I think we’re starting to see a bit of “post pandemic” economic factors and that explains some of the shake up on Wall Street as of late. I always felt this about Peloton more than anything though, that it was not going to be able to sustain growth numbers as the pandemic when either of these came to pass:
1) ended officially
2) waned on to the point that it became "normalized" in how to handle day to day activities out
Largely, I think some things that were popular in the pandemic got outsized growth through it, may fade in popularity quickly or outright be out of business as people want to resume more normal behaviors they had pre pandemic.
I wonder how Zoom will fare. I think its more sticky than Peloton because everyone is transitioning to remote work for White Collar workers and I don't see that particular bit being given up quite so easily now, we shall see if thats the case over the coming months I think
Peloton forgot how easily they can be replaced. You can buy a used exercise bike, and play whatever YouTube videos you need on a mounted iPad.
For a while Peloton started to position itself as a tech company, competing with FAANG when it came to total comp.
I've also seen an explosion in fitness tech companies. Peloton struck gold, and should've remained a much smaller company. Instead they started expanding rapidly, and lost the plot.
Every company in history could have remained smaller and more efficient. Amazon could still be an online bookstore with higher margins than they have now. It is very normal and natural for companies take risks to grow, and sometimes those risks pay off and sometimes they don't. It is very results oriented to see what happened and then say they shouldn't have tried.
Peloton is also far from insolvent. I'm not saying they were mismanaged or not, but the fact that the gamble they made didn't pay off is not on its own evidence they shouldn't have tried.
Wrong comparison. Peloton is manufacturer of fitness gadgets with limited market size. While Amazon is a marketplace gathering fees from sellers with virtually unlimited market size. Everything with hardware is close to death with one leg in the coffin. One mismanagement in supply chain and you are gone. Look at the poor car manufacturers right now. Maybe there is exception - one phone manufacturer that is managing supply chain very well.
Not a wrong comparison at all. His point is that Amazon was a place that sold books. They took risks and grew into a marketplace for selling everything. One mismanagement of their AWS development or platformization and things could be very different.
Peloton is a manufacturer of fitness gadgets AND a content provider of fitness classes. What they could grow into if they take risks is an open and interesting discussion.
Starting with books with an intention to go into all e-commerce seems like a good plan to expand into a large domain from a hard problems side, then he could do it again with AWS. By that point size alone was advantage.
Manufacturing a fitness product with streamed classes seemed to be tackling the hardest part of what domain? Sure they could try random things now, but where are they ahead of a media, robotics, car or e-commerce firm? Investors are quoted as thinking he doesn't know what he is doing so probably he shouldn't have built up staff with no new market to enter with an advantage.
I think that's the exact point the parent is making. Most companies can figure out a way to raise and grow. The point was that it was a bad idea in the specific case of Peloton.
Maybe on the hardware side, but I don't know if the same can be said for their content. Having tried many, I don't know if anyone but Apple has even come close to providing the same kind of consistent value for general fitness instruction.
Zoom is most definitely here to stay. I am confident that remote work culture will continue to be a part of normal working culture going forward. There's too many advantages for both labor and businesses to keep remote work alive.
Is Zoom here to stay or is video conferencing here to stay? Google Meets and MS Teams are pretty good and built into their respective Office suite products.
I will never work for any company that uses Teams as their internal communication tool again.
I'm done talking about "admins who set up groups wrong", or indicators that I'm holding it wrong...
I feel very strongly that Teams is a consequence of a company that doesn't care what it inflicts on workers, regardless of price.
The way teams shoves itself down my throat (we do not use teams at my current company and it was one of the reasons I moved here) is astonishing too[0].
I will also never work at a company that uses Teams as its primary form of communication. The whole ecosystem, along with SharePoint, is absolutely broken, end-to-end. Perhaps the worst user-facing software I've had the displeasure of using on a daily basis. I'm not kidding when I say that it a played a factor in me quitting.
Not a single time did we have a meeting on Teams that worked properly. Not once.
That’s a pretty crazy statement - I was typically on 4-5 meetings a day on Teams and it generally was pretty smooth for everyone. Including all hands with a lot of folks on. I thought their meeting software was easily the best part of an otherwise rickety app.
Meetings are smooth for me on Teams now after months of struggling but I still get near 100% CPU usage and my Macboook can't stay in a call for more than around an hour on battery. The UI is a confusing mess with too many things integrated into it. "Keep It Simple Stupid" needs to be more ingrained into Microsoft software. I do like the ability to raise hands and also the "meeting is ending in x minutes" notification however.
I would also consider joining a company in the future that doesn't use teams as a form of communication.
We moved from IBM Connections and WebEx to Sharepoint and Teams. I still think Teams is terrible software[1] but I’ve learned there’s definitely worse software out there.
[1]: the 100% CPU, the fan noise in the background of many peoples calls, the 500-2500ms lag between clicks and a screen update, the UX disaster of teams vs chats vs private channels, etc.
Amen brother. We had webex in my previous job and we needed to install a libpurple plug in for pidgin to make it work...just the chat. The video most of the times worked, but it required quite a lot of button clicking and was a separate web application .
Teams in comparison is heaven video and chat together... Wow. Of course it eats processing power like hungry, is slow and requires thrid party cookies.
I have to edit a lot of documents. Word appears to be an app, a web app and a thing in teams.
None of them work the same and all have strange behaviour.
Try make a header or footer and edit it in one of the other apps MS offers.
Try edit or move an image.
Try work out how much text fits on a page.
It’s incredible how much market share teams has achieved with such poor functionality for basic tasks.
Couldn't agree more. Teams is terrible, but it's not so bad that it can't be used on an effective software team. The bigger problem with Teams is that it's indicative of a team who can't see the value in using something better.
I find that tools are usually something I can use to find and use information or capabilities, or some place information and capabilities can be placed if you don't want anyone to be able to find them.
My brief use of Teams (granted, like 3 years ago) put it firmly in the latter category. God that UI was a mess.
MS Teams is the worst of the bunch by far, mainly because it's not a video conferencing tool but wants to be everything. So it's hard to just schedule a call with someone in another organisation. Works fine with Zoom and Meets, doesn't work with Teams (also the HTML link in invites does not work in my calendar solution, why not just have a simple text link?)
Zoom is the easiest and has the best video and sound quality and is my prefered tool (also support raw audio which is excellent when working with my speech coach).
(I invest in my setup, Sony ZV1/Elgato HDMI, Bose QC, Rode Podcaster, 500mbit fiber and I don't like it when the software tool reduces this to 90s video internet for no reason).
That's also been my experience. Teams is absolutely awful. It looks like it's a sharepoint messaging client (you can store files in it, make group pages), which is.. insane.
I dread seeing a Teams meeting put together, because almost always, at least 1/2 of the people on it will struggle with sound, video, random crashes, and inability to share.
Zoom, for the same people, on the same equipment, doesn't have any issues. It's night and day.
Teams tries to be Slack, Zoom and more and it's been terribly confusing and bad a few times I had to use it.
However when people in suits take decisions then "why pay for N products instead of one?" becomes compelling for many. I saw a tweet last week saying Teams have 10x user count of Slack apparently. I guess some upselling from MS who already has Office does wonders.
I didn't use Teams more than 1h at once so maybe long term it's not that bad when you learn to use it? But Zoom and Slack seem aay better products for me.
I still have issues with zoom and audio cutting when multiple people speak at once. They seem to have gotten better over the last few years, but it still feels very jarring and disrupts the flow of conversation.
I sure hope Zoom goes away; they way they've repeatedly lied about behavior and security just ASTONISHES me, especially since they've experienced zero backlash.
They've got CIOs utterly snowed, which is honestly a huge indictment of CIOs, including and especially those in "government" roles.
Perhaps I'm misremembering, but wasn't there actually quite significant backlash towards their security flaws in the early days, causing them to rectify the problems?
I got Micro Snitch [1] as part of a bundle with Little Snitch years ago and have just had it running for cases like this. I'm fortunate to not have run into this issue, but I like the peace of mind of knowing exactly if I do.
Me too; but for now zoom is simply the best product in the video chat space.
Everyone else seems to be betting the farm on webrtc and web browsers. But video meetings in chrome or Firefox don’t look or sound as good as zoom does. And Google Meet and the rest are at the mercy of web standards. Its much easier for zoom to add features to their product because they’re in control of the entire stack.
I hope the situation changes, but I think it’ll be several years before browsers are able to meaningfully catch up to where zoom is today.
If they've snowed the CIO, chances are pretty good it's a large "enterprise" which is exactly what the target audience for MS Teams is.
