YouSaid · the spoken record

John Foley

lines on the record: 75
first: 2019-04-29
most recent: 2019-04-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, it's effectively Peloton bike. It was here's a big screen, and here is a bike that talks to the screen. So you have metrics and you have competition and motivation. You have a leaderboard. You have great instructors. I knew enough about the content and the celebrity that you could, if you had the global scale, you could pay for the best instructors. And in a lot of these things, content is king, as a lot of you guys are connoisseurs of the category, you know that sometimes you say yoga, yoga instructor is more important than the yoga studio. If you're a yoga instructor went to a different studio, you might follow him or her.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was an amazing idea. It was. Your words. Your words, not mine. It was, I think it came to me, and I said, I think you can digitize that experience and build a hardware and software platform for consuming fitness content at home. So the light bulb went off.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's how I think it. So effectively, because the good locations and the good instructors are sold out so quick that I wasn't able to go to them. I was boxed out of it. And I said, if these classes sell out, these 50 bikes sell out in 30 seconds, would there be 500 people if it was infinite room, would there be 500 people that wanted it in? Would there be 2,000 people in New York that would want that great time and that great instructor? If you could scale it globally, would there be 50,000 people, 5 million people that would want that great instructor at that great time? And so I said, it just started to scream, distribute it to technology play. And obviously I knew enough about technology that got me excited.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A poster child for this stuff. She premeditates her workouts for the week and she'll say, okay, next Thursday morning I'm going to wake up at 6 and go to this class. And so let me schedule and reserve my bike. And I just didn't do that. I don't have that gene. I'm thinking at 10 o'clock at night before I go to bed. Am I going to set the alarm tomorrow?”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So like a lot of New Yorkers, I'm guessing a lot of you here, boutique fitness was exploding in New York City, sole cycle, flywheel, Barry's boot camp, yoga had been around for a long time. I'd done spin back in the 90s in LA, and I clearly felt that the boutique instructor-led group fitness, high energy programmed experience was better than going to the gym. It was more fun than going for a six-mile run by yourself. It was more fun than going to the old big box gym and trying to throw around the weights and get on a treadmill and get yourself excited. And so I had tasted this content and I said, this is good. People want this. I want this. But it was at a different location, at somebody else's time. You had to pay a lot of money to get that experience. And interestingly, my wife, who is probably works out two or three times more a week than I do, she's, she's...”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I'm a competitive guy, and I study everything. I read every business book, I listen to how I built this. I really am a student of business. And after years and years and years of this, I would say, I think I'm as good as that person I just heard. Some of them I think I'm better. And so what about me? I think I can do it. Give me a chance.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, at this point, I'm anxious. I wanted to be big, and I'm just kind of spinning in my wheels and I hadn't found anywhere to go. Oh, sorry.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. Trying to compete with Amazon 15 years late. I mean, you don't wish on your worst enemy competing against Amazon in their core category, right? So it was pretty rough. And yes, we were losing money.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my buddy, a guy named William Lynch, became the CEO of Barnes Noble. And everyone knows that Barnes& Noble in 2010 was challenged vis- ⁇-vis Amazon. But if any of you read Barbarians at the Gate where private equity companies attacking something or trying to take it private, taking a company private sounded like a pretty fun pirate, you know, take the ship. Exciting challenge.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right around that time, I was starting to become entrepreneurial in mind because I was surrounded by these type of people, and you're seeing people take risks and get the reward. And I was starting to become, I have more belief in myself. There was enough of that conversation around the water cooler that I was starting to get that bug to go do something.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was not right around that time. I think it was 32, I was meeting my wife Jill, who was living in LA. It was right around that time.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We grew at substantially from call it a million dollars top line to $25 million top line and profitable. So in relative terms successful, but still meant nothing to anyone at IEC.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right, and this is a tiny, tiny business that effectively meant nothing, and so there wasn't a lot of pressure, but we were the little engine that could. We saw it becoming something massive. And so we put pressure on ourselves. We had a lot of fun trying to pull the rabbit out of the hat.