Troubled fitness startup: Peloton is cutting another 500 jobs

The turnaround now has to happen within six months. Also: Spotify also announces savings and Volocopter is allowed to test at Europe’s first “Vertiport” in Rome.

Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.

The top topics:

Pelotons Financial situation remains precarious: The US sporting goods manufacturer is implementing further cuts. Now another 500 employees are to lose their jobs. This is the fourth round of layoffs from the fitness startup hyped during the pandemic.

In August, the New York company announced that around 800 jobs would be cut. In September, co-founder John Foley left. This means that only around 3,800 people will work for the company. About a year ago there were more than twice as many. If the turnaround doesn’t succeed in the next six months, Peloton will likely not continue to exist as an independent company, CEO Barry McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal. [Mehr bei Wall Street Journal und The Guardian]

on Founder scene: Fobizz – spoken Fobits – it contains Fobi, the abbreviation for advanced training. And that is exactly what the platform offers: further training by teachers for teachers. Teachers can apply to the platform and offer their colleagues courses on all areas related to digital education, teaching tools and media literacy. Demand exploded during Corona. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

And here are the other headlines of the night:

Spotify Also struggling with the global economy, the music streaming service is laying off 5 percent of its internal podcasting staff and discontinuing 10 original podcasts produced by its studios Gimlet and Parcast. The Swedes acquired Gimlet and Parcast three years ago as part of a $1 billion foray into podcasting. Spotify hoped this would boost its advertising revenue. [Mehr bei Hollywood Reporter und Techcrunch]

Volocopter allowed to test on Europe’s first “Vertiport” in Rome. “This is an extraordinary milestone,” said Marco Troncone, head of the airport operator Aeroporti di Roma (ADR), the “Handelsblatt”. The tests are on schedule. This stipulates that Rome will be one of the first airports in Europe to put air taxis into commercial operation by 2024. Only on Wednesday did it become known that the start-up was threatened with legal trouble with its investors, who wanted to obtain “fair participation” from the tech company from Bruchsal. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt]

Of the Twitter-Musk dispute appears to be easing: After Tesla-Chef Elon Musk has relented and now wants to buy the short message service, the scheduled court date will be suspended until October 28th. The takeover should be completed by then. The tech billionaire requested the move, saying the banks were working together to fund the deal. Twitter actually wanted to keep the trial date as is to avoid “further mischief and delays.” [Mehr bei Wall Street Journal und Handelsblatt]

Amazon has stopped work on its semi-autonomous delivery robot called Scout. It’s another sign the online retailer is cutting costs to cope with slowing retail sales amid the economic downturn. Since 2019, the Scout team has been overseeing a pilot project for delivering packages to customers via delivery robots. Amazon is now in the process of dissolving the 400-strong team that worked on the technology. An Amazon spokesman said the affected employees would be offered new jobs at the company. [Mehr bei Bloomberg]

Tiger Global Management plans to raise $6 billion for its fifteenth fund, which the VC plans to use to finance private tech companies. The New York-based hedge fund had collected more than twice as much from investors in its last fund. Also this week, news broke that John Curtius, one of Tiger’s most active dealmakers, is leaving the company to start his own rival firm, Cedar Investment Management. [Mehr bei The Information, Axios und Techcrunch]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: A term sheet is the declaration of intent for an investment. The Berlin VC Cherry Ventures has now published a sample – with tips for founders. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

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Happy Friday!

Your Gründerszene editors