The principal architects and security team don't care that Teams is neither good nor secure. They just know that they can blame Microsoft if things go wrong. Slack was too startupy. God forbid people just start texting each other, or even worse, use Discord.
(Before you say, "But...", PAs don't care if Slack is owned by Salesforce now. SF is just some weird tool that Sales requires and won't stop screaming about.)
So, they already use MS for Office, file shares, Exchange, etc, why not just throw another piece of MS crap into the ecosystem? Who cares if it sucks? Who cares if it was a hastily thrown together piece of garbage that MS scrambled to make when they suddenly realized Slack was beating the snot out of them? They don't have to do any work because they're already in bed with MS.
Every time I see I have a meeting with MS Teams, I get annoyed.
- Most of the time, people don't setup a dialin number, so I can't use my phone
- There's no way to display both the attendees list and the chat at the same time
Those are two examples of things that just cause it to be an "also ran" in my mind. It's just missing a lot of the "nice to have" features; much the way Zoom did when it was first release... it feels incomplete and unpolished.
There's another one that I forget the name of that used to have the mute and hang up buttons right next to each other. I would constantly drop off calls because of it. Video and sound quality are important, but so is UX.
This is completely personal preference and I would never enforce it, but I hate when people dial in to a video conference or other meeting. Even when the camera is off, having 10 people on a call but 15 attendees that include a bunch of random phone numbers, combined with not having any idea who is speaking if you don't know everyone's voice by heart, makes it a very suboptimal experience.
If everyone had a nice camera, nice microphone, and nice headphones (I think all three of these should be provided by employers to remote workers), and just used the video conferencing software the way it was designed, a lot of the friction and annoyances would go away.
The way Zoom is setup, you dialin and put in your personal attendee code. You still use the computer for video. From a UI perspective, it's no different from using the computer to connect to audio.
From a personal perspective, I prefer the phone for sound quality. I have poor hearing, especially when it comes to understanding speech. As such, I make sure to own a high quality phone with an excellent speaker-phone. The sound on the computer just doesn't compete, and it makes my experience a lot more difficult.
I had already built a nice audio setup pre-pandemic because I play games with friends every other evening for the most part.
4K webcam (Logitech BRIO), Blue Yeti for the microphone + a pop filter and a shock mount, and my noise cancelling headphones. All together they cost a fraction of what my work laptop does.
No one complains about my audio. Except when teams decides to randomly switch back to the built-in laptop mic which is hideous as it's right next to the cooling fans...
I have the BRIO's predecessor, the 920 (which I think is still sold). For my purposes, it's good enough and is super easy to use. I experimented for a while using my Canon EOS but it's just so much more of a hassle that it really isn't worth it. (In part this is because it's an older model that doesn't have continuous autofocus.)
I have a 920, if I ever take a job where video-on meetings are the norm I expect to upgrade to a BRIO. It seems really nice I just don't have a use for it right now.
We do generally have video-on meetings and I also record videos using it (at least in part). I'd probably buy a BRIO if I didn't have an external webcam but, honestly, I'd probably be overoptimizing given that something like my network is more likely to get in the way.
Teams insists on defaulting to my webcam's built-in microphone even though everything else (including system settings) uses the correct mic. Only seems to be a teams issue, no idea what it is.
Really handy to dial in when you can (long drive on a Friday afternoon) so you don't break the bank on your mobile data. Unlimited free talk minutes... woo!
Oddly, various VC tools I've used with dial in properly map the caller unique pin code to the calling user.
Maybe I'm a different use case, but I would never use phone over the computer audio on zoom if I can help it. The phone call codec is so bad compared to modern codecs that I couldn't imagine preferring it. The only situation is if I'm on the road in an area that has really terrible mobile service but for some reason has better phone service.
In any case, I know that Google meets at least supports dialing in using phone.
I actually use phone for Zoom audio pretty regularly because it has lower latency and higher reliability than computer audio. I recognize that the audio quality is lower, but I'd rather have fewer interruptions and lower latency than nicer quality that is delayed and interrupted. I simultaneously join video via computer, of course.
FWIW, I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, but there's only one ISP available so it's perhaps unsurprising that service isn't stellar.
Second this. The Teams application rarely works on my vanilla setup (MBP, latest OS). And every time you run it, it reinserts itself into your Login Items — even if you've previously removed it.
WebEx used to do this and thankfully stopped. I would never quit WebEx. I'd just press Cmd-Opt-Esc to bring up the list of running processes and force quit it to avoid it both reinserting itself into my login items and also to prevent it from running the WebEx listener app. Like dude, I'm quitting this app. Why do you think I want to run the app again? WTF? Like I say, they've stopped doing that, but wow, what a shitty thing to have done in the first place.
MS Teams is well integrated within the Microsoft Windows desktop environment, which is what is used by most enterprises. I appreciate that it is integrated into my outlook and onedrive and co-authoring documents is easy in a meeting.
From IT departments' point of view, buying MS Teams license is a no-brainer.
> Pretending that the current system is as good as it can get the for the vast majority of individuals is disingenuous
That is a long standing issue in many companies; the people who buy the software aren't the people that use the software. Which results in the people that use the software being unhappy with what winds up being an inferior product for their use case.
Teams has good features. Lots of good features. Too many good features, really. And they're assembled in the most confusing/annoying/exhausting way.
I've given it a fair shake (probably in the hundreds of hours of video conferencing) and I still feel like I don't understand how I'm supposed to use it for anything but pure video conferencing.
Zoom does have product merits of its own, for example, I have hearing loss and uniquely sensitive to voice quality — Zoom has by far the best sound quality across all apps I tried. It remains to be seen if these kinds of advantages will make it stick, because on the other end of the balance lies a giant security risk due to China ties.
>Is Zoom here to stay or is video conferencing here to stay?
I think Zoom is here to stay at the enterprise level. Video conferencing was always a niche product until the pandemic. It was a big business, but never quite large enough to experience network effects. Now that it's a mainstream part of most people's lives, that has all changed. Zoom was in the right place at the right time to capture that, and it's going to be very hard moving forward for someone to unseat them at this point.
In Europe I haven't come across a business using Zoom instead of Google Meets or MS Teams, or even gathertown as someone else mentioned. Mostly because they already have licenses for Office or G-Suite. Is it a US thing?
Same. One place that was otherwise quite lenient and tended to let people use whatever (allowed both Teams and Slack) explicitly barred Zoom completely, considering it a security risk.
Personally, I've never been on a Teams call. I'd say it's been about 50% zoom, 50% webex, surprisingly. Fortunately with webex, the invites include a generic SIP address that we can use with our video conferencing equipment.
It’s interesting how this differs so much! I think I’ve never been on a work-related Zoom call, and only extremely rarely something like webex. Almost always Teams.
Fair, we'll see. Zoom's screen share and participant control features are superior from what I've seen. It's also demonstrated scale with webinar and is the de facto choice there. Integration for Zoom into calendar events and just sharing abilities are pretty seamless. I don't like that I have to use a Google account to join Meet.
Low friction web rtc based tools like streamyard and jitsi meet will probably become more popular than “native” apps like zoom and teams which tend to get slower and just generally worse as they are updated especially with large corporates driving the feature bloat.
Web-based tools are stuck on whatever the currently supported standards are and depend on all browsers implementing them the same. It's much easier for a company to simply ship their own code on their own apps and control the entire stack, which is why Zoom was so much better than every other alternative when it came out. I think people forget just how crappy teleconferencing was before Zoom. I used to work for a competitor, and we didn't like using our own product!
All of the video conferencing apps have web interfaces. I work with a lot of different companies and end up using whatever conferencing system they use. I refuse to install any of them on my computer.
I'm not sure if they've improved it, but in the past Zoom's web client was missing significant simple features like gallery view that made it basically unusable for social calls.
I had to collaborate with something the other day and was not looking forward to signing up to yet another service. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this worked so well and with no sign in.
I also prefer google meets, specifically because its live transcription imo beats out zoom's. This is useful/important for people that can have disabilities which involve speech processing. (eg. I know of people with ADHD or autism who would need to request something be repeated simply because the brain didn't process the sounds as speech the first time or something similar, when this isn't a problem when reading text.)
Interesting. I wonder if this is a problem for some people in-person, as well, or if the video specifically causes the speech to not get processed right the first time around.
If it's a problem in both environments I could see remote work with closed captioning being a big benefit for people with certain types of neurodivergence.
It’s a bit easier to resolve because there’s more context/body language available, but I still often ask people to repeat themselves. Sometimes overtly, sometimes by restating the portion of what they said that I understood and prodding them to elaborate so I can implicitly fill in the missing pieces.
