Peloton co-founder John Foley is a rug man now

What Ernesta’s spherical tells us about at the moment’s VC market

John Foley clearly didn’t take (ahem) a brake after leaving Peloton.

The previous co-founder and CEO of the related health firm — who stepped down as CEO in February and left the corporate altogether in September — is again with a brand new startup.

Ernesta, which goals to launch in spring 2023, will promote customized rugs by a direct-to-consumer technique. It has already raised a $25 million Sequence A spherical from a slate of buyers that additionally backed Peloton, together with True Ventures and Lee Fixel, by his present agency Addition.

It’s not shocking to see Foley getting again into the startup recreation by any means — enterprise capital each embraces failure and loves comeback story. Plus, there are many earlier examples of this taking place involving people who left corporations on a lot worse phrases than Foley did. However this deal is especially attention-grabbing — even once you look previous the seeming randomness of it.

For one factor, comeback tales in enterprise don’t typically begin in the identical calendar yr that the earlier story resulted in. And Foley’s capability to shortly increase such a large spherical earlier than the corporate’s launch really tells us fairly a bit about the place the market is at proper now.