John Foley, every mention
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every year anyone Ben Gilbert 29David Rosenthal 13
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where John Foley comes up
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 20:10 Ben Gilbert There are times where it still makes sense for us to do those, like John Foley bringing in a new CEO.
Peloton - the entire history and strategy behind America's trendiest workout · Acquired
- ▶ 2:02 Ben Gilbert And, you know, there's this fun thing, too, of, like, I've seen articles that are, like, John Foley stepping down as CEO.
- ▶ 2:10 Ben Gilbert People are saying he's staying involved.
- ▶ 2:11 Ben Gilbert He's staying very involved, and, uh, we'll definitely dive into sort of how this duo is gonna conquer the road ahead together.
- ▶ 26:30 David Rosenthal Peloton, as many folks probably know, was founded in 20 12 by John Foley, who, and this is where, you know, the connections just go so deep here.
- ▶ 27:00 Ben Gilbert Uh, and then another one actually interviewing John Foley on Peloton, which is great.
- ▶ 27:55 Ben Gilbert You know, the, the, the moment in 2012, and I think even 20 11 when there was ideation happening was totally, you know, I'm John Foley.
- ▶ 28:15 Ben Gilbert And of course, there's, there's John, who's not really the most, uh, numbers-oriented, schedule-oriented, disciplined person, more of a visionary product leader type person.
- ▶ 28:46 David Rosenthal Well, we'll get into who John is in a, in a sec, but, uh, I was gonna do this second, but you're absolutely right to start with SoulCycle and Boutique Fitness and Flywheel, uh, and Barry's Bootcamp and, you know, all the other
- ▶ 29:01 David Rosenthal So John and his wife, Jill lived in New York, which is the epicenter of all of this.
- ▶ 29:51 David Rosenthal John and Jill, his, his wife, they were
- ▶ 32:19 David Rosenthal And like, we can't give enough credit to Peloton and John Foley for innovating on this.
- ▶ 33:02 David Rosenthal So who's John Foley?
- ▶ 33:09 David Rosenthal He had been prior to starting Peloton.
- ▶ 33:12 David Rosenthal He had been the head of Barnes and Noble's nook business, their e-reader business, uh, which is based in New York.
- ▶ 33:36 David Rosenthal But you know, it's interesting too, thinking about the book and e-reader market relative to Peloton too, and maybe some lessons that Foley learned from that, you know, you could have the best hardware in the world, but
- ▶ 34:11 Ben Gilbert So, you might be giving Foley a little bit too much credit here.
- ▶ 36:00 David Rosenthal Okay, so that's what Foley was doing immediately before, um, before starting Peloton, but before that he had been a long time
- ▶ 36:14 Ben Gilbert I mean, like, I, I'm kind of annoyed at the number of people that try to characterize John Foley as someone who, you know, was breaking into the industry or didn't have a tech background or, no, he was in the middle of this stuff in the…
- ▶ 37:07 Ben Gilbert So what was John doing at IAC?
- ▶ 38:30 David Rosenthal Ben, as you referenced the John's episode on, on how I built this is great around all this, so we won't rehash all of it, but it was incredibly hard to get this funded.
- ▶ 40:22 Ben Gilbert And John says on the, how I built this episode that half the people who backed the Kickstarter were already investors.
- ▶ 50:51 Ben Gilbert So John Foley talks about this.
- ▶ 1:34:18 Ben Gilbert There's a lot of things to applaud the management team about and John Foley and the doggedness and the entrepreneurism and the pure invention of a movement and recognizing talent and hiring the right instructors and finding ways to align…
- ▶ 1:34:40 Ben Gilbert Is all the quotes that Foley and other folks gave along the way saying, sure, this pulled forward demand, but we think it will only ever be more.
- ▶ 1:37:29 David Rosenthal And they publish a deck calling for Foley to resign and for the company to initiate a strategic sale process.
- ▶ 1:38:05 Ben Gilbert And the way they sort of message this is that John Foley is stepping down as CEO, which is the.
- ▶ 1:38:24 Ben Gilbert So John Foley becomes the executive chairman.
- ▶ 1:39:16 Ben Gilbert John Foley is currently Barry McCarthy's boss, but it totally is fair to say that John Foley is on the board, is the chairman of the board, the board hires and fires the CEO, and, and here's the real kicker on this whole thing, as many of…
- ▶ 1:39:47 Ben Gilbert Uh, in which the founders and some insiders have stock with 20 votes per share, and Foley has a lot of it.
- ▶ 1:40:11 Ben Gilbert Foley can't do it alone, but with one
- ▶ 1:40:21 Ben Gilbert So the message Peloton wants Blackwell's and other upset shareholders to hear is John Foley has sort of moved on, stepped down as CEO, uh, and we've brought in Barry McCarthy.
- ▶ 1:40:33 Ben Gilbert In practice, dude still holds the cards.
- ▶ 1:43:58 Ben Gilbert Like we kind of put together a full, there are so many more deep cuts in the history that we didn't go into like John and his, uh, his friend, like prototyping the experience on a Disney cruise.
- ▶ 1:44:15 Ben Gilbert Uh, so John Pleasance, uh, who got a big job at Disney, uh, got convinced Foley to come on a Disney cruise with him.
- ▶ 1:44:23 Ben Gilbert And so they're on this Disney cruise and Foley rolls out a couple of spin bikes and stood there, like, for the first, like, 10 minutes of the ride, like, coaching John Pleasance on what to do.
- ▶ 1:51:33 Ben Gilbert I mean, Barry's not going to be the product person by any, by any means, but, uh, you know, that's why fully is there.
- ▶ 1:57:47 Ben Gilbert So there's another bear case, which is being floated by our good friends, the activist investors, which is, hey everyone, did you know John Foley sold ninety six million dollars of Peloton stock in 2021 when the price was really high and…
- ▶ 1:58:50 David Rosenthal And also like, it's hard to, you know, look, he, uh, he started Peloton in late 2011, early 20 12.
- ▶ 2:09:21 Ben Gilbert It's funny, I was thinking about what would be an interesting comparison here, and I think Eric Yuan against John Foley is sort of an interesting one, or let's just say Zoom against Peloton.
Standard Oil Part II (Extended Cut) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:39:52 Ben Gilbert John Foley, if you're listening to this, come on the show.
- ▶ 2:39:58 Ben Gilbert If you know John, if you're friends with him, tell him he should come join us.