Not sure what you’re talking about. My work has been using Google meets and I would strongly disagree here. Google hangouts has been relatively fast (by Google standards) at adapting to the market needs and improving its features. It also runs in the browser which is a lot nicer than zoom’s dark patterns to install dubious executables or deal with a crappy webrtc interface.
Google's video products used to be better, and better integrated. I used to use it to call my mom. Now I have to send her an email with a link to click instead of just initiating a video call. And they keep changing the names of all of it. The underlying video technology is perfectly fine, it's all the other stuff around it that's a complete train wreck.
The video quality is terrible. And many of us have symmetric gigabit internet so it's not like it's our connection. Zoom is actually crystal clear in most cases.
I'm surprised that you (and the giant chain responding to you) haven't mentioned Discord. It's not taken over the corporate space, but it seems to have made a lot of inroads to one-degree away events: industry meetups for instance.
> Zoom is most definitely here to stay. I am confident that remote work culture will continue to be a part of normal working culture going forward.
I'm with you on the second statement. I don't see the first immutably flowing from it.
Zoom is dominant, but switching costs are small and their competitors are well capitalized and eagerly assaulting its fortress. Add to that their geopolitical vulnerability and their long-term dominance is far from assured.
Zoom is here to stay ≠ Zoom is poised to remain the leader indefinitely.
But I don't see why Zoom would lose so much market share or revenue streams as to disappear or become a marginal player. Something extraordinary should happen for it to cease to be here to stay.
It wasn't anything extraordinary that made skype lose market share - just a gradual slide into irrelevance as competing products got stronger, and they tried to make a profit when everyone else was giving away the product for free.
One of the reasons we stopped using Skype is how slow it became, specially on non high-end phones. On the other hand WhatsApp was always fast. It seems they never optimized for performance.
That's fair, I don't think it's a guarantee that Zoom will remain an industry leader. Google Meet and Microsoft Teams might catch up and overtake. Last I saw the numbers, Zoom still has a pretty big advantage as a brand name with 600 million DAU and being the brand name. I think the geopolitical vulnerability is fairly overblown.
> I'm curious what you mean by 'geopolitical vulnerability'. How are they vulnerable?
Zoom's China links have put it in hot water before [1][2][3]. If tensions flared, it could find itself cut off from some combination of a large section of its customers and/or large section of its workforce.
It will survive for sure - the question is if it will be an independent entity. My personal prediction is that Zoom - like Slack - will be acquired by Salesforce if Zoom's stock price normalizes. In both cases, benefit of doing the IPO is that it enabled the founders to cash out at market prices.
absolutely agree. a google or microsoft wouldn't cus the customer base overlaps with their own anyways. Salesforce on the other hand could continue on their path to becoming the enterprise suite of everything.
real question though is who does SF acquire to gain a foothold in the email arena? superhuman?
Zoom is probably here to stay but won't achieve dominance as the standard for video meetings the way I think investors speculated early pandemic.
Pre-pandemic almost no remote companies that I knew used Zoom. It was almost exclusively google meet with a few use of other, lesser well known services. Zoom did some great early pandemic marketing and was able to quickly capture market share, especially in the "meeting with a 1000 attendees") type calls. I've known plenty of teams that switched of zoom into other platforms relatively quickly. I suspect that zoom will replace Oracle's webex and similar products for "business meetings" but will not achieve dominance in day to day meeting space.
People already have solutions for the majority of their video chat needs:
- small office meetings: Google meet/slack video
- family calls: FaceTime (or equivalent)
- socialization: Discord
I suspect Discord will grow a bit as younger people enter the work force. Since they've optimized around gaming/livestreaming their screen sharing video is remarkably more crisp than either Google or Zoom.
Whats interesting to me is that all the big players had Video meeting software that is exactly like Zoom, more or less, pre pandemic, and they were still losing out to Zoom, just at a much slower rate. I recall Zoom pre pandemic was still a profitable business[0][1]. Not the gang busters it was during the pandemic, no, a good, profitable business none the less. So whether Google or Microsoft or Slack can win now is debatable. They should have won this out before hand too, if you look at how things are stacked on paper. I don't know that the pandemic has changed the fact that these businesses are playing catch up in users minds.
Ironically, if anyone is going to threaten Zoom, its likely to be Microsoft with Teams, and only because so many organizations are already on Office 365 and Microsoft seems to be sinking some sales channel hooks into Teams specifically, and arguably Teams is good enough and has most of the same extension points as Zoom does, including its own add on store and API for most major integrations[2][3][4].
It seems Google is having a lot less luck here, first hand experience being that every business I've worked for in the last few years have been Google Workspace customers, yet still prefer to use Zoom over Google Meeting, despite Google Meeting being effectively free with the rest of the Google Workspace product.
I'm still mind boggled that Slack didn't capitalize on video meetings, they had all the technology and know-how, however execution matters like anything else, and I don't think they've been able to entirely execute on adding strong robust video offering to their core product.
It was not exactly like Zoom. Zoom was/is the smoothest experience for participants, especially participants who are not in video conferences regularly.
Before Zoom, it was always 10-15 minutes at the start of each meeting getting people online, able to see and hear, resolving questions, calling them out of band on the phone to walk them through getting started. Most of that didn't happen with Zoom.
I hate online video conferences, but Zoom is the least bad experience of the ones I've used.
Zoom has done well but the bundling of video conferences by microsoft and google will likely win out in the end. All it takes is a single botched update or more bloat in the software to have others try an included option. My company is on google workspace and quite frankly love the ease of being able to click a button to create and join a meet in next to zero spin up time.
I loathe it when 3rd parties send a damn zoom or teams link cus they always want me to default to using their app that has settings/config issues with my hardware, etc...
Most of the ultra large 10k+ employee companies seem to not mind paying for both though. My wife works at big oil and they use teams internally cus it's included but then use zoom with external cus it's "cool".
> I'm still mind boggled that Slack didn't capitalize on video meetings, they had all the technology and know-how, however execution matters like anything else, and I don't think they've been able to entirely execute on adding strong robust video offering to their core product.
I find that I’m using Slack’s “Hangout” features more and more often, especially for ad-hoc 1:1 meetings.
Intentionally or not, they seem to be taking an approach that allows them to embed themselves more deeply into work culture one piece at a time.
Eh, I disagree. Remote work might become more common for things like software engineering, but I fully expect most others to shift back to how they were pre-pandemic. It's just a question of how long that shift takes
Zoom charges a $/user/month. Companies pre-covid had video conferencing platforms. Zoom did a lot of shifting of existing spend from business on Webex & Hangouts/Meet to its platform.
Even if Zoom's average usage per paid user goes down post-pandemic, it's revenue will remain constant and could still grow as new employees are hired and new companies switch over.
The strategic threat for Zoom at this point is big players providing a more integrated offering. Microsoft being the best example.
Zoom was easy for corporations to adopt quickly in the pandemic rush, but companies that already had Webex or others didn't switch.
When a player offers cross-sell discounts with other products they offer and as long as the functionality is 80% as good, they will absolutely go with the cheaper vendor.
Zoom needs to diversify to stay competitive five years from now, the Five9 acquisition/merger was Zooms first attempt at trying to figure this out.
I can see the appeal. Just this morning I was walking on the treadmill watching a TV screen of sexy people doing gym stuff, and that made me want to keep watching. When the TV is showing something dumb else, I get bored of that treadmill super fast.
I can see the appeal, but I don't think that really saves Peloton. It's an easily replicatable feature -- you could imagine NordicTrak doing it with a different set of sexy people -- and its a feature that many of us lived without pre-pandemic by going to the gym and looking at real life sexy (and unsexy) people. Additionally, it continues to be a niche market, even among fitness enthusiasts. Tablets allow us access to whatever we want to watch.
This isn't to say Peloton is bad or people will not keep using it, just that there was almost sure to be a reset as we all reset and at least partially revert.
Remote work was already a very long-term trend before COVID. COVID pumped steroids everywhere on that trend, thus making Zoom and others see tremendous growth. I suspect the growth will "slow" relative to the first 6 months of, say, March-September 2020, but as remote continues its long-term trend, including the after-effects of COVID's steroidal injection, the growth rate will probably wane but will still be strong cumulative growth regardless.
Google Meet is so much better than Zoom & MS Teams, that being said I think Zoom has entrenched itself in plenty of businesses and people won't transition away.
Curious what you think makes it better than Zoom. In my experience, Zoom video quality is heads and shoulders above Meet, and the fact that Zoom supports multiple monitors, whereas Meet does not, means that Zoom pretty much wins hands-down.
