Why do so many startups fail?
There are many different reasons why startups or companies in general fail. In my experience, however, I think there is no one single cause, but a constellation of mistakes or misfortunes that once combined can be fatal. Common causes include: - hiring! having the right people on board is key, a wrong hire can ruin a company; - cash! many entrepreneurs fail to anticipate or generally underestimate the cash requirements of their business; - infrastructure! here I am referring to execution infrastructure which may be as basic as billing system, IT, policies etc. I my experience, most startups neglect this areas as they focus principally on bringing their products to market and hope to figure-out the rest later; - product! sometimes great product simply fail the test of simplicity and consumers or customers simply walk away; avoid complexity in product design;- governance! another aspect commonly ignored by startups. Co-founers, board and advisers are key to the success of any venture. Choose wisely. - leadership! another key success or failure factor is the leader; management style is important. How do you treat your employees? how do you communicate, motivate and chart the course?- customers! most startups create products without a market or a problem to solve, and then spend valuable time and resources looking for the problem. Listening to the needs of the customer / market is very important. In today's 'Lean Startup', it is possible to come to market quickly with simple Minimum Viable Product, and study what works, and what does not, obtain feedback and iterate like mad..
Why are Harley-Davidsons so popular among American police forces given their limited performance?
The problem with police bikes (and police cars) is that they have to be specc’d to perform to what the department needs. This means that they have to be serviceable, parts are available, they are expected to hold up between servicings, and they need to actually do the job.One of the big things that shuts down a potential police bike is the ability to get a big enough ground plane for the radio. Cars are fairly easy, as they’re big metal shells on wheels. But a bike doesn’t have that much metal, and so police radios can be problematic if the bike isn’t ALL metal, like a Harley or older Kawi.As an example, the 2010 Kawasaki Concours 1400 ABS Police model was being considered as a potential replacement both for the older BMW and Kawi 1000 California Highway Patrol motor fleet. It had room for all the equipment, it had the performance specs (and then some), it had the dealer and parts network, and all of the other checkboxes for the CHP to order a boatload of them and put them to work. But the techs at the CHP just couldn’t get police radio antennas to ground reliably using the Big Connie’s frame. And that was the dealbreaker.There have been some exceptions, but most have been more for ‘community outreach’ purposes. Case in point: The Oklahoma Highway Patrol procured a Suzuki Hayabusa sport-touring bike as part of a drug bust forfeiture, and originally was going to set it up as strictly a show bike for outreach to the young sportbike riding community. However, the motor officers assigned to ride it realized, it would make an excellent “interceptor” unit. So the department bought two more with drug-seized funds, kitted all three out as patrol interceptors, then sent the bikes and the officers overland to the Keith Code Superbike School in California, so that the officers could learn how to ride bikes that were capable of 189mph speeds.Apparently the program has been quite successful, be it the original ‘outreach’ or actually running down speeders with them.
How serious is a Pinion Seal Leak?
I would say pretty serious depending on the vehicle. As others have stated, it really depends on how bad the leak is, but i will go ahead and assume that it is actually leaking, since that is what was stated.The first thing to analyze is what is a leak? Anything from a wet film around the seal to a drip of fluid forming, but not dropping would be seepage, if the formed drop actually falls to the ground, it is then considered a leak.There are two problems to consider with a pinion seal leak. First, obviously you are losing fluid from the diffential. With reduced capacity of differential fluid, your ring and pinion gears lose cooling and lubrication, which will cause the gears and bearings to overheat and can catastrophicly fail. I've seen ring gears stabbed through the cover, driveshafts twisted like pretzels, and even an incident where once the differential gears locked solid it ripped the transfer case off of the transmission destroying both.The second thing to consider is the root cause of failure of the pinion seal. Sometimes it just failed from normal wear and simply needs replaced. However, it is fairly common as well for the failure to be caused by too much runout of the pinion, caused by either incorrect preload on the pinion, or failure of the pinion bearing, the former often being caused by the latter. In this case total gear failure is imminent, and will definitely cause catastrophic failure.Even barring catastrophic failure, and the very least, with lack of fluid you will wear the gears and bearings out way faster, and will generally cause the differential to “howl” especially at highway speeds.All of that being said, I've seen people ignore a pinion seal leak for years with no consequences, but you are playing with fire.