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as someone who's written and deleted as many posts as I've actually made, I totally empathize with feeling like you have something to say without a good way to say it. that said, overwhelmed is not a word I'd ever use to describe what I've seen you write on this thread, or on vital in general. yeah, Robot made an eloquent and insightful post, but you've made plenty of those yourself (the last few in this discussion included). it's so rad to see such thoughtfulness put into discussions about mountain bicycles on the internet, and y'all are two of the...

Hey everyone, not mad at anyone in this thread (besides maybe myself). I clearly have ideas and a delivery style that probably isn’t ideal for a mountain bike forum. Robot wrote a genuinely great post (he’s a better writer than me), and I realized there was no way for me to counter it. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I started turning into this (actual photo Tucker took of me this morning): Any frustration you see from me is with myself, not anyone else. I like friction. I like debate. What I don’t like is knowing...

While the name is kinda on point, it could be worse, like "Ransom."

This might be the only mtb forum where people actually get along 84 pages in, talk about REAL books in both finance and philosophy, and say sorry. Long live vital

Very much this; I've learned a tremendous amount from this thread alone, and have been delighted and surprised at how civil and thoughtful the conversation has been. Jeff, I hope you reconsider and feel welcome to return but either way, thank you for sharing your time and expertise so freely, it's a been a real pleasure to be a beneficiary!

I don't have a horse in this race other than being very sad if Jeff stops posting his type of posts, and interacting with all of us in reply to help us along. It seems to me Jeff's posts were (are) nearly universally loved here, there's a reason I started jokingly referring to this thread as "bike industry talk and lessons in finance with Jeff". It would be a different landscape without Jeff and I hope he reconsiders.

But what happens to the NA entity if the European (and main) entity closes down? It's originally a German company so I assume that means that the European entity was the one responsible for designing and manufacturing the bikes. I assume all the manufacturing contracts, IP, parts supply deals, trademarks, etc. are all tied to that entity. Are YT going to transfer all ownership of that over to the NA operation? Either way I think they have burned a lot of trust recently. I think people would be crazy to buy a bike from them until there is clarification on...

Who in their right mind is going to spend any money on a new e-bike from YT right now? If I wanted to get rid of several thousand dollars quickly for nothing in return, there are plenty of better ways to do it, such as setting it on fire or hiring a lawyer to claw back money from YT for other customers.

Not sure if they have just forgotten to tell PB to not run that ad or what but they should postpone the launch until they offer some sort of update on the future of the brand and what they are doing for all the European customers who have had money taken for orders they seemingly cannot deliver or refund.

Not sure I’ll ever finish the long blog post, so dropping a few thoughts here instead: YT did sell a majority stake to a PE firm. -Details are scarce. We don’t know the exact stake sold (just that it was over 51%), how many equity owners there really were (beyond the two founders), the deal structure, valuation, any earn-outs, if Markus retained a stake etc etc. -Without that info, blaming Markus might not be fair . Sure, flaunting wealth on Instagram is a bad look, especially during a downturn, but that’s social media for you. I’ve posted cringe stuff too...

I feel your pain haha

I think the primary compensation mechanism for tech bro execs is when they get to imitate Steve Jobs walking around a visually minimal stage design in jeans talking about a powerpoint: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2025/03/31/rivians-micromobil…

Customer service suicide with sending out that email. So bro, no bike, no refund. Good lucking earning back any goodwill after that.

I don’t mean to make light of a bad situation, but this felt inevitable. Anyone with any level of inside knowledge of the bike industry could look at YT from 30,000 feet and perhaps wonder if they have long had a money tree or maybe the operation was a money laundering front for the cartel.\ Some head scratchers, in no particular order: -Aggressively low prices (like...how is this possible low pricing) -Bloated SKU count (for them, its mostly the number of builds they have per model of bike) -Complex global supplier web (true for everyone, but their vendor count is...