The former CEO of Peloton, the hugely successful fitness technology company that developed exercise bikes that really took off during the 2020 pandemic, revealed in recent days how he has been forced to sell all of his possessions after losing “all his money.”
Speaking to the New York Post, John Foley, who founded Peloton in 2012, described how he has sold virtually all of his belongings after his company failed. While Peloton bikes were popular when people were forced to stay in their homes, with sales increasing by some 250 percent in just the first quarter of 2020, the company’s stock eventually began to plunge as people stopped using the bikes and returned to their pre-pandemic lives.
Foley was previously worth $1.9 billion, but as he told the Post, that money wasn’t technically in his bank account – it was the value of his then-successful company.
“You know, at one point I had a lot of money on paper,” he said.
The rise and fall of Foley’s company, and wealth, was dramatic. Foley became a billionaire by the end of 2021, but in February of 2021, as lockdowns were beginning to be lifted all over the world, his fortune had started to wither away. Foley was still worth $225 million – a lot of money by most people’s standards – but it was a sign that his company either needed to change or reinvent itself to survive. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Peloton was hit by a storyline in the Sex and the City reboot show, And Just Like That, which stuck the knife in.
Mr. Big, a character in the show, died on his Peloton bike – and that, Foley said, was the beginning of the end.
“We were coming out of [the pandemic]. The stock was getting crushed. And then the Mr. Big thing happens…it was brutal,” Foley said.
The company still exists, but boy is it struggling. Reports revealed how Peloton was forced to lay off 400 employees earlier this year, and its real-world stores are slowly shutting all over the country. That being said, it’s not over just yet – the company replaced its CEO in May and still has a market cap of $1.8 billion. It’s not nothing…but it’s not what it used to be.