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Ticketmaster and City Search had merged, so it was still the same people that I had left. They had just bought this tiny company called Evite.com that interestingly you'll appreciate this. A lot of budding entrepreneurs listening to this. They had poured, I believe, $45 million into building Evite And I think we bought it for $3 million because it was 2001 and everything had crashed. And so it had at one point 120 people. I got it down to six people.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I went back to what was then IAC, Ticketmaster City Search. The people that I'd worked with prior, truth be told, my brother-in-law, who was the CEO of Ticketmaster, picked me up and dusted me off and gave me an opportunity kind of forced a role because he cared about me and it was a moment that I needed.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I was sitting there coming out of HBS in this recession with no job, and I had just signed a lease in New York City, and I spent four months trying to get a job calling back people. And they're like, oh, you turned us down, screw you.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny. I got a job at BMG Music, which was this, you know, it was my dream to work in the music industry. And it was in 2001, it was a recession, and so I accepted the job. And six months later, when I was set to start, I was going to go away to Italy for a week. And I called the HR director and I said, hey, I'm going to be out of the country for the next week if you need to reach me. And she's like, oh my gosh, no one's called you. And I said, wait a second, what do you mean no one's called me? She's like, oh gosh, you need to talk to so-and-so. Turns out because of the Napster disruption of it was right around that time where the music industry was being decimated. My job had gone away. My whole department had gone away.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For sure, after two years, I got there and was incredibly intimidated. The language you talk when you grew up in New York City and your parents work at Goldman Sachs, I didn't know what an investment bank was. I knew TIB, the Bank of the Keys, and that's where you got your checks cashed. That was a bank to me. So I didn't know anything about much. And I learned a ton, so it was cool.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. And coming from the Florida Keys and going to Georgia Tech, where I was an engineer and then being in Waco, I just didn't know the world and I wasn't very exposed and I wasn't very savvy. I wasn't very confident. And all these hotshot people at City Search were way over educated and they all went to these fancy schools and I was very intimidated by them. They worked. They had internships at Goalman and McKinsey and they were this and that. And so I just didn't know that whether I could hang with them. And my brother-in-law encouraged me to apply to Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia. He said if you're going to go to business school, try to go to one of the best. I got the rejection from Stanford. But luckily I got an HBS and I was very excited. It in many ways changed my trajectory because it gave me the confidence to know that no one is that much smarter than the next person and everyone's trying to figure it out. And so it was a transformative opportunity for me to go.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I went over, and you guys will appreciate this now. You guys know this.com startups are super fun, super dynamic. There's interesting people. It was quite a contrast to the manufacturing world in Waco, Texas, whereas people who are going to kind of punching the clock literally we punch the clock. And so it was a totally different style of person. And I just fell in love with the idea that you can work with great people that challenge you, that motivate you, that they're your age and they're also ready to take over the world. I found my people over at City Search.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a little bridge there where I went out to LA for CalCAN pedigree, whiskers, Sheba, pet food, which was a division of Mars. So at 25 years old, I said, hey, I'm kind of realized I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in Waco. And I requested a transfer within Mars to LA where I started making pet food in Vernon, which is the meat packing district of LA. It's pretty grim scene itself. But that's what got me to LA and then I made the jump over to the tech company.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lots of skittles. I ended up being responsible for Skittles and Starburst manufacturing in North America, managing 200 people when I was 20 years, 22 years old. And it was a great experience. And it felt like a good job. They paid well and they treated me well. And I saw myself spending the rest of my life in Waco. Yeah.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was modern day Willy Wonka. We made six million snicker bars a day. Wow, just for North America's wild stuff. I wore a hairnet, hard hat, steel toe shoes, and a uniform working midnight shifts for five years to pay my way through college. I don't recommend it. Don't have your kids do it.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was 19 years old, I got a co-op job in Waco, Texas at a manufacturing plant making with Skittles, Starburst, Snickers, and Twix.”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was a nobody from Key Largo, and here are named venture capitalists. I mean, I don't want to call them out by name, but think of 20 venture capitalists you've heard their name. I'm sitting there and they're saying, no, this is dumb, no thank you. And you're like, who am I to think that this named person, at this named shop, is wrong?”
2019-04-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT