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Super good question. The honest answer is: it depends, but we can frame it pretty cleanly. Private equity is generally not structured to “swing and miss” the way venture is. In a traditional buyout strategy, you’re underwriting to avoid permanent capital loss, even if you’re using leverage. That said, bankruptcies do happen. Depending on the dataset, the strategy (mega buyout vs middle market vs distressed), the industry mix, and the time period you measure, you’ll see something like mid single digits up to the teens as a reasonable range for bankruptcy outcomes across portfolios. The more “risk on” the underwriting...

This article about the troubles PE firms are having (cue the tiniest of tiny violins) got me wondering; what happens at the PE firm when an acquisition fails; i.e. gets written off/goes bankrupt (Kona, Revel, Vitus, Nukeproof etc.) Is that just considered part of the cost of business? Do the people who championed that acquisition face any consequences or is it just "oh well, we'll do better on the next one"? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/business/private-equity-stock-market…

Oh, and just to back up my assertion of the importance of the human component, here is a screenshot of what I have ordered from Amazon. I never ordered from Amazon any bike components, but I saw this deal and wanted to give it a try. Price was 394€ by the way (including 19% VAT) for a full XX1 Eagle groupset, shipped from Europe: First time I ordered, I received a RS rear shock (OE product). Seller told me to send it back and order again. Guess what I received. The same thing went on to happen for 4 orders...

Mid January

I think we have known these were coming for awhile but this is the first time I’ve seen the Tacky Chan radials on something other than a race bike. (Post from Crossworx Instragram)

Here’s the thing. People get hired into positions of power. They start thinking “I gotta do something!!!” The problem begins when “do something” turns into “change the thing”. The “something” they could do is at all costs protect the core identities that surround the current position. With all the current fuck-ups in business branding you’d think some lessons had been learned. Nope, they can’t help themselves. I actually appreciate that the logo on my 2025 Fox Factory DHX2 is exactly the same logo that was on the shock on my 1994 Cannondale Super-V 1000, and on my Fox Factory Twin-Clicker...

@rodrigomorais Haha, good one! No, truly, these words mean a lot to us. That's also what we're doing this for! It's great to know that people are appreciating the effort we put into trying to make our products sustainable and user friendly instead of cranking out one iteration after the other just to create that fear of missing out. Of course we do want to sell new posts (and we need to), but it's so much more rewarding, hearing people tell us that their BikeYoke dropper (particularly the Revive) is that one thing they take from bike to bike. I...

Wow, just wow. The amount of insight we get in here is absolutely fantastic, and this week specifically has been tremendous. To Sacki, big thank you for sharing the passion, the stories and the pictures! Seems your posts here are as good as the ones you build :D

I get what you’re saying Mickey, but I think it’s actually a positive. There are a ton of kids who aren’t going to go professional who just kind of drop out of mountain biking when they graduate high school because there’s no real organized path forward for them that doesn’t involve forgoing college and dedicating themselves 100% to training and racing. They might continue to ride and race competitively if there were some better transition into college programs, which then might start to grow college programs. You might get some occasional outliers like Dak as well as a result, too.

When I refer to "manpower" I am talking about our in-house capacity. We manufacture/assemble our posts in Taiwan in our own facilities with our own team of now 13 people. That means every single post is assembled by ourselves, not, as it is otherwise often the case, by a "partner"/factory/assembler who is contracted to do all the sourcing, manufacturing, assembly to get the product ready in the box to sell. We draw every single part, source the suppliers, have them made, get them to us and then put everything together in our own facilities with our own machines. No post...

Completely O/T but a big shout-out to @Sacki - your posts changed my dropper experience from a random gamble to a reliable, dependable, don't-have-to-think-about-it-anymore boring matter. Boring is good.

Those are some rad insights Sacki! Question: we always heard from the bike manufacturers that they couldn't ship the bikes out because parts were missing/late etc. Do you think there WAS a point where those crazy numbers of posts could have been sold by you IF you had made them? Or those were in fact purely fictitious numbers that never materialized at all?

The bike industry as a whole could have sold more than they did in 2020 and most likely throughout the whole 2021. However, the supply chains simply were not able to cope with the demand. And I completely understand that, for some companies (those that essentially everyone needed parts from) it was impossible to give exact lead times. Their systerm could not scale for that demand and that's why you suddenly heard about lead times of 700-800 days. In reality it could have been 300 or 1000. Simply because no one could accurately scale it up just like that, because...

The DH casing HR3 has a different sidewall from the other Maxxis DH tires. The sidewall has a thicker layer of rubber near the bead that can be easily felt by hand when the tire is deflated. I haven't seen any marketing or info from Maxxis about the differences though which makes me think they're cooking up a different/better option (radial?)

Thanks @Sacki , for the detail! @jeff.brines how about asking Sacki if he's up for a podcast? I best we'd all be into hearing more about Bike Yoke!

Wow. Thanks for sharing. What an incredible inside scoop and a reminder that sometimes... common sense makes business sense.

It's a very interesting and impressive interview. Thank you, Sam, for taking the time and going so much into detail and also Jeff, of course for trying and then making this happen! It was interesting to hear how YT experienced the turbulent times during covid. For us, I can say, that we already saw OE orders being postponed and cancelled already around Q2 2022. But the more important thing happened to me in April 2021. There was one particular OE customer who used to need around 1,500 post per year from us. End of 2019 (pre-Covid) we received a projected...

Wrapped up @jeff.brines podcast with Sam yesterday. I'm definitely not a business wonk, but I really appreciated the high-level business discussion that was still digestable for me, as an educator who runs a school. It also gave me a lot to think about even in my own practice of being the "CEO" of a school around making tough decisions, strategy, and revenues vs. outflow. Anyway, I feel like this sort of business insight into the bike world might have a somewhat limited audience... but I do think that it follow the 1,000 true fans model that the people who appreciate...