Peloton's new CEO is joining the fitness company at a difficult time. Exercise bike sales are slowing, stock price is declining and takeover rumors are swirling. On Tuesday, the company announced plans to cut 20% of its workforce.
But new chief executive Barry McCarthy has a history of helping transform companies. McCarthy, 68, is the former chief financial officer of both Spotify and Netflix, and he's served on the boards of companies ranging from Pandora to Rent the Runway and Instacart.
McCarthy was an early employee of Netflix, joining the tech company in 1999, two years after it was founded by current CEO Reed Hastings. McCarthy served as chief financial officer until leaving in 2010 — and during that time, he helped shift Netflix from mailing DVDs to the online streaming business that has since helped disrupt the entire entertainment industry.
When the company's online streaming service first launched in 2007, it only had about 1,000 films available to stream, compared to roughly 70,000 titles on DVD. But McCarthy remained confident: In March 2008, he told Reuters that Netflix would be the market leader for streaming movies online, even ahead of larger tech companies like Apple and Amazon.
The plan, McCarthy said, was to make Netflix's platform as widely available as possible. "We'd like to be on as many platforms as possible," he said. "If you buy an electronic platform and you're able to access Netflix content on your TV because it's on that set-top box, that's great."
