https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/568069889/the-peloton-bike-bring-home-the-studio-cycling-exp
After a bit of research today, my other 2 cents:
As Buffett would say, invest in businesses, not stocks… or something along those lines. So he bought Coca-Cola, not Pepsi, and is still holding it. He got into cloud, but picked IBM… and sold it.
Peloton is a hardware and software company. Your hardware can get commoditised (especially by 
companies) once someone can smell the money. Your software can get replicated. What are the barriers of entry to making fitness bikes or creating fitness content and streaming in online? Ask Disney and Netflix.
Let’s look at the pricing (by the Wirecutter) and direct competition:
Pretty much everyone who tries the Peloton likes it, at least on a test run. Peloton’s customer reviews average 4.8 out of five, across more than 1,000 reviewers.
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The Peloton indoor bicycle, with its live-streaming and on-demand classes, costs roughly $3,000 for the first year and nearly $500 each year thereafter.
(Peloton said in the S-1 that its main customer earns under $75k 
)
(Source - Wirecutter Peloton Bike Review: What to Know Before You Buy for 2023 | Reviews by Wirecutter)
There used to be a great hardware company called GOPRO. They are technically up for sale. Excellent innovative product at the time. After the IPO, they tried becoming a platform-based company with its own “YouTube”—and thus follow the machine-platform-crowd business model of successful tech companies, but failed, ultimately. I still own a GOPRO camera—but you, on average, only need to buy 1 camera:
So, technically, you buy a bike—a many have and are still using it—then pay for a subscription (or not). You don’t buy a new Peloton bike every 12 months or 24, when your contract runs out, or 33—the average replacement cycle for smartphones in the US.
Does Peloton sell differentiable products? Some people drive a Vauxhall, some—a Mercedes or a Tesla. A car can be not just a machine for movement, but also:
…a complex symbol denoting status, taste, rank, achievement, aspiration, and (these days) being “smart”—that is, buying fuel economy rather than display. But the customer buys even more than these attributes. The enormous efforts of the auto manufacturers to cut the time between placement and delivery of an order and to select, train, supervise, and motivate their dealerships suggest that these too are integral parts of the products people buy and are therefore ways by which products may be differentiated.
(unless you’re ordering a kitchen appliance from Currys PC World…
Source - Harvard Business Review)
That means they have to convince people to choose Pelotons and make them fork out $2.2k (or $4k). Then we should sign up to the app.
Does this justify the hefty Sales and Marketing spending Peloton undertakes every year? Possibly:
So, can Peloton become the iPhone of stationary bikes and treadmills among the “Androids”? It has a machine (not the bikes/treadmills but the data from all users), a platform (paid classes), a crowd (can you do “multiplayer”? they have a leaderboard… a bit like “Strava”):
A differentiated product doesn’t need to be a better product, it just needs to be perceived as a better product by the buyer. Much of the advertising and promotion that occurs in our society – of which there is plenty – is focused on trying to convince consumers that their product is better than those of competitors. Whether it is actually better is immaterial. The only thing that counts is if you can convince the consumer that it is better.
(Source - Iowa State University analysis)
Competition
- Flywheel’s FLY Anywhere (launched 2017)
Have you heard of Flywheel?
Peloton filed suit against Flywheel, claiming Flywheel infringed upon Peloton’s patents, “by creating a copycat of the Peloton Bike experience called the “FLY Anywhere” that, among other things, detects, synchronizes and compares the ride metrics of remote users on a graphical user interface,” according to the suit filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Marshall Division.
FLY Anywhere is cheaper at $1,699, while the subscription is $39/month:
Here it is next to Peloton Bike - from Wirecutter:
(Source - Peloton Bike Review: What to Know Before You Buy for 2023 | Reviews by Wirecutter)
No wonder there’s this lawsuit.
- Echelon Smart Connect EX5s:
Source - https://flexmastergeneral.com
- TechnoGym (!) Bike Personal
Bike Personal is a “great” name, like FLY Anywhere… very catchy and googleable 
TechnoGym are the Samsung of fitness hardware https://www.technogym.com/gb/bike-personal.html
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Any other stationary bike that can connect via Bluetooth / ANT+.
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Bike trainers if you’re a cyclists - made by Wahoo, Tacx, etc etc.
Some can be much cheaper (minus the bike) and have apps, connectivity.
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By the way - this was on Kickstarter:
And this is now:
