Peloton's CEO Deleted His LinkedIn Post. But It Needs To Be Talked About.

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Dear Peloton, we need to talk. Again.

Part I: The Most Mismanaged Brand In Wellness

(And I’m Rooting For Them)

There is no brand in wellness that makes me more emotional than Peloton. Like being dealt the best hand at the table and asking for new cards. The problem was never the cards.

Peloton dropped Q3 earnings two weeks ago, but I cannot stop thinking about it. Yes, I’m late, and I don’t care.

I was stunned. Their CEO posted on LinkedIn about how proud he was of the quarter. I read the results and could not reconcile his pride with the numbers…

In fairness, he has a lot to be proud of, but even still, he has since taken the post down (which to be fair, is probably the most self-aware thing that happened all quarter).

And I say this as a Peloton superfan. Not a ‘member’. A superfan from a business perspective. What they’ve built, the assets sitting right in front of them that they can’t seem to figure out how to use — pure brilliance, completely squandered.

So here’s my reframe, and I mean this sincerely:

Hey Peloton, you're not a tech company. You're a hospitality company. And the sooner you stop optimizing for the former and start owning the latter, the sooner you actually win.

Because here’s what they keep getting wrong. They built one of the most culturally potent communities in fitness history, and then treated it like a content library…

The leaderboard exists.

The streaks exist.

The para-social instructor relationships (that SoulCycle spent a decade trying to manufacture and never quite got there) — Peloton has them organically, for free, right now.

Cody Rigsby has a fanbase that would follow him into a stadium.

Robin Arzón makes people cry on a bike.

That is not a content asset. That is a cultural moment waiting to happen.

And it’s just...sitting there.

Then, Q3 happened.

218,000 subscribers gone in a single quarter.

They raised prices, lost customers, made more money off fewer people. Which to be clear, that is not a win, that is a slower version of losing.

And my personal favorite part: the CEO said on the earnings call don’t expect the revenue growth to hold in Q4…I’m sorry, what? You walked back the headline before the call ended?

So I want to talk about the thing that actually determines whether Peloton matters in five years.

Not the bikes. Not the hardware margins. The thing they’re sitting on that they can’t seem to figure out how to use.

Part II: The Playbook They're Not Running

(And Why It Should Change How You Think About Wellness)

You just read the problem.

The opportunity is bigger than most people realize, and it has nothing to do with bikes, hardware, or AI pivots.

Behind the paywall, I get into:

Why the hospitality reframe is a retention strategy worth over $100M annually

The specific IRL playbook I’d run if I were inside Peloton tomorrow

The role that doesn’t exist at Peloton but should (and what it would actually unlock)

Whether I’d back them right now, and exactly what would have to be true for that to change

What Peloton’s story tells us about the next generation of wellness brands actually worth backing

This one isn't just for investors and founders. If you're Peloton-obsessed, wellness-obsessed, or you've ever looked at your bike and felt personally attacked — this is the part worth reading.

You’re not a tech company. You’re a hospitality company. Here’s why that changes everything.

Tech companies optimize for engagement. Hospitality companies optimize for how you made someone feel. One measures time in app. The other measures whether you’d recommend it to your best friend at dinner.

The best hospitality brands in the world (the Soho Houses, the Equinoxes, the Four Seasons) don’t keep you because of the product. They keep you because leaving would mean losing something you actually care about. A feeling. A community. A version of yourself you like.

That is exactly what Peloton has the raw material to build. And exactly what they’re not building.

When someone cancels their Equinox membership it’s a hard decision. When someone cancels Peloton it’s because the bike is in the guest room and they forgot why they signed up. One cancellation feels like loss. The other feels like relief. Peloton needs to be in the first category. Right now they’re firmly in the second.

And before you say, “but Rach, they don’t have four walls” that’s exactly the point. The best hospitality brands aren’t selling you a room. They’re selling you a feeling of belonging that travels with you. Soho House figured this out globally. Peloton figured it out accidentally in 2020 and then somehow forgot…?

Let me tell you what I mean from the inside.

When I’m in Chicago, my dad and I do Peloton strength together every day. No negotiating. Even during chemo, we open the app, pick a class, and move.