What are your arguments in favor of Meet? I'm genuinely curious, not trying to start an argument.
Zoom will soon follow the rest of the silicon valley companies in finding ways to invest in military technology, use lobbying power to earn big dollar government contracts, and monetize its access to biometric data. Unless it has already done that.
“The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society, except their constant criticisms, can feel both intellectually and morally superior.”
Which I'm utterly sure is in NO way more secure or less of a liability than regular Zoom. Zoom has proven itself to be completely craven about behavior and pseudo-apologies; I'm amazed they have any credibility with CIOs.
It’s FedRAMP authorized at the moderate baseline. That requires implementation of a pretty sizable and stringent set of security controls, continuous monitoring, and more. I’d say it’s probably a bit more secure than their commercial offering, but that likely depends on your opinion of the control catalog’s requirements and compliance does not always equal secure.
I am in the gov't contracting world, and let's just say I'm not impressed with the "stringency" of FedRamp controls or evaluation.
Plus, as noted, Zoom has lied repeatedly about what they do, how they do it, where their data goes, etc., and every time has somehow escaped any real repercussions. They are not trustworthy, regardless of certification.
Is it just me or is $40 a month too much for the content they provide? I would spend a couple thousand on fancy exercise equipment, or maybe get one as a gift for my parents but the required subscription gives me rent seeking vibes.
£40/month is worth it. The quality of the classes is impeccable. It's like they've been produced with TV budgets! This price does also include the digital membership which has yoga, boxing and loads of other type of workouts.
The bike (Bike+) is expensive but it's a solid piece of kit and does come with a 24 inch (Android) tablet.
Edit: Forgot to say, the £40/month is per bike, not per member. So you can have your entire family using the bike for the £40/month.
It’s not even per bike, it’s per household. If you get the tread the subscription carries there too. So for $40 you get bike, bike boot camp, treadmill, outdoor running, running boot camp, HIIT, strength training, calisthenics, yoga, and meditation classes. Compare that to something like soul cycle at ~$30 per class or Orange theory at ~$200/mo/person
But you don't need a Peloton bike to use their app...I bought a non-Peloton bike and pay $14.30/month to subscribe to the Peloton app (which I run on the big screen TV I already have in the room with the bike)
I don't need or want any interactive features that the bike provides, especially at a $25 premium to what I pay now.
does come with a 24 inch (Android) tablet.
When I bought my bike, I saw that 24 inch screen built-in to the Peloton as a drawback, my bike has a simple 4 line LCD bike computer, which I expect to run indefinitely, but it never needs software updates and if it breaks, it costs $200 to replace. And I don't have to plug it into the wall, it runs for a year on AA batteries.
I link my bike to my watch so have all of my workouts in once place -- spinning bike, running, outdoor biking, etc.
As someone who occasionally ride's my partner's peloton, I am BEGGING them to just let me watch Netflix or something on the screen. I have to jimmyrig an iPad over the huge screen because they won't let me just use the screen how I want.
It’s with this mindset that I went the Zwift route with an iPad and my own bike. But boy is it hard to get everything to work together! With peloton you could just climb on and start pedalling. With Zwift there’s always a sensor that won’t connect at first. There’s a reason these tightly integrated systems are popular. I wonder if peloton would be this seamless if the tablet was open. Too many configurations make things messy for the typical consumer.
Without installing or rooting anything, if you tap the correct part of the about screen it pulls up a browser and you can go to netflix.com (there's instructions floating around for this, I can't remember the exact incantation)
I have a Peloton and a Tonal. The Tonal monthly cost is more, but it's far superior to Peloton. Tonal does hide some feature behind the paywall which is a bit sketchy. All said, both devices are worth the $100/month combined expense, and my health improvements I've achieved has been incredible for me. This is all achievable with other stuff, but my schedule usually has me working out after 11pm. And I have 2 other family members that use both.
Specifically for the bike, if you're a "spin class person", then you're used to spending $20-40 per class - $40 for a month of unlimited classes with the best instructors in the business seems like a steal in comparison.
This is me. I was previously going to a brick & mortar gym in the CA Bay Area and paying $120/mo for unlimited classes per month. Doing the math on the upfront cost of the bike, plus $40/mo for the class access, still made financial sense for me. (I also took advantage of a deal through my credit card that got me 3 free months of subscription, plus lots of bonus points to use for travel later.)
Right, but that just makes Peloton even more attractive because now I don't even have to go to a gym, and I can take classes anytime I want in the comfort of my own home on my own schedule.
People who are really into spin classes do not lack motivation to exercise - they're in it for the classes - this is where people who equate Peloton to a stationary bike are completely missing the point. The classes are the point. The instructors (who are the absolute best spin instructors money could buy), the music, the programming/training - these are the things that users love about Peloton. If I just wanted to ride a bike then I'd do Zwift cycling, but that's a totally different activity. Spinning != cycling, and Peloton != gym equipment.
My wife fits the “almost in a cult” description. I think she loves the positivity, and feels engaged by the classes. She started with bike, but now also does peloton outdoor runs.
She is focused on the Peloton power zone classes. For power zone, you take an FTP test every 6 weeks which measures your ability to produce power output over 20 minutes. The bike then knows your 7 power output zones, from easy effort to max output. Based on that, Peloton instructors design classes which are zone based, and drive improvement at whatever your level is.
I tried powerzone after seeing my wife do it, and although it’s only a part of my exercise, I really like it. You can really see the improvement. I’ve never liked exercise classes in the past, but I like the powerzone classes and instructors.
My wife also signed up for some third party website (I forget what) that is essentially like a team based and powerzone based training plan. It motivates her over longer periods.
Having tried it, I think the peloton bike product is really good. It may have pulled forward a lot of demand and grown too much, but it offers a lot of real value.
The positivity and encouragement is one thing, but it's also a very interactive and immersive experience. Sure, there's a large catalog of pre-recorded classes, with different instructors, different styles, different music, and different languages. However there's also live classes where you can be seen and interact with people. They also gamify the experience with a live leaderboard even if you aren't in a live class.
The tech is also pretty well rounded. You can get pretty much all info that the bike has at any time on the app. During a workout, the Apple Watch communicates back biometrics.
I'm a pretty cynical and skeptical person, but after just getting one, I can definitely see the appeal.
I don't personally get it as I'm too cynical, but my partner says it's a very positive and encouraging culture. It's also gamed very well to encourage DAU so someone like my partner who loves getting her "dots" is incentivized to keep participating every day.
I reiterate though, it's working well for her health journey, so I'm all for it.
Unfortunately there are not good alternatives. I have a fairly nice bike at home and a standing desk that I can fit it under comfortably. I told my partner we don't need a Peloton because I could find spin class videos online. Nope. There really isnt any quality content out there. I guess I could just sign up for the Peloton platform with my own bike but I was surprised there wasnt at least a handful of Youtube videos of spin class instructors.
It seems similar to Yoga where you can find incredible quality online but its really not.
You do not need spin class videos. There is nothing technical about stationary biking. Yoga ? Sure, poses might be tricky to understand. Calisthenics ? Same thing. But a stationary bike ? Pump the difficulty on a timer and play some loud music on your own. Congratulations on your very own spin class.
These are people who need to consume and "belong" their way to fitness.
These people always burn out once the gimmick wears off. Then they go searching for the next thing and the next.
Throwing money hand over fist bc they cant figure out to eat better and put the proverbial foot to the concrete.
I'm sure they were all convinced their apple watch was going to keep them on track. These are the people who ran out and bought those stupid finger-toe running "shoes". They thought the Wii Fit Board was going to revolutionize things.
These are people who have perfectly matching and stylish gym outfits. they buy endless supplements to enhance performance or weight loss.
Just go do some hiit. Lift some weights. Take a yoga class. Quit eating like a jackass.
Nutrition and fitness can be complicated but beginner to intermediate changes aren't. 90% of people have an effort and habit problem.
And the western world thinks in consumerism terms. That fitness is something you buy at the store and name drop the brand to your friends.
And it's why they'll yo-yo their efforts all their lives before just giving up entirely
In all fairness, the wii fit board is fun. In the same way as ring fit is. I absolutely understand wanting to gamify your exercise: it's fun and always nice to see that you've put in 2500 planks since you've started. But even these are a one time payment. As you said, paying 40 dollars for HIIT is unbelievably either uninformed or lazy.
Any able-bodied person can get fitter than most people who aren't very into fitness for (damn near) free, without even that much time investment.
