIo

It's funny, before I starting working as a developer I thought this guy was useless, but now I understand how valuable not having to deal with the customers actually is.

[deleted]

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#173

I get the impression they don't like the CEO very much. That was an impressively brutal attack on him, with probably the worst damage inflicted by the CEO's own statements. Blackwells is obviously not a neutral party here, there's a reason they created this thing. But on first glance it looks like a pretty solid argument that the management at Peleton is seriously flawed. I don't really buy the arguments on why Pelet…

In my one of my MBA classes, we were discussing, whether Peloton's original super optimistic slides were reflective of reality ( most of the class agreed, it seemed more like a niche product rather than a gym replacement or even a $300 boutique training replacement as this presentation claims ) and were comparing it to AT&T Time Warner saga. We never touched on Peloton's management, but if we did, the quotes are pret…

> it seemed more like a niche product rather than a gym replacement

I don't know, I have a peloton. I've never been in a gym in my life.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#174
Peloton just didn't wine and dine and wow Wall Street enough for them to consistently hype the stock and now it's the CEOs fault? Because he didn't create the "magic show" that Wall Street wanted to see? John Foley is a founder of the Peloton business and created value from nothing to a leading fitness technology company. Why should he have to justify anything he does to asset managers who have never created any value in their entire careers? Wall Street only destroys value and extracts they don't create anything.

You're a founder and your business goes through a few rough years as you build the business and experiment? Wall Street says "quit, give up and sell". What a bunch of Wall Street hacks and they pushed out a perfectly good CEO, really sad. Just so the business could be sold off for a fraction of its' real value to some conglomerate to let it wither away and die.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#175

I get the impression they don't like the CEO very much. That was an impressively brutal attack on him, with probably the worst damage inflicted by the CEO's own statements. Blackwells is obviously not a neutral party here, there's a reason they created this thing. But on first glance it looks like a pretty solid argument that the management at Peleton is seriously flawed. I don't really buy the arguments on why Pelet…

Blackwell is engaged in activist investing. Their goal is to make profit by changing how the company is run. This deck is surely part of that campaign. Thus it may contain truths, but it also serves their agenda. Best to be understood in that light.

> I do find the arguments around bad governance structures and oversight weird though, as those should have been known before they invested.

Likely they knew and saw an opportunity for their investment strategy.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#176
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fawning over Steve Jobs (and I don't mean apple coolaid folk) is always bizarre, and I think really drove a lot of the "super star ceo" nonsense these days. I'm not saying he didn't save apple or whatever, I'm just unconvinced that being that particular model of arrogance was necessary part of said "saving". Obviously we can't roll back time and replace him with an identical clone with the only difference being t…

You mean you shouldn’t admire a CEO who took a company from near bankruptcy in 1997 to the most valuable company in the US in 2011?

You should also admire the boy who took his dorm-gossip php script and made it the world's biggest media empire

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#177
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fawning over Steve Jobs (and I don't mean apple coolaid folk) is always bizarre, and I think really drove a lot of the "super star ceo" nonsense these days. I'm not saying he didn't save apple or whatever, I'm just unconvinced that being that particular model of arrogance was necessary part of said "saving". Obviously we can't roll back time and replace him with an identical clone with the only difference being t…

You mean you shouldn’t admire a CEO who took a company from near bankruptcy in 1997 to the most valuable company in the US in 2011?

Wall Street thought he was a loser too after we was fired as CEO of Apple and just another dumb founder and he should sell his company to IBM. This story repeats again and again. Steve Jobs proved them all wrong and now everything Apple does is brilliant and they should buy Peloton.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#178

> 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,…

One might ask, if the CEO does 1% of finance, and 0% of technology, what does a CEO do? Office, HR, comms management?

The deck also calls out another interview where he said he does very interviews (meaning hiring decisions). The deck also calls out that he gave an executive role to his wife.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#179
post #30

> 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.

How do you make sure you are aligned and that you both see the problems, challenges and opportunities that one party sees?

This looks more like a traditional company than a tech company, which is not helped by it being based in NYC. The CEO and CFO are probably buddy-buddy while the CTO is an outsider "geek."

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#180

So many words trying to obfuscate the simple fact that “We are a treadmill maker trying to masquerade as a tech company.”

And HN eats it up because this company is on the front page on a seemingly weekly basis, so something's working for them.

Their stock dropped like 75% in a bull market. That's what gets the vultures circling. If the CEO was a weirdo who gave some bad interviews while the stock doubled we'd all be calling him an eccentric genius. It works for Elon Musk.
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