At 6 a.m. on September 5, 2025, Owen Akibi Herrera found his side hustle in trouble.
Akibi, founder of the New York City-based social fitness group Peak and Pace, had spent weeks planning a 5K run and afterparty on Governors Island, a former military base at the tip of Manhattan that’s accessible only by water. He and his team planned to load 18 trucks with supplies and load them onto ferries. The morning before the event, we received word that the boat had broken down and the vehicle was stranded on Wall Street, the city’s busy financial district.
He said he spent hours on the phone with Governors Island officials worried about refunds for the 2,000 people who bought tickets to the event. He managed to get another boat, and the last stock, about 30 portable toilets, arrived when the first guests arrived on the island, he added. By the end of the day, the effort felt worth it. Akibi said he saw a 25-year-old member hang a medal around the neck of an older participant at the finish line.
Akibi, 27, originally founded Peak and Pace as a run club in 2024 while working in algorithmic trading sales at investment bank JP Morgan. Running at Peak and Pace is always free, he says, and large parties typically require tickets ranging from $15 to $25. The company generated more than $640,000 in revenue in 2025, almost entirely through these parties, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
While not all parties are profitable, the company overall operates at a 15% profit margin, says Akbi, who now works full time as head of partnerships at the San Francisco-based AI robotics lab Grounded Superintelligence. Instead of taking a second paycheck, he says, he invests the profits in a side hustle.
Running clubs cost about 10 cents, Akibi admits, and there are at least 200 in New York alone. Many are free to join, and the latest data on running club participation rates from running tracking app Strava shows global participation has increased by nearly 60% in 2024. Many Gen Z adults are at an age when they are moving to a new city for work and are especially looking for social groups, such as organized clubs, to make friends and combat loneliness.
He said Akibi, also a member of Generation Z, launched Peak and Pace in July 2024 after moving from London to New York as a way to create community for herself and others beyond nightlife. Although he’s always had an entrepreneurial streak and had a side job in real estate sales before Peak and Pace, he says he always wanted to monetize the club to get the community involved in big-ticket events like comedy nights and ski trips.
Akibi sitting in front of the Peak and Pace flag photographed at a club event.
Peak and pace delivery
Akibi posted daily on social media to promote Peak and Pace, and by the fifth session, the number of participants had increased to about 150, he said, after which he hosted parties at Manhattan bars for about $20 per participant. As participation in the run increased, parties featuring DJs and food vendors were also held to justify the ticket price. Now, Peak and Pace also hosts hiking and ski trips outside of the city.
Over time, Akibi says running the club started to feel like a second full-time job. “I had to maintain a very high level of performance in my (day-to-day) work. I was put in a position of high responsibility, so keeping myself in a good mental state was probably the most difficult part,” he says. Including his side job, he worked 18 hours a day for about a year.
More than 30,000 people ultimately participated in the Peak and Pace event in 2025, Akibi said. I took this as a sign that running a side hustle on top of a full-time job wasn’t sustainable for long. In a bit of a coincidence for him, he moved to San Francisco in March and accepted his current role with Grounded Superintelligence. Peak and Pace currently has a team of nine contractors who lead the event almost completely independently of the founders. He said Akibi checks in with him every month when he visits New York, but that he is looking for a new manager to take over.
The lessons learned from running Peak and Pace helped him find community in San Francisco, he added. “Making friends means understanding other people,” and “you can develop a lot of patience by attending events and interacting with people.”
Patience is especially helpful in finding common ground with other people, Akibi says.
“It can be frustrating when you don’t understand someone’s perspective,” he says. “If you can be patient and try to put yourself in their shoes, you can understand almost any situation. Then you can adapt more easily.”