Trainers and peloton classes and such give people the option to rent someone else's willpower, though. (plus leverage sunk-cost sentiments and other tricks)
It's probably part of why fitness levels go up and waistlines down as one's gaze travels up the SES ladder. Someone with money who kinda wants to get fit can pay someone else to do their giving-a-shit for them, and might get fit. Someone without money who kinda wants to get fit—won't. That's what you'd expect to see even with all else, including the distribution of willpower (however we measure that) among various social classes and income levels, being equal.
Yup. This is a great way of putting it. Seth Rogan once said that if Hollywood wants you to get in shape they will basically do it for you and they would send a robot to move your arms and legs for you. He was joking but if you have a personal trainer to motivate you and make working out, "fun" and a personal chef to make your meals getting into great shape if much easier than if you are dragging yourself to an anytime fitness after working and taking care of kids.
Of course, It is more than a "Youtube video" who are part of Peloton cult.
It would be rather normal if cult members never describe cult as "Oh it is just a typical cult with some suspicious ideology, providing dubious benefits and led by a charismatic charlatan"
You're right, you can actually own a Geo Metro and drive it and fix it on your own, as opposed to the Ferrari which is nothing more than an expensive toy you cannot take out for anything useful. At least the Ferrari doesn't have a subscription (aside from the one you'll take at your gas station to make up for the 30L/100km that it gets)
I don't understand how you expect the question of what "x" is worth to be anything other than subjective.
It's like asking whether any other digital media subscription is worth it - my wife follows certain instructors and says she really enjoys the rides/classes - there is a certain element of "star power" in this space; the production values are excellent; the integration with the bike is top-notch.
We initially bought a cheaper Schwinn IC4, subscribed to the Peloton app ($12.99/month), and used our 7 year-old iPad to get nearly the same experience (minus the Leaderboard functionality and probably other things). Eventually we wondered why we were even spending $12.99/month on it, as my partner only had a few instructors that she liked, and neither of us could understand, or get behind, the "Peloton culture". We ultimately canceled and now just ride the bike without a class.
ha! Well the leaderboard and live stats and gamification where you can see where you are compared to your previous best at this point in a ride of the same length is IMHO what has made me get on the thing consistently and constantly push PRs. After being a couch potato for years, I am now on a 100 week streak and probably in the best shape of my life. High fiving people keeps me engaged through a class and prevents me from getting bored.
Its kind of like saying "Quake is cool, but I don't know why I would ever want to play multiplayer..."
If you have the motivation to keep yourself on a bike with just some headphones or a video on a tablet, more power to you, but there are many of us who can't do that. Add in that this has replaced my wife's multiple times a week soul cycle habit, with each class being $40, and Peloton is actually a significant cost savings in my home.
Eh, I thought the same thing but I've really enjoyed the classes. For me it's not about motivation, it's about getting structure to your ride without needing to plan it yourself. You also get things like the strength classes, etc, which provide the same value. If you work out every day, planning what you're doing accrues nonzero mental load. It's nice to just pop on a class and know you'll get a decent core workout, or whatever.
And I definitely wouldn't say I'm a member of the "culture", I get on, do a class, get off, that's it. The price is worth it for two people in the house I think.
I have the Tread, and I'm on the verge of cancelling my subscription. The $40 would be worth it if I was into the classes, but I tried them for a while and switched back to listening to podcasts while I run.
It's disappointing to have such nice hardware that's so limited--can't watch youtube or listen to music directly on the device, no built in interval training, no way to pause a run... Now that I think about it, it's one of the least-capable treadmills I've ever owned.
I've scrolled through these comments and am surprised to see no one's pointed out the alternative - it's $13.99/month for the content if you don't buy Peloton hardware.
That is in fact as bonkers as it sounds - my wife has a $700 spin bike and just puts an iPad on the front of it. Because she didn't spend $2000 or whatever on the Peloton bike, she says a third of the price for the content.
I'm pretty well versed in the fitness industry. Peloton, SoulCycle, Mirror value proposition never made any sense to me. With people going back to the office and gyms opening up again, people will want their normal fitness classes, gyms instead.
EDIT: apparently some of you disagree. Change my mind.
Perhaps don’t be so confrontational when people disagree you and you wouldn’t be getting as many downvotes?
But it would be easy to see peloton fitting in with gym classes for people that like to work out everyday but adding 1hr around a gym class to travel and get ready on days that time may not be available
Your comment is a bit strange: what makes you "well-versed" - that is an honest question.
I'll attempt to change your mind with a bit of math. And some context. I've used/use Peloton, Zwift, Future, and finally brick-and-mortar 24 Hour Fitness and Equinox.
My EQX membership is $240/month.
My Peloton membership is $40/month.
You're saying that people are going back to the office and want their classes/gyms, but that's not exactly true. I'm going back to the office, at most 3x a week, typically 2x a week. Work in Manhattan, live in Westchester County (30 min commute).
$240 / 8 visits per month (2x per week) = $30 per visit.
$240 / 12 visits per month (3x per week) = $20 per visit.
That $240 made sense when I could go to the gym 4x+ per week. And use multiple locations linked to the membership. It's now a very expensive line item on my credit card statement for doing something 8x per month.
Meanwhile, I can hit 2 or 3 Peloton classes per day, for $40 per month. Some of the most basic supplemental equipment (bands, dumbbells, etc.) can go a long way with some care after dealing with their upfront cost.
So, I agree with you that people want their gyms and classes but I don't agree that people are willing to pay for things they can't physically use as often. Meanwhile, anything you've built up at home is right there waiting to be used with almost no lost time.
>"Peloton, SoulCycle, Mirror value proposition never made any sense to me."
To be fair Peloton was doing ok before pandemic I think. They got disproportionally hyped since pandemic and now returning back to what is realistic value. Myself, I would not touch it with a wooden pole but that's just personal preferences - I do not participate in organized activities. Do everything on my own.
The narrative around Peloton is kind of strange to me. They were doing pretty well before the pandemic, then the pandemic hits, and they spent like this hockey stick growth is permanent and not just a trend, and then went in odd directions- focusing their energy on Peloton stores that sell apparel, for one example. Using that growth to move into different fitness areas and expand on their core product- interactive gamification based fitness- would have made a lot of sense to me- heart rate monitors that actually work, maybe weights that can detect how many reps you did that show up on a weight class leaderboard, would all fit in with the brand's draw. Trying to become the next Lululemon, I mean its not the worst idea I have ever heard, but it kind of goes against the idea of a relatively low fixed cost business model that can scale infinitely with almost zero incremental cost per user.
But the narrative that they are essentially a failed company, when they are still growing their user base, and haven't even really done much of an international expansion, is so far off from the reality that their management just spent money like drunken sailors on new businesses that no one wanted.
I got a spin bike that came with spot for an iPad or comparable device, and paid $10/month for a peloton digital subscription. Sure I don't get to be on the leaderboard, but I'm saving $30/month and my bike was $900 instead of ~$2000. My partner's work subsidizes the peloton subscription now though which is obviously even nicer.
Bike would've been cheaper if I had bought before the pandemic but home gym prices went up, unsurprisingly
Between $10 and $300/month, depending on how fancy (or crosfitty) you want, and where you’re located. The really expensive gyms near me seem to be heavily populated by very attractive young people, so I guess that’s an ancillary benefit if you care about that. I wonder if they offer hot-person subsidies…
Depends on what you're getting out of the gym membership. If you're just going to the gym, walking on a treadmill and doing curls for a bit, gym memberships can be incredibly cheap.
If you (like my SO) is going to the gym and using multiple provided amenities and training programs, that price can get very pricy very fast because those amenities are usually upcharged.
Gym memberships range from 10$ to hundreds, but the big thing is the class price. If you want to do classes on bikes/dancing/yoga/whatever, they are usually an absolute minimum of 10$/each, which is what makes the Peloton monthly attractive for people I think
A decade ago I paid $35/month for unlimited classes at my gym. I could only attend maximum of 2/week due to scheduling (I wasn't interested in every class). I thought that was an excellent deal back then.
In addition to the monthly fees that others have mentioned, there's usually an upfront "setup" fee of a few hundred dollars. Gyms have traditionally done shady shit to lock you in, too.
If Apple roles out GymKit more broadly to consumer devices, that will allow the average person to pay significantly less for both hardware and SaaS subscription. I imagine this would be a catastrophic event for Peloton.
It's a tough sell for me. I pay $40 a month for the whole family at the local rec center with multiple pools, water slides for the kids, an indoor running track and every piece of workout equipment you could want.
Not just you. I'm a cyclist and runner, who dabbles in yoga and other stuff.
