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definitely no room for brake or suspension tech talk with bonedeth

I don't understand what you are getting at. YT made a financial commitment to those racers, those racers fulfilled their end of the agreement and Markus failed to pay them what he owed them. Whether you think a race team is a good investment or not, a business owner should pay their obligations. While it may be legal to not pay the team members it isn't ethical.

I tried to make this clear in my follow-up audio note, but I’m really not trying to throw shade at @Downtime Podcast or Chris. Two things can be true: Chris is one of the best hosts in the MTB world, and the Markus episode missed the mark for some of us. No podcast hits a home run every time. Every show I listen to has episodes where I think, “not for me” or “this one whiffed.” That’s normal. And the same is obviously true for my own content. In a way, Chris let Markus make his own bed. Anyone who...

+1 on Downtime here! The pre- and post-race shows are among the holy triumvirate of DH racing content (with WynTV and Vital Raw), absolutely not to be missed. The guests are often great but as hogfly says, the Downtime Goes Downhill series is evidence that the host n dem are interesting on their own. I have that as the best execution of that vibe in DH, it’s relatable and a really cool insight into the British DH racing scene. So yeah. Downtime good! Flossmann bad though. What’s noteworthy about Flossmann’s appearance is that he was given an open mic to...

Chris, lots of people sacrifice and do hard work. Usually to make profits for someone or lot’s of someone else. Lots of us here make huge sacrifices cause we love mtb at financial loss. Both in how it affects our careers and the money we spend. And I’m not talking on gear, but rather the millions if not billions of dollars people spend a year after year creating trails, races, etc out of pocket with zero profit or even for free. You start every podcast asking listeners for money to keep it going. Which is completely fine. I have zero...

Watching the Downtime Podcast with Marcus Flossman . I just got super upset. He talks about arranging a legal way to deliver bikes to customers while under court administration where he bought the bikes to deliver to the customers with his own money but then later on in the video, he’s basically shrugging 🤷🏼‍♂️ his shoulders when it came to supporting YT Mob , says the court wouldn’t let them pay the riders or the team. Riders are paid as independent contractors. So we now know he bought the company back. My question is why the heck didn’t he enter...

Chris, That is precisely my definition of paid work. If you are unhappy with the amount you should have charged more. It’s not like Marcus wouldn’t have paid it. And taking a weekend away from family to sit down with Marcus and give him a softee interview to spin his bs sounds like the worst use of time. Generally enjoy your show. But personally I think this episode is highly regrettable. I agree that your general style is good when it comes to interviewing racers and folk with no agenda. But Marcus paid you because he has an agenda. Not...

Flossman has all the classic traits of a narcissist. If you've ever worked with folks like this in any capacity... oof. He built of house of cards based on his charisma and it blew over. Expected.

Markus coming across as that POS who is bashing his wife and says something like "look at what you made me do, you made me do this" kind of vibes everyone else's fault but his.

I’m marveling at this dude’s ability to detach himself from decisions he made. Talking about these onerous contracts that have simply handcuffed them, whatever shall we do? Zero accountability. Like, I expect it from these sociopath CEO LinkedIn financebro podcast goblins, but it’s infuriating to hear. Made it to the halfway mark, I’m out. The cornball way he holds the mic should’ve been enough: dude’s a kook. I sure hope he stays out of racing forever.

It sure seems like Markus came back in early 2024 and the strategy / spending didn't change. Perhaps there were layoffs. Perhaps there were other cuts. But it really didn't sound like it from that interview. What's wild to me was that he was already going hat in hand to the PE guys at the beginning of 2025, and they told him they weren't going to give him 100% of the cash infusion he was asking for. That should have been a red siren moment for him. Time to cut and cut deep. Instead the strategy appears to have been...

Just remember what HE did to Gwin. Honesty, transparency & relationship based business growth are dead last on that guy's priority list. Second worst priority...financial stewardship.

This was great! Crazy fast turnaround, too. Thanks for your timely thoughts on the Downtime Podcast, Jeff. To your point about Markus being at the helm when he alleges that "PE was overly focused on growth," I agree. As I was listening to your 9-minute response, I was thinking about Andreas Kolb, who was likely signed to the 2025 YT MOB sometime around September of 2024, well after Markus came back as CEO in February of 2024. Kolb must have been a HUGE contract and represents YT choosing to double down on their DH and Enduro teams, especially given the...

As much as I love it (and am a Patreon supporter) I've started skipping/abandoning episodes because they seem like straight-up puff pieces...

Maybe that is a pod we could actually get.

Impressive. Very nice. Now let's see YTUSA's CEO tell-all podcast.

I think it’s pretty clear Markus will say anything he thinks is will help him. Doing it is a diffirent story. forgot to say really enjoyed the pod. You guys kept it light. With just enough of classic team robot to keep me interested. Jeff’s insight was fantastic. Really looks like essentially yt has only ever grown thru big investments that never turned into profits. And every opportunity to profit has been spent on the look of being successful. If Marcus had half a brain he’d rebuild himself on the German market on a small scale and wait for the...

Ironically, this fits in this thread... But seriously this is one of the craziest freeride edits I've ever seen. A tooth hanger clip and a massive wall bang clip in the same edit... ON THE SAME BIKE? I thought that thing was gonna blow up on that double compression at the end. Wow

Number of bikes shouldn't matter. 1) The warranty rate is probably very low, all things considered. So your net cost is measured in the 4 digit range. 2) Transition has shown the world how warranty should work in a D2C (or hybrid) environment. It really isn't even that hard. Always make sure the customer is happy and make it easy for things to get fixed in a timely fashion. Again...its not hard.