Interesting to note that the CEO (39.6%) and co-founders (18%) have 58% of the voting power of Peloton's stock.
Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
41–50 of 280 posts
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that similar to a video store masquerading as a tech company? Or a book store masquerading as a tech company? Or an apple masquerading ... Oh wait, that actually IS a tech company.
I kind of agree it's time to depedestalize "tech"founders. Every company is a tech company and their bosses can be just as scumbags. The religion that worships infotech as inherently unevil and idealistic needs to die.
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 that he didn't shout at people or have personal vendettas against other people.
I don't recall similar stories about Bill Gates, and yet MS clearly did well.
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#43Where this road is going, it looks highly likely it is going to Amazon or even Meta.
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#44> 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.
I mean I get the sentiment but months? Which kind of company size are we talking? I'm not saying you should talk to your CEO every week, but twice a year sounds really weird to me.
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#45> 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,…
I am not so sure why this sounds odd. All successful startup that I have seen, had a great builder and a great seller. A CFO/COO running internal operations and finance is great to have. So since he is not the builder and obviously not the CFO/COO, he could still be a very successful CEO by being the seller, who is advocating for the company on the market. Think Steve Jobs. Wasn't the CEO of Peloton not that kind of guy?
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that similar to a video store masquerading as a tech company? Or a book store masquerading as a tech company? Or an apple masquerading ... Oh wait, that actually IS a tech company.
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…
I think of "tech" companies as companies where you've got large fixed costs to build out and maintain the product, but the marginal cost of your product is very close to zero.
So Facebook and JCDecaux are both advertising companies, but only Facebook is a "tech" company.
Lockheed Martin is a tech company, but Google is a "tech" company.
I don't think it's a great term for that kind of company.
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#47The question it begs is if the CEO is not the right-person for the job (which they don't appear to be) then why keep him on as executive chair? That sounds like dragging things out for the sake of it, if he doesn't add anything useful, buy him out and send him somewhere else, it sounds like his experience is not really needed any more?
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
One might ask, if the CEO does 1% of finance, and 0% of technology, what does a CEO do? Office, HR, comms management?
"Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
As much as we make fun of the new Agile/Startup/SV world, it looks like I'd absolutely dread work on a 90's Software company (though granted this is exagerated for comedic purposes).
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that similar to a video store masquerading as a tech company? Or a book store masquerading as a tech company? Or an apple masquerading ... Oh wait, that actually IS a tech company.
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.
Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]
#50Do I read the decks properly, or do they have only 2331 subscribers for Q4 2021? This looks like a super low for such big valuations of their disruptive product.