Currently, I have one of my bikes mounted in the basement on a $1000 Wahoo Kickr smart trainer and use Zwift for $15/month (which I cancel over the summer).
When I do yoga, I want a live class because I want the instructor to adjust poses based on my skill/flexibility. Mindlessly cycling through sun salutations does nothing for me.
A few family members who aren't fitness buffs have Pelotons. They all slowly stopped using them over time. So the bike is basically a very expensive coat rack.
The monthly cost on top of the high cost of the bike is why I didnt jump on the bandwagon, er, bicycle in 2020. I probably went to enough cycling classes pre pandemic that I was paying roughly 40 dollars a month in costs anyway but paying for an in person class is a lot different than paying for access to video content.
I would get a bike tomorrow if that cost was $15-$25 a month.
I personally agree, but from their view is the competition/substitution another highly scalable virtual fitness subscription or is it a trendy cycling class (Soul Cycle, Orange Theory, etc)? If it's more the latter, then $40 could be compelling value. Yes, the classes aren't the same, but they're convenient and cheaper.
You can make the comparison work if you amortize the cost. Soul cycle is $30/class; peloton is $40/mo and $1600 to get started. Assuming a 13mo year of 4wk months and 3 classes a week, soul cycle costs $360/mo and peloton costs $40/mo. In 5 months you break even and keep a workout bike that retails second hand for $1000-1300.
No, it's ridiculously overpriced for the equipment and content. Buy a real bike and go outside. It's way more interesting and better for you.
If you HAVE to stay inside for bad weather or something get a trainer for that bike. There are several youtube channels/patreon channels that film their mountain-biking/road biking and you can put those on and feel like you're riding along if you need that aspect.
I feel like the type of people that fall for these electronic gadgets typically don't like exercising and are hoping they'll somehow get more motivated with digital content. Invariably, after a few months they quit using it just like every other exercise program they've started.
"Do something else!" is not much of an argument. It really just points out that you're unaware of the distinction between what Peloton sells and cycling in general.
Spin classes have their appeal and benefits that aren't the same as regular riding. A spin class is (typically) a high-intensity activity done for a fairly short period of time (say, an hour). An hour spent outside on your bike does not impart the same benefits, plus issues of weather and traffic detract (for some) from the overall appeal.
I'm a serious road cyclist, so I kinda dismissed Peloton initially, because I figured because it looked kinda like a bad deal for road-cyclist indoor workouts then it must be the same thing, but it's really not. I have a fancy indoor riding setup using a Wahoo trainer and one of my bikes and an iPad, and that's PERFECT for the kinds of FTP-boosting workouts my coach sets up for me, but Peloton isn't in my market AT ALL. Just because it'd pedaling indoors doesn't make it the same thing.
Spin has its own (typically well-heeled) devotees, and Peloton is pursuing that market. There is almost ZERO overlap between the sets of "my serious cycling pals who do indoor training" and "my friends who own Pelotons," which just highlights the difference.
Interesting take but while there is some argument to be made for being outside... Cycling outside is not always better for you. Many people live in urban areas where cycling outside is dangerous and objectively worse for you due to fumes from cars.
I've lived in rural areas where biking outside was great and in cities where biking was prioritized but I've also lived in many places where biking outside put myself at a much higher risk of being injured than biking inside. Especially at night after work which is when many exercise.
I keep seeing this argument, from presumably 20-40something single men.
I ride outside a lot and indoors too.
1. trainers don't work if you have 7+ bikes in a household with differing drivetrains, even the ones that attach at the wheel.
2. watching people ride and sitting on a trainer is kind of boring
3. peloton content is pretty engaging (maybe not for you)
4. the subscription cost is not an impact to finances
I mean, I get your point, but I'm confused by the statement
"trainers don't work if you have 7+ bikes in a household with differing drivetrains, even the ones that attach at the wheel"
They absolutely DO work, even then. Wheel-off smart trainers (Wahoo KICKR Snap, e.g.) don't care what your drive train is. We can put every bike we own on ours, and that includes bikes with 9-speed, 10-speed, and 11-speed drivetrains.
If you opt for a wheel-off trainer, sure, you'd probably need to ensure chain/cassette compatibility, but then you're clearly making a tradeoff for a superior "feel" and better power calibration -- in other words, you're probably racing and have no interest in keeping your 9-speed bike on a trainer when you race on 11. ;)
2$/month would pay for nothing essentially. You get unlimited classes for the 40$/month, which is cheaper than going to most fitness classes more than a few times.
Even in the middle of my small town, drop in classes at the gym at 8$ each, on top of your monthly membership.
Fwiw I dont own a Peloton, I prefer running, I just dont think its nearly as bad of a deal as people make it out to be
I'm not a user either but $40 at their current subscriber number comes in at a quarter billion dollars of revenue. How come everything else takes advantage of economies of scale but not virtual goods? $2 a month at scale would be great. Even greater if they allowed you to log into any of a number of fitness video services.
From Peloton’s point of view (bottom line yadda yadda), you’d have to think that dropping to this price would 20X their subscriber count. Which is not to say that $40 is the correct profit maxima, but it almost certainly isn’t $2.
Just because something can be offered cheaper at scale, doesn’t mean it should or needs to be.
Peloton has pretty expensive products and induces the same reaction folks had to iPhones before other companies released similarly priced flagships. Generally I think it's easy to hate on these products if you don't have one. I was pretty skeptical myself. "Was", because my partner picked up the Peloton Bike and subsequently the Peloton Tread.
Like some other comments here, the almost cultish following is quite fascinating to witness in person. Would I get one myself -- probably not, but there's something to be said about the intensely passionate users Peloton has. This passion comes not from the hardware itself but from the trainers who've become celebrities themselves.
I’m a fairly new user. I stayed away because I never use my real bike, but a friend got one and said it was helping his air efficiency for scuba.
I have to admit that this is unlike any workout machine I’ve had. Being totally silent is a big deal; I could watch Tv, take a call, or just generally feel less like I’m working. The classes are also a huge deal; I didn’t know my forms and I wouldn’t structure my own workouts to have the interval training they do. The leaderboards against both other students and my own personal PR push me every day (I just beat my last PR by 8%!).
I really hope the company stays afloat. This has been the best I’ve adhered to a workout plan in almost a decade.
There are two strengths at Peloton: the hardware is pretty solidly made, and the talent. We tested a lot of bikes before picking up a used Peloton. The hardware feels like an Apple product to me, and it lasts like it too. Everything just “works.”
But what keeps us doing peloton is really the classes. The content is really broad, there’s always something to do, if you don’t like an instructor, there are plenty more.
It’s hard to articulate this to anyone who hasn’t dived in.
One friend said they don’t need their therapist after doing peloton classes. That’s a stretch but it’s something like that.
You can buy a set of kettlebells up to 24kg, a barbell, and enough plates to make 315 lbs for the cost of a Peloton. Completely different crowd, though.
Yeah, but even within Peloton's own sphere competition is fierce and IMO some of the biggest "pros" of Peloton are liabilities.
The customer base also includes me - I ended up getting an exercise bike during the pandemic, was in the price range for a Peloton (expensive as it may be), but ended up not choosing the Peloton.
The biggest factor for me is that I didn't want to tie an expensive bike (which will last for many years) to the upgrade cycle of a consumer electronics device. Which is to say, I wanted to bring-my-own-tablet, knowing that I'd want to upgrade the screen far more often than I'd ever want to upgrade the bike. The tight integration here is actually - at least for me - a downside.
There are also a plethora of subscription services now that do on-demand/livestreamed classes that aren't Peloton, and bringing your own tablet allows you freedom to choose any of them. Oddly enough - subscribing to Peloton's own content on an iPad is cheaper than doing so via their own bike, which further compromises the appeal of their hardware.
I ultimately got a Bluetooth-enabled bike that didn't have any screen at all, but instead has a large tablet holder. Throwing my iPad on it and putting in my AirPods has been very usable.
I find these differences fascinating. I used to work out at one of the top bodybuilding gyms in Europe (I’m not a bodybuilder but my trainer was) — and none of the hardcore members would have been caught dead swinging a kettlebell.
Now I work out at a more corporate gym and am trying to learn to stop worrying and love the functional because my trainer is in fact a professional and I pay to learn from him. But I totally give the side-eye to the flimsy TechnoGym gear.
I’m pretty sure that for any given exercise trend, you will find purists and haters and they will be outspoken. Just like in tech, but don’t tell my PT!
