Overheard at Launch House NYC yesterday, "...they raised $100 million with literally just a landing page."

Oh to be building in web3 rn.

FITNESS

Peloton is Pelodone  

Even for a stationary bike manufacturer, Peloton is going nowhere fast. The company announced yesterday that it has replaced its CEO and founder, John Foley, and plans to lay off 2,800 employees, including ~20% of its corporate positions (but no instructors). 

The goal: help the company save $800 million in annual costs. 

What the heck happened

If we rewind to 2020, Peloton was on top of the world. It notched a 172% spike in sales over the course of the year as the pandemic forced wealthy gym-goers to stay home and sweat all over their carpets. 

But that same boom is now coming back to haunt them. During the peak of Peloton mania, the company made plans to build a new factory in Ohio to meet the surge in demand. But now that people have realized that gym > bike with ipad, that demand has disappeared. 

• Now, Peloton is “winding down the development" of its Ohio factory in order to save an extra $60 million. 

• Ex-CEO Foley admitted that the company made "missteps," including scaling its operations "too rapidly" and overinvested in some areas of the business. 

Enter, Barry McCarthy 

The new Peloton CEO joins the company by way of Spotify and Netflix where he was previously CFO of both streaming giants. The message this appointment sends is clear—cost cutting and efficiency are the name of the game in the post-pandemic era of Peloton. 

Zoom out: Down 80% from last January’s highs, Peloton’s battered stock actually jumped 25% yesterday as rumors swirled about Nike, Amazon, and Apple reportedly exploring bids to acquire the company. But for now, the cost cutting efforts and changes in leadership seem to indicate that Peloton is charting a path forward on its own.

CRYPTO

Polygon secures the bag

From 2017 till the present, Polygon had taken in just $750,000 in outside capital and struggled to raise money at a less than $30 million valuation.

Now, it’s worth roughly $13 billion and on Monday, announced it had raised a monster $450 million round led by Sequoia India. Talk about a J-curve. 

Quick Polygon background

Ethereum has the largest developer ecosystem of any blockchain, but it’s slow and has brutually high transaction costs (aka gas fees). Layer-2 solutions attempt to move transactions off chain to make everything cheaper and faster. Polygon is among the largest and most successful of these solutions  

• How large and successful? Using metrics like daily active users and transactions volume, Polygon is “5 to 10 times bigger than Solana and 20 times bigger than Avalanche,” Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, told TechCrunch 

How it got there: Polygon’s white paper highlights a technique called Plasma that utilizes a sidechain to address Ethereum’s performance issues.

Where it’s going: Nailwal says Polygon is using the new round of funding to explore other potential Layer-2 solutions including zero knowledge rollups, the technique he believes will be the end game for blockchain scaling. 

Bottom line: The huge influx of VC interest—40 firms participated in Polygon's round—shows that VC’s are now very interested in getting a piece of Ethereum scaling solutions after paying little attention to the space in previous years. 

QUICK HITS

Speed Round

Stat: Just when you think crypto is the only place for brain melting gains, the stock market hits you with a stat like this—$10,000 invested in Monster 30 years ago would be worth $27 million today. But only if you HODLed hard.

Startup: Proprietary technology is a moat for many startups. But what if that proprietary tech had two legs, feathers, and an existential crisis every time it crossed the road? You'd get Cook Ventures, the farming startup that just raised $50 million in debt to continue developing its strain of "proprietary chickens" that get sick less, are easier to raise, and tase better than your average clucker. More here. 

Rabbit hole: Explaining the wordcel vs shape rotator meme 

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Disney+ just ran its first test of livestreaming in the US

• DOJ says it seized $3.6 billion in stolen bitcoin from 2016 hack

• Apple is introducing a feature for iPhone that turns the device into a contactless payment terminal.

• Nvidia and Arm call off $80B merger and Arm CEO resigns

• Bumble made its first acquisition, a French Gen Z dating app called Fruitz

• Peter Thiel is stepping down from Meta Board

• Amazon is launching its telehealth program, known as Amazon Care, nationwide

TRIVIA

What is "Yahoo" an acronym for?

1. You Are Hating Older Operators

2. Yes A Humble Omniscient OS

3. Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle

4. Youthful Argonauts Have Open Offices

SOMEONE BUILD THIS

...also need this for Discord.

TID BITS

The winter Olympics are underway, but you probably haven't been watching. That's okay. Catch up quickly here.  

1. US figure skater Nathan Chen skated the best short program...ever.

2. Two time Olympic champion, Mikaela Shiffrin has been disqualified from both her events so far.

3. Jessie Diggins became the first American woman to win an individual Olympic medal in cross-country skiing.

4. Words cannot describe how bizarre the Beijing Big Air Jump facility is. You just gotta see it for yourself.

TRIVIA ANSWER

3. Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle