John Foley
Co-founder & CEO, Ernesta. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveernesta.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
John Foley is the co-founder and former CEO of Peloton Interactive, which he led from its 2012 inception through its 2019 IPO until stepping down in 2022. He subsequently co-founded and serves as CEO of Ernesta, a direct-to-consumer custom rug company.
2shows
3appearances
34statements
6resolved
3supported
0contradicted
50%fully supported
14said about them ↓ Everything John Foley said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Foley: Hardware is not inherently harder to build than software
“I would say hardware isn't hard. I Tom Cortese, my co-founder who runs product development and is our product visionary I try to pin him on what's harder, software or hardware, and he'll go back and forth on different months and oftentimes he'll say software i…”
Foley: Complex hardware serves as a long-term competitive moat
“Hardware can be hard, but to an ambitious group of people like the Peloton founders and now the Peloton team You know, it's a competitive moat over time, which is which is why I think our investors are excited about it at this point.”
Foley: Raising Peloton's price above $1,200 increased sales velocity
“We started pricing it at 1200 dollars, because it was just over 1200 dollars was our cost, and we're like, let's price it at cost, because we have the subscription digital content business model that comes afterwards, so we don't need to make any money, and we…”
Foley: Peloton will be one of the special companies of our generation
“I think if we do it well, this will be one of the special companies of our generation.”
Foley: Peloton raised zero institutional money after pitching hundreds of VCs
“Three years later, after pitching hundreds of venture capitalists and thousands of angels, I hadn't raised a dime of money from an institution.”
Foley: Peloton's addressable market is massive, not small as investors thought
“I was so excited to show that Peloton is an awesome business and the total addressable market is massive. It's not small as some of the narrow-minded investors thought.”
Foley: Business school is wasted on individuals with existing elite access
“For a lot of people that I've connected with that are educated in the north, northeast or lived in New York City or San Francisco or have parents who have A little more access to the world of business business school could be a waste of time and a waste of mon…”
Foley: Fitness Equipment Industry Was Incredibly Dopey With No Tech or Design
“The fitness equipment category is incredibly dopey. No tech, no design, and just, it didn't feel like there was a bike that met the bar of the, of quality that we wanted.”
Foley: 400 institutional investors rejected Peloton before 100 angels gave $10M
“We have a hundred angels to get the first ten million, but in order to get a hundred angels at my success rate, I probably pitched 3000 people. And then the fourth, the 400 institutions that all said no.”
Foley: Venture capitalists focus on minimizing risk rather than taking it
“You think venture capitalists, you know, want to have a vision and take risks, but you're absolutely right, guy. They minimize risk, and you get it if they're shepherding your capital. They want minimal risk”
Foley: Peloton amassed a 300-person cap table across its first five rounds
“The Series E, I mean, the date was two years ago, effectively, when investors started to really see it, and we actually turned down, I mean, for the first five raises, we took every dollar we could from anybody.
And that creates a cap table of 300 people, inst…”
Foley: Peloton raised roughly $10M from 100 angels across three years
“Three years later, I had a hundred checks from a hundred angels that amounted to a roughly ten million dollars, and that's how we capitalized the first three years of Peloton.”
Foley: Investors avoid hardware because logistics limit scaling speed
“The problem with hardware is that investors are nervous about it. Investors shy from things that require hardware because then you have to have logistics and you have to have manufacturing and you have to figure out how you're going to sell these things and it…”
Foley: Peloton spent $50M each on New York and London studios
“We have these fancy studios in New York and London, and we've spent, you know, fifty million dollars a piece, I believe, on these two studios, so real investments.”
Foley: Fitness instructors matter more to customers than the studio
“Sometimes you're say yoga, Your yoga instructor is more important than the yoga studio. If your yoga instructor went to a different studio, you might follow him or her, and so the content really is, is important”
Foley: Pure Software Companies Are Easiest to Build and Fund
“A pure software company is easiest to do, and it's easiest to raise money for. Every venture capitalist is looking for the next Instagram platform. Where you put 250,000 dollars in, and 18 months later it sells for a billion dollars.”
Foley: Relying on Third-Party Hardware Cycles Makes Products Obsolete
“I don't want to be that company that looks so dumb, because your product is made irrelevant based on some other company's hardware cycles. And so I said, I think you've got to make the tablet.”
Foley: Early Peloton team got kicked out of Flywheel and SoulCycle
“Well, we all of us very quickly got kicked out of Flywheel and SoulCycle.”
Foley: Half of Peloton's 200 Kickstarter buyers were existing investors
“And 200 people I guess we raised 300,200 people bought, and a hundred of them were investors.”
Foley: Peloton converted 50% of mall shoppers who tested the bike
“Generally, if I could get somebody on a bike, honest to God, I got to a point where it was There's a fifty-fifty chance that you're gonna buy the bike, even though you just heard of it.”
Foley: Telling People You're Launching a Startup Creates Accountability
“Putting the energy out there and telling other people gets a little, gets the momentum going and holds you accountable. And I thought that was a, that was an important thing for me having the courage, which is basically, I just, I had to deliver on my promises…”
Foley: 60% of Peloton demand occurs between Thanksgiving and late February
“We have a uniquely seasonal business where I think we've said 60% of our demand is between Thanksgiving and the end of February because of holiday sales and the cold winter months.”
Foley: Peloton delivery wait times peaked at 10 to 11 weeks
“Yeah, I think it's spiked at 10 or 11 weeks in some markets, and I think we're down to six or seven weeks in most markets at this point, and as we continue to build capacity in our manufacturing pipeline and supply chain we're able to you know, meet the demand…”
The other half of the tape: John Foley's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 7 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 10Selina Tobaccowala 2
Statements about John Foley, by other people (2)
Peloton founder John Foley lost nearly his entire billion-dollar fortune
“At one point, he was worth almost a billion dollars. And he lost all, almost all of it, actually. And I recently read an article where he, in the Wall Street Journal, where he basically said, look, I'm, you know, I lost virtually all my money, but he has start…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 12
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
2022 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens John's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Ernesta | 2 | 32 | 60% 3/5 | full record on How I Built This → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Ernesta | 1 | 2 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Masters of Scale → |