Exclusive: The founders of SoulCycle built a startup for relationships, then pivoted to GLP-1 support groups. Now its assets are being acquired by WeightWatchers
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Exclusive: The founders of SoulCycle built a startup for relationships, then pivoted to GLP-1 support groups. Now its assets are being acquired by WeightWatchers

August 7, 2025
01:34 PM
5 min read
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financialhealthcareconsumer servicesmarket cyclesseasonal analysismarket

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Peoplehood cofounder Julie Rice is joining WeightWatchers as chief experience officer.

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5 min read

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financial news

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August 7, 2025

01:34 PM

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Fortune

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financialhealthcareconsumer servicesmarket cyclesseasonal analysismarket

s·MPW DailyExclusive: The founders of SoulCycle built a startup for relationships, then pivoted to GLP-1 support groups

Now its assets are being acquired by WeightWatchersBy Emma HinchliffeBy Emma HinchliffeMost Powerful Women EditorEmma HinchliffeMost Powerful Women EditorEmma Hinchliffe is Fortune’s Most Powerful Women editor, overseeing editorial for the longstanding franchise

As a senior writer at Fortune, Emma has covered women in and gender-lens news across , , and culture

She is the lead author of the Most Powerful Women Daily (formerly the Broadsheet), Fortune’s daily missive for and the women leading the world.SEE FULL BIO SoulCycle cofounder Julie Rice is selling the assets of her startup Peoplehood to WeightWatchers

In today’s edition: Jane Fraser’s meeting with Trump, some dark horse candidates for Fed chair, and a startup pivot that led it to WeightWatchers. – Peoplehood pivot

Two years ago, SoulCycle cofounders Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler launched another

It was called Peoplehood, and it was billed as a way for people to work on their relationships—a kind of unofficial group therapy that captured the spirituality that drew people to SoulCycle classes with an element of leadership coaching and self-reflection

Over the past several months, Peoplehood quietly pivoted to a new model: support groups for people taking GLP-1 medications

Now, Peoplehood is shutting down and the company’s assets have a buyer: WeightWatchers

The original, 62-year-old weight-loss community network, WeightWatchers itself recently came out of bankruptcy under a new CEO, lightened its long-burdensome debt load, and unveiled its strategic direction

Two years ago it acquired Sequence, a telehealth platform for prescribing GLP-1s

Now WeightWatchers plans to offer new options menopause support

WeightWatchers didn’t disclose the financial details of the transaction, but it’s acquiring Peoplehood’s and platforms and bringing on Rice as chief experience officer (Rice was a longtime member of the WeightWatchers board)

She’s bringing three employees with her (at one point, Peoplehood had as many as 60 but slimmed down to a sixth of that); Cutler isn’t joining WeightWatchers. (“She’s happy to send this baby off,” Rice says.) Peoplehood had raised funding from the venture firm Maveron. “Community is what has underpinned this throughout and it is as important, if not more important today than it’s ever been,” says WeightWatchers CEO Tara Comonte

Peoplehood’s GLP-1 pivot, while surprising to some, came out of finding duct-market fit, Rice says

People enjoyed coming to the community for other reasons—”We tried Peoplehood, we tried couplehood, we tried motherhood, we tried singlehood,” Rice says—but they stuck around longer when it was weight loss. “It was just stickier

It just was,” Rice says

Community was at its most powerful as a tool to support “habitual change.” SoulCycle cofounder Julie Rice is selling the assets of her startup Peoplehood to WeightWatchers

As chief experience officer, Rice will lead WeightWatchers’ expansion of its longtime support groups into a virtual model

In 2024, WeightWatchers had $786 million in annual revenue and the year with 3.3 million rs

WeightWatchers will continue to offer a mix of groups, some focused purely on GLP-1 users, a place to discuss topics understanding the science of the medications, dealing with side effects, eating while taking the therapies, and supporting weight loss through exercise and strength training

As WeightWatchers attempts to keep up with fast changes in this category—an oral weight loss medication is on the way—Rice will steer efforts to evolve communities

She says her biggest lesson from her years building Peoplehood is that “people just want to be together.” “This is a really new category

It is really hard to find information

Your best friends won’t tell you that they are taking these medications,” Rice says. “What I’ve seen in these rooms is that people want a teacher

They want a best friend who will tell them where they’re buying their tein and which brands they the best

And they want a cheerleader

They want somebody who’s saying, ‘You’re doing it right, you’re doing a great job.’ I think these rooms can be all of those things for people

They can be a classroom, a support system, a confidant.” Emma Hinchliffeemma.hinchliffe@fortune.com The Most Powerful Women Daily is Fortune’s daily briefing for and the women leading the world. here.ALSO IN THE HEADLINES- Major meeting

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The Trump administration ordered $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that were en route to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mali to be destroyed

The International Planned Parenthood Federation reports that that will lead to 174,000 unint pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions

Guardian- Other options

The two leading candidates to succeed Jerome Powell as Fed chair are both named Kevin. (Trump says "both Kevins are very good.") But two dark horses in the race are Michelle Bowman, the Fed's vice chair for supervision, and economist Judy Shelton

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The only thing was relearning guitar again."— Lindsay Lohan on revisiting her role in Freakier FridayThis is the web version of MPW Daily, a daily for and the world’s most powerful women. to get it dered free to your inbox.