Peloton raised early money on Kickstarter, about $300,000 from fewer than 300 backers, to build a bike most people had never seen. The bike had a screen. The screen streamed live cycling classes from a New York studio. Riders could see where they ranked against everyone else on the ride. When Peloton filed to go public in 2019, it was selling a lifestyle as much as a machine.

A Barnes & Noble Pitch

John Foley was an executive at Barnes & Noble when he pitched a colleague, Tom Cortese, on an idea. Studio cycling classes were hard to book and easy to skip. Technology could bring the class home. Foley, Cortese, Hisao Kushi, Graham Stanton, and Yony Feng founded Peloton in January 2012. They ran a Kickstarter campaign in 2013. The first bikes shipped in 2014, along with a monthly subscription for the classes.

A Rough First Ride

Peloton priced its offering at $29 a share on September 25, 2019, and raised about $1.3 billion. The stock fell about 11 percent on its first day on Nasdaq. Then the pandemic shut gyms, and sales soared. When gyms reopened, demand fell hard. A treadmill recall and layoffs followed, and Foley stepped down in 2022. Peloton still trades on Nasdaq as PTON.

Cover: Man Bicycling, Etienne Jules Marey. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a motion study of a cyclist (the ride).