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From SoulCycle to Support Circles—how Peoplehood ended up with WeightWatchers
- Mandy S
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
A relationship startup pivots to GLP-1 support and sells to WeightWatchers
SoulCycle cofounders Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler
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Two years after launching as a guided “relationship workout,” Peoplehood—the venture from SoulCycle cofounders Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler—shifted its core product to facilitated support groups for people using GLP-1 medications.
The company is now winding down operations, with its assets acquired by WeightWatchers (WW). The deal reflects a wider reconfiguration of consumer health: weight care delivered through a clinical backbone, reinforced by structured peer support.
What changed at Peoplehood
Peoplehood’s initial proposition borrowed from the choreography of boutique fitness: time-boxed sessions, trained facilitators, and repeatable rituals meant to build trust.
As GLP-1 therapies expanded, the team redirected that format toward the very practical challenges users face—dose titration, side-effect management, and the day-to-day behavior change that must accompany medication. In short, Peoplehood evolved from relationship coaching to adherence coaching.
Why WeightWatchers wants this
WW has been rebuilding its operating model to pair medical programs with community, moving beyond calorie tracking toward a more clinical, outcomes-oriented service. Peer groups are a natural fit: they create accountability, normalize side effects, and turn solitary regimens into shared routines. The format also travels well—digital or in-person—and can be woven into telehealth visits, nutrition consults, and activity plans.
As WW’s leadership has emphasized, the objective is to “accelerate innovation” and “reinvest in our members” following a summer restructuring that significantly reduced debt and clarified priorities. In practice, that means integrating clinical access (including GLP-1 prescribing through its clinic arm) with life-stage offerings such as menopause support, then surrounding members with evidence-based coaching and community.
The market signal behind the move
The GLP-1 category has scaled from niche to mainstream in only a few cycles of product iteration. Global spend surpassed tens of billions of dollars in 2024, and U.S. weekly prescriptions for the leading agents now number in the hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, more than twenty states report adult obesity prevalence at or above 35%, underscoring the size of the addressable population and the need for durable weight maintenance strategies.
Key numbers at a glance
Global anti-obesity medicine spend exceeded $30B in 2024.
U.S. weekly prescriptions for top GLP-1s recently surpassed 700k combined.
WW eliminated roughly $1.15B of debt in 2025 and is investing in clinical and women’s-health programs.
Peoplehood’s groups offer a plug-and-play format for adherence support within that model.
How a “support-first” asset creates value
Adherence and persistence. Group-based programs can improve medication persistence by setting expectations for titration, troubleshooting side effects in real time, and translating clinical instructions into everyday habits. They also encourage modest, consistent behavior changes—protein prioritization, fiber intake, resistance training, and sleep hygiene—that support fat loss while protecting lean mass.
Dose efficiency. Better coaching can reduce the likelihood of abrupt discontinuation and enable dose optimization, which matters for access and affordability. For payers, employers, and health systems, a regimen that maintains outcomes at the lowest effective dose is preferable to intermittent, high-dose use with frequent drop-offs.
Experience design. Peoplehood’s format emphasizes facilitator quality, psychological safety, and repeatable rituals. Those elements are teachable and measurable—attendance, participation rates, symptom resolution, and satisfaction scores—and can be audited like any other clinical-adjacent protocol.
Integration questions to watch
Product architecture. Will WW embed groups directly into care pathways (e.g., auto-enrollment after a first script), or treat them as an add-on?
Data and outcomes. Which metrics will be tracked—body-weight change, waist circumference, lean-mass proxy measures, medication persistence, or patient-reported outcomes—and how will those feed back into clinical decisions?
Access and equity. GLP-1 coverage remains uneven. Group formats can broaden access to high-quality guidance even when medical touchpoints are sparse, but pricing and scheduling will determine real usability.
Women’s-health focus. With a menopause program rolling out, expect protocol variants for symptom clusters (sleep disruption, vasomotor symptoms) and life-stage nutrition needs.
The acquisition signals where consumer health is heading next: medication anchored to behavior science and community. For incumbents, the lesson is straightforward—own the protocol, not just the app. For startups, it is a reminder that strong, human-centered delivery models can be as valuable as software, especially when they translate complex therapies into routines people can actually follow.
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