It goes both ways. Pure bodybuilders scoff at anything that doesn’t help sculpt, but I think there’s equal derision in the functional and strength training crowd to folks that only focus on pure bodybuilding. Personally I say do what makes you happy and not worry what the obsessive purists think. I always find the rigid thinking in fitness crowds to be very off putting.
Right. And you'd need a fairly large area to take advantage of those items. It's easy to store away some kettlebells but once you get a bar and a bench you really need a dedicated workout space. A bike is much easier to roll in and out of the way. In my last apartment a bike was feasible even if it wasnt ideal for the space. Any type of barbell was too large.
respiration rate is not the same as heart rate although they trend in the same direction. I say this because I've worn a heart rate strap during all sorts of exercise and kettlebells do not elevate heart rate like cardio does, even though they feel like they should.
That said, is intense cardio really that important for health? moderate cardio seems to give most of the longevity benefits.
>>Peloton has pretty expensive products and induces the same reaction folks had to iPhones before other companies released similarly priced flagships.
I think they both continue to generate the same reaction in many. They are both over priced products with users that are near cult like in their support of the company. If you are not part of that cult you view people in the cult as a little crazy
To be fair, their failings were almost entirely a result of bad financial projections, resulting in an unstable balance sheet for an otherwise-solid business
They already have a great product. What they don't have is a great balance sheet and income statement. Seems like a bean counter is what they need at the moment.
I agree with lots of the negative sentiment on Peloton, however, the name of the luxury game is to stay ahead of the pack and maintain a premium brand. Much of what they've done to date is maintain a huge catalog of real-time and recorded streaming classes and videos.
I found the news about Peloton working with Google to use Stadia as a platform for gaming on Peloton devices, very interesting. So far, what we've seen from gamified exercise equipment has been cheesy, at best. Seems like there is opportunity there.
On the other hand, it's a durable product and they should worry about market saturation.
Zwift has done well with a fitness gaming product oriented around bike races and challenges. But the graphics are cheesy. And the whole game experience is mostly just about power output in a straight line with maybe some drafting tactics; it only even supports steering in a very limited way.
As a runner, I just do…not…get Zwift. I could see using it, maybe, on a bike (though, as parent points out, the bike version isn’t exactly all that). But running, it’s just watching a cartoon avatar run down the road while getting passed by bicycles. I well and fully admit that I could be missing the key element that makes Zwift a draw, but as I see it I’d do just as well to stare at the numbers on the treadmill’s LCD screen.
I'm a cyclist, so I use Zwift to drive my trainer for workouts, and early in the pandemic I participated in some virtual racing. I won't say I love it, but I do think it's a valuable thing, and I'd miss it if it was gone.
That said: I totally understand their desire to expand into running, but Zwift as an idea just seems so disconnected from the culture and practice of running that I'm not surprised it's not landing super well with at least some runners. Zwift is a cycling platform first, and it shows.
it's just about the worst "game" you could imagine. Why is it simulating (poorly) outdoor cycling when it could instead invent a new form of competition a la tron or rocket league?
Zwift is targeted towards users who are somewhat serious outdoor cyclists and want an indoor training tool. I'm skeptical that they would want a Tron type game.
Peloton has a solid product, solid revenue, and a very devoted following. I think they will be fine as a medium sized company. The reality is they were just overvalued as a result of the pandemic. It should have been obvious to anyone that the insane user growth they had wasn't sustainable.
This right here. Had the pandemic never happened, Peloton would have grown more slowly and appropriately. Instead they were like no-face in Spirited Away; they just kept eating and eating and getting bigger and bigger.
I don’t know why they did this because someone internal had to know this was a one time thing. Yet they acted like they could just power through and sustain growth through mere force of will.
I applied to Peloton and was about to work there as a backend engineer for one of its departments that works with businesses and their HR departments. I'm very glad that I got away from all this. At the end of the day, this is a company that sells a piece of hardware with some pretty simple software on top. I was always baffled by the number of loyal consumers Peloton has, and found it delusional how the company kept labeling itself as a FAANG company.
As long as they make good quality products I think they'll always have a market, especially if they can hang on to their brand awareness, but the pandemic and bored people gave them a boost they won't be able to maintain forever.
Anecdotally, it appears that Zwift usage is still growing. It's more race and social oriented than Peleton, and less of a "spin class simulator", but it's only $15/mo and doesn't require as much of an up-front equipment investment.
I think Peleton believed too much of their own BS and flew too close to the sun.
While I like Zwift it's not at all like Peloton. Yeah, it's more race oriented but also it's not as prescribed-- i.e you have to figure out what exactly you want to do for a workout.
Also, a good Zwift setup will cost more than a Peloton. A reasonable road bike with an 11-speed cassette starts at ~$1k, then you'll need an extra cassette (~$100), smart bike trainer (~$1k), ipad or computer+tv (~$1k), etc.
That said, a TacX Neo2T + Wahoo speed sensitive fan + TV is a fantastic combo.
Growing, yes, but from a much smaller base and probably with a lower ceiling. (I'm a regular Zwift rider in the winter.)
Fundamentally, Zwift is for road cyclists who are training or stuck inside, and Peloton is for spin class fans, and never the twain shall meet. There's a big gulf between the two groups that is larger than it might seem to someone just casually observing that they appear to be doing almost exactly the same thing.
The Zwift up-front investment is only really lower if you already have some of the necessary pieces. But if you're starting from scratch and have to buy a bike, smart trainer, tablet / laptop, and stand then that can cost as much or more than a Peloton bike depending on how fancy you want to get.
It was outsourced to freight companies. The same companies that deliver and put together your Pottery Barn furniture. There was nothing special about their 'white glove' delivery.
Laying off 2800(!!!) people sounds like they have too many people around. What are these people working on? I mean, Peloton just offers a couple of devices, and the content does not seem to be too advanced. Do you really need 2800+ people to do all of that?
They need folks across a tall vertical in order to scale to the number of people that they have so quickly: hardware, software, logistics, brick and mortar stores, marketing, tons of content, etc. Easy to see how they can quickly balloon as demand outpaced their supply during covid.
They were given money to expand their service offerings and hopefully make even more money. That means hiring more workers than needed to keep the lights on for their current services. This is just the market realizing the CEO got lucky with the first product and is unlikely to repeat it.
I almost took a job with Peloton last year, since they made a pretty reasonable offer to me and I figure that working for an exercise company might inspire me to get into better shape. I'm pretty glad I didn't now.
The issue with Peloton is not that the pandemic is ending, people are going to gyms again etc. but their failure to evolve the product.
It was innovate when first launched but their half fitness-half entertainment focus has left them unable to do either effectively. Competitors have taken a much more serious approach to fitness and have a better product or have focused mostly on casual fitness (Apple Fitness) and have a more polished end user experience.
I thought about getting a Peloton because I like to bike every day, but it gets a bit cold for me to do so. The deal breaker on Peloton for me was that they locked down their platform. I couldn't install Zoom or any other apps that I wanted, I had zero control over the camera, etc... I really wanted to do PR/Code review on my bike, but if I can't even install Zoom then that's definitely a no-go.
Why was any of this necessary on an exercise bike that is otherwise great quality?
Look at the bright side - they still have ability to take classes from their favorite instructors for a year! Isn't that an amazing perk for being fired?
P.S. I cannot wait to hear about what actually happened to the employee stock options.
> The profit seems to be in selling the recurring subscription to exercise videos and gamification, which Apple already offers.
Sure but they would inherit the memberships that Peloton has, and if they were smart about it they would do a gradual transition towards merging the platforms, similar to how they handled Beats music IIRC.
Huh, One more kid get wrangled/stuck in bike in some tragic accident and Apple would lose ten times more than Peloton ever lost. Besides endless memes about "Killer Apple" and so on.
I guess Apple would prefer to stay dumb on this thing.
That's fair; I suppose Apple has traditionally stuck with "safe" electronics, as in stuff that is unlikely to be able to kill you. It's unlikely I'll be able to do anything with my iPhone that is likely to cause me any permanent harm, at least not accidentally.
That's true. I was just thinking it would be an easy product to integrate into the health offering and it would be a pretty significant amount of people. Also if it was re-branded as Apple it would attract an even greater amount of people.
That said I would imagine apple would need to repackage and improve the product offering so it is up to snuff.
They do all kinds of acquisitions. Beats was exactly the same fit. Most of the company's value was in its branding and cultural buzz rather than actual products.
A lot of people love their Peloton bikes and the associated service, but all I could think about when Wallstreet was hyping them is how big, really, can the premium exercise market be? And further, the exercise market is a fad market. Nothing sticks around for more than a few years, maybe a decade. Anyone remember CrossFit? P90X? Richard Simons? BowFlex?