That experience is what this platform is actually capable of.

Not a workout. A ritual. Something you don’t cancel because canceling would feel like losing something real.

That’s the product Peloton needs to be selling. And it has almost nothing to do with the bike.

The retention math nobody is running.

218,000 subscribers lost this quarter at $44/month.

That’s $9.6 million in monthly recurring revenue gone.

Annualized: over $115 million. Every single year. From one quarter of churn.

Now flip it. A genuine community strategy — IRL moments, instructor activations, city rituals — that moves retention by even 20% puts $23 million back annually. From one lever. That’s not a feel-good initiative. That’s a growth strategy with a return you can model.

The economics of belonging are staggering when you actually run them. The question is why nobody inside Peloton seems to be running them.

The IRL playbook I’d actually run.

Instructors as live cultural moments — not just content.

Cody. Robin. Jess. Becs. These aren’t fitness instructors with good engagement rates. These are people with the kind of loyalty that brands spend decades and hundreds of millions trying to build. Members plan their mornings around them. Name their pets after them. DM them during hard life moments. That relationship is extraordinarily rare and almost completely untapped as a live experience.

I want to take Jermaine Johnson on tour. Not a pop-up. Not a brand moment. A full arena experience — thousands of people moving together like a concert where sweat is the main act.

The content alone would be worth it. The retention impact in every city it touches would be worth more.

A sunrise run with Becs Gentry that shuts down the West Side Highway. The drone shot goes everywhere. That’s not a marketing activation. That’s a cultural moment people talk about for years — and come back to Peloton because of.

Language and belonging as an actual product.

The best communities have insider language. Things that signal: I’m one of you.

Peloton has this already and isn’t using it. “You don’t have to, you get to” is Jess Sims. The output scores people screenshot. The streaks people protect like they’re sacred. It exists organically. It’s just not being intentionally built into something bigger.

Merch that actually means something. Not a logo…insider language. A shirt that says “you don’t have to, you get to.” Something that starts a conversation between two strangers at an airport who both instantly know. That’s not merchandise. That’s membership. And membership is retention.

City activation as a measurable growth strategy.

Top ten cities by subscriber density. A quarterly ritual in each: a run, a ride, a rooftop strength class at sunrise. Paired with instructor energy where possible. Felt, not marketed.

Members who attend a live brand moment will churn at a fraction of the rate of those who don’t. This holds across every community-led business I’ve watched. The economics of a single city activation, when you run the retention math against it, make the marketing budget look like a rounding error.

The role that doesn’t exist but should.

Someone whose sole mandate is turning community into strategy and belonging into growth. Not a CMO. Not a head of social. Someone who wakes up every day asking: how do we take Peloton from a screen in your living room to a presence in your life?

Chief Community Officer. Head of Member Experience. Architect of Vibes. I’ve said this before, the title is flexible. The mandate is not.

Every product launch paired with a ritual. Every city given a reason to gather. Every instructor moment turned into a live cultural experience. Not louder branding. Deeper roots.

Peloton doesn’t need a reinvention. It needs someone accountable for the thing that made it iconic in the first place.

So would I back Peloton right now?

Honestly? Not yet.

Peter Stern (CEO) inherited a disaster and has done real work. The margins are better, the cash flow is better, the balance sheet is cleaner. I respect it genuinely.

But cleaning up a business and growing one are two completely different problems. And growth, for Peloton, will not come from another AI feature or a better algorithm. It will come from making people feel like leaving would cost them something real.

The Spotify deal is smart distribution. The commercial gym business is interesting. None of it moves the needle on the core issue: people cancel because they only ever had a bike, not a belonging.

Fix that, and everything else follows. That’s what I’m watching for.

Does Peloton still have legs?

Yes. Genuinely.

Q4 is the reality check; the CEO already told us this quarter won’t repeat. When revenue dips again we’ll find out what’s actually underneath all of this. Not the LinkedIn post version. The real one.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: Peloton changed fitness once.

The opportunity now is to change what community looks like in wellness. To go from a screen in your living room to a presence in your life. To be the brand people don’t cancel because leaving would actually hurt.

That lane is still wide open.

They just have to decide to run it.

All the best,

Rachel & WGV Team