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May 18
1h 4m

1098: Pandemic Rollercoaster Veteran Cha...

The Future of Finance is Listening
About this episode

When Peloton’s stock debuted in 2019, CFO Jill Woodworth believed the playbook was air‑tight. She had shifted fiscal calendars, re‑segmented reporting and shaped statements that “tell a story,” she tells us. Then COVID hit. Orders “flew nine‑fold overnight,” marketing was switched off, and customer focus narrowed to a single metric: getting bikes from order to doorstep. Wait times ballooned to “four or five months,” but earlier bets—a vertically integrated Taiwanese factory and Peloton‑owned delivery crews—proved “fortuitous,” enabling a sprint to drive delivery toward one week. When demand fell just as quickly, Woodworth slashed the bike’s price and led a restructuring that cut “$800 million of costs,” announcing it days after the board replaced the CEO. The lesson, she says, is clear: even elegant models need room for the unimaginable.

That conviction now guides her first months at Prenuvo, where a patient can slip into an MRI bore and, under an hour later, leave with a radiologist‑written report on every organ and joint, Woodworth tells us. She is “learning the business” alongside technology, AI and clinical teams, convinced the company holds “so many different ways to grow,” including a new biomarker offering. Finance remains small yet “mighty,” but she will embed analysts so thoroughly that the head of clinical practice “doesn’t want to be in a meeting without” them. Acting as co‑pilot to the CEO, she intends to safeguard a balance sheet that grants “every available option” for raising capital—ensuring, this time, finance anticipates both the surge and the calm that follow ahead.

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