Yes, Peloton will be around for awhile, but the growth was never sustainable. I think it is strange anyone thought it would be.
The $40 subscription is the killer not enabling them to expand to mass market beyond the cult following. Not everyone needs a spin-class type contents and some just want to stream Netflix / HBO or just hear some good beats.
If they need to expand their market beyond cult following, then they need to sell no-subscription options and focus on making the margin when selling the equipment.
Just asking as I don't have a treadmill myself, how would any other brand of treadmills prevent this accident from happening? They have some fail-safes that this brand doesn't have?
Somewhat related: a miniature version of the Peloton model is Supernatural, which I run on the Oculus Quest 2. (https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/1830168170427369/). It's about $20 a month and absolutely worth it, the workouts are fun, challenging, motivational and musical. It's been transformative for my fitness.
My wife got the quest 2 and initially loved it when we were on vacation back to the US at xmas. Come back here to Europe and found it's geofenced with no likelyhood of ever coming because it uses royalty based songs.
The absolute bloodbath of VC funded companies with weak fundamentals is finally catching up. Peloton, Robinhood, WeWork, Opendoor, Clover health, and countless others with major layoffs, stock down 60-80%, no profitability or sustainable business model in sight.
My back of the envelope calculation suggests that over the last decade $200-300bn has been spent by VCs on startups, led by Softbank. And with very little to show for it. 95% of tech revenue, profit, and market cap is dominated by MSFT, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon - companies that took very little to no VC funds.
Just makes me ask what a world with little VC influence will look like. Will most likely be more resolute companies and founders building more sustainable businesses who take on this big 5.
There is no "finally". VC-funded companies fail all the time. In fact most of them are expected to fail. You can find similar misses every year stretching back to the start of the industry. Similarly, there are companies which have gone public over the last year with spectacular businesses and sky-high valuations. And heck Peloton is still valued at $12B+. The VCs are all fine.
The obvious answer is that lockdown made people more aware of their lack of exercise. Once lockdown starts to lift, people don't want it any more, they can go back to their gym instead.
It is tough but this is def. a big problem with VC-backed companies who are always under pressure to make the most money whatever happens. Most of us would see 2800 layoffs as a failure but the VCs probably think it a success that they made the most of the market bubble and are now adjusting for a more realistic size/income.
Well, they have about 100 brick and mortar stores. So in addition to all of the other complexities of running a large business, they surely have more than 1,000 people working in stores and store support.
So they're cutting 60% of their workforce give or take - from 3600 people or so down to 835.
I have to wonder what on earth those other 2800 people were doing?
I would expect a company like Peloton to have a workforce of around 700-1200 people, just based on the market they're in.
20% of that in Manufacturing, Manufacturing Engineering, and Logistics
40% of that in Operations (web, sales, marketing, productions, IT, etc)
15% of that in finance and accounting cost centers
25% of that in management, supervision, product management, general executives.
I guess if they had showrooms or retail operations that number might make more sense, that could add an additional 20-150 people per store (retail is headcount expensive - and how expensive varies based on square footage and desired customer experience).
Apparently they have (had) 123 showrooms (and perhaps concessions). So imagine if you need to keep these open 7 days a week, maybe 10 hours a day and staff them to cover holidays then you're probably looking at ~6-10 staff per site which is a fair old chunk. They might not all be full time so that headcount might go up even further. Then on top of that area managers, maybe 10-15 show rooms per manager? It all adds up.
Their headcount certainly surprised me for a cycling on the internet company :)
strictly speaking as a consumer, I would rather ride an old scrappy bicycle in the great outdoors, rather than an in-door bicycle that costs 2000$ and 40$/month. I was rather surprised to see it go on as long as it did.
Some people might see it that way, but most people see ice on the roads and really narrow shoulders as a literally deadly risk to biking outdoors. There might be some hardos that’ll still bike in these conditions, but for the other 95% of people who want to get some bike exercise, indoors is the way to go.
I got an entry level magnetic resistance stationary bike for $500. But I can still sign-up for the $13/mo peloton package and use it with them. I am sure Peloton has many price conscious members taking advantage of this offering.
Yeah, that wasn't their business. Their business was an aspirational service with interactive classes and a built-in community, all sold on a turnkey platform.
It could be real business serving well off IT professionals like in FAANG+, or a slice of finance/legal/medical professionals. These folks can spend few hundred easily on fitness along with few thousand dollar devices.
But if they want to scale to much larger then as you say they would be competing with 200 dollar bike + ipad.
I'd think that just enticing people who could spend 400 dollars / month might be financially viable then reaching out to masses to justify 40 dollars per month on top of already expensive equipment.
The bikes were secondary to them being a media company. I wouldn't be surprised if they sold those bikes at a loss. I am not in their club, but their instructors were celebrities with celebrity-sized followings.
Even if people entirely stopped buying their bikes, they could be be acquired just for their content and brand.
They had 2800 employees?! Why? Their product is a home bike with a screen. Plus some developers and their TV crews, I don't see how you can get to such a number
All your comment really shows is how little you know about how many people it takes to run a large business, and that you don't really understand what Peleton do.
Peleton design and manufacture their own equipment, they ship it globally, they have their own buyers and supply chains for that, They also build the tech that runs their business, from the customer portal to the video integration in the products. They make programs that include CGI and motion graphics. They do sales, and support, for nearly 6 million customers. On top of that there's payroll, and admin, and HR, and ... it's a very long list, that requires a lot of people.
We're bad at estimating large numbers so our first impression is usually wrong. It's important to factor that into any reaction to a number that sounds way too high. It's always worth taking a step back and thinking about why it might actually be correct.
Just to clarify they are in 4 countries. They also appeared to be doing the last mile delivery in these countries themselves (at least I could confirm in the USA) which probably helped with their premium brand.
That said, I still agree with the above post. Fitbit has 1,600 employees and actually ships globally. This was excessive.
Coincidentally, I was (also) going to jump in this thread to say that at Fitbit we never employed even near 2800 people.
Of course, per the standard corporate model nowadays, Fitbit in its time as an independent company didn't directly employ the people who do the manufacturing, logistics, retail sales, or front line customer support (nor of course the people who do janitorial services, security, food service, etc for those folks.)
So I don't think it was fair of GP to say:
> All your comment really shows is how little you know about how many people it takes to run a large business
Although perhaps it was more fair to say:
> you don't really understand what Peleton do
Personally, I concluded from the headline that there must be an interesting story there.
They definitely were not doing last mile delivery themselves. They use an outsourced delivery company. Those vans you saw with their logos on them were just part of that deal.
Those thing need people, and for that size makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is why do all of that themselves, instead of using third party providers.
Bringing more things in house often doesn’t even make sense if you’re a huge behemoth. But even then, it’s a great way to make your company fail, as you lose focus on what value you’re providing.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if they do outsource some of those things. For example, they probably use ADP or similar for payroll. And they probably use outside production companies and trainers for their videos. But you still need internal people to manage vendors and deal with problems and people to manage those people.
It's a pretty common reaction to scratch your head and wonder what all those people in $DEPARTMENT are doing all day. Some of them are probably wondering the same thing about your department.
Your question implies that there were just 2800 people too many. That might be the case but I think it's unlikely. No matter what you think of a given company, and how lazy people outside of tech are, most people actually do do something during their working hours.
It's more likely that they'll do all the things they planned, but slower.
Or they're ramp up the amount of work the remaining staff have to do.
Or they'll cancel some things that would have happened without the reduction in headcount.
I have no idea. I don't work for Peleton. I do work for a large, global company that makes things though, and I do see how the manufacturing things, legal things, digital things (me!), retail things, support things, and admin things all come together and require a lot of work from a lot of people.
Look at how quickly they are (were?) growing. Lots of those employees were probably working on the "next" thing, whether that's another bike or a new device or software product. It's not like all they're doing is maintaining their current iteration of bike with TV screen..
they do (did?) also have showrooms. customer service staff. who knows if they did their own assembling or final product qa. they certainly weren't running your average SaaS service.
i'm not _too_ surprised about 2800 people. i'm surprised there's anyone left afterwards.
1) ended officially
2) waned on to the point that it became "normalized" in how to handle day to day activities out
Largely, I think some things that were popular in the pandemic got outsized growth through it, may fade in popularity quickly or outright be out of business as people want to resume more normal behaviors they had pre pandemic.
I wonder how Zoom will fare. I think its more sticky than Peloton because everyone is transitioning to remote work for White Collar workers and I don't see that particular bit being given up quite so easily now, we shall see if thats the case over the coming months I think