Peloton had a huge surge in sales during the pandemic. But they struggled to stock enough inventory to fill orders, leading to long waits. In the meantime, they made bets into expanding into a whole bunch of different markets that compared to the growth they were promising wall street; app-only subscriptions without the equipment, music festivals/collaborations, hotels and gyms, and apparel/lifestyle brands, among other things.

As things started to re-open, they got hit with a high volume of returns, cancelled subscriptions, and the treadmill recall JUST as their production had finally caught up. They were stuck with inventory that no one wanted, and a lot their expansion bets fell flat. In their June '22 results, compared to the year prior their revenue fell by 10% while their costs went up by 40%. Within 6 months their stock was trading -75% from its pandemic peak.

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Robinhood's initial growth was a right-place-right-time kind of thing. They were one of the few fintech companies that were making a bet on commission-free retail investing, aimed at new/small investors, which they called "democratizing". But because regular trading was free, they earned their revenue by charging fees on more exotic transactions, like options, IPOs, crypto, futures, margin, and other things the average person couldn't really explain if asked to write a one-page essay about it.

Nonetheless user growth was rapid. In Q1 2021, they had something like 18 million users. By Q2 it was 22.5 million. As they explained in their prospectus, there was extraordinary growth in retail investing. A combination of the crypto bubble, meme stocks, bored people working at home hoping to turn day-trading into a hobby, and spike in savings from lifestyle shifts and pandemic relief funds. 40% of their revenue was from options trading. Another 20% from crypto.

Hoping to capitalize on this growth, they went IPO. In their annual reports, they say their chief competitive assets are "Creative Product Design", "Brand", and "Scale". But investors saw the writing on the wall - either the retail craze would slow down on its own, or anyone else could come along and build a good app targeted towards retail. Their stock price fell ~10% on its first day of trading. Their brand took a hit following accusations on order flow and transaction limits related to GME. Today, it's also about -75% down from the initial price.