From Baja1000 to Breakthrough Entrepreneur: Colin Godby’s Journey to Revolutionize Electric Dirt Bikes

When an entrepreneur takes the road less traveled, it is literally true for Colin Godby, co-founder of Dust Moto, an innovative startup launching a high-performance electric dirt bike. Colin’s entrepreneur journey began as a young power sport enthusiast which led him to be an off-road co-driver in international competitive events including the Baja1000 and the TransSyberian Rally.  

Colin shares how he used his mechanical engineering background to transfer his professional experience and passion for motorsports into a new product---that he believes will attract more dirt bike enthusiasts and expand the sport. He describes his team’s process of product innovation that resulted in a new bike design with features that significantly enhance user experience.

Transcript

Jeanne Gray: I'm Jeanne Gray, publisher of American Entrepreneurship Today and host of the podcast series, Experienced Voices, where I talk with highly accomplished people who share the critical elements that led to their success.

Our guest today on Experience Voices is Colin Godby, co founder of Dust Motorcycles, a startup introducing an innovative high performance electric dirt bike. Colin shares how he used his mechanical engineering background to transfer his personal experience and passion for motorsports into a new product that he believes will make more people dirt bike enthusiasts.

And expand the sport. He offers great insight on the product innovation process drawn from his career as a product innovator.

Jeanne Gray: Colin, thank you for being a guest on Experienced Voices. 

Colin Godby: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Jeanne and I'm excited to be chatting about dust today. 

Jeanne Gray: You have an interesting background in power sports, and I thought I would start by you sharing a little bit about this passion and some of your unique journeys with the competitions that you were in that I think made you becoming an entrepreneur almost inevitable.

So, so tell us about power sports and your involvement. 

Colin Godby: Yeah, no, I agree. It's been a journey since I was, you know, a little kid, basically interested in anything that would go. I had a dream of being a race car driver or a race car engineer. And as soon as I graduated from college, I made it my mission to kind of get into automotive mobility some form of racing.

And one of my first roles out of college was actually. Working on these advanced vehicle systems. And a part of that business was actually building and fielding off road race cars. So I had an awesome opportunity as a young engineer to actually jump in and be a co driver in the Baja 1000, as well as a race across the Asian continent called the Trans Siberia Rally.

And this kind of closed the loop for me in terms of my passion, as well as professional focus. I was always enamored with the idea of design and engineering at the highest performance levels and actually getting to experience this in the real world and see what it took to actually finish these races and compete at the highest level was really instructive terms of my own toolkit as an engineer designer.

I think as I continue through my career, working consumer products, I always had an interest to get back into motor sport and specifically in the power sport side of things. And so recently in my career, prior to starting Dust, I got my entry point back into developing two wheel vehicles. And it was really, I think, connecting those dots that had been, established earlier in my life and my career back into the focus for my, latest career pathway.

And so it kind of excited me again about what the potential is and how to invest in myself and, and, you know, creating a new business around power sports and competition and really was a important piece of building dust into what it is today. 

Jeanne Gray: I'm imagining that an important part of being a design product design developer, you're, you're no different.

The area in which you're delving into. So before we go too much into the engineering aspects of it, I just have a fair amount of curiosity about the Baja 1000 is that's at a totally different level than a lot of people who are sort of in a building doing product design you're out there experiencing and even the trans Siberia rally.

So what type of vehicle were you in? And what did that actually first hand experience sort of embed in your thinking? 

Colin Godby: Off road motorsport, power sports, is so abusive. It goes way beyond, I think, the standard expectation of a, you know, person driving a vehicle on the road. And what it really instills is an understanding that the level of design and engineering needed To create reliable products that can survive these conditions.

we were in a race prepared truck. It's designed to go quite quickly off road across the harshest terrain in the desert and hitting these obstacles at speed or even unplanned obstacles, rocks trees and stuff like that. These things have to power through and really it makes you realize.

If you're developing a new product, especially one that's designed to be driven or ridden at a high performance level. The reality of the abusive use cases are just well beyond what most people would expect. And so literally out there laying in the dirt, fixing, you know, broken suspension parts other things during the race in the field, it's hard not to learn these lessons and.

And really take that back to the engineering side of things and saying, okay, if we're going to build something for consumers to use in these kinds of environments, how are we going to approach that? Make sure they're safe as well as performing at the highest level. So you see in a very I think direct way, what the sizing of components and the materials and the design of these structural and mechanical aspects really need to be to survive.

And you do see kind of the worst of all, I think, the environmental situations, whether it's river crossings or hardcore dust and, and dirt the impacts as well as the, the loads from driving are, are really, you know, You know, much higher than the real world use on a typical kind of road. So it, it really planted that seed for me, like this is what's possible for how people can use these products and, and, and making sure that that's layered into any of the design work we're doing at dust has been important.

We want to make products that actually perform at that high level for, for the enthusiast customers, in addition to. Being safe for a general consumer.

Jeanne Gray: This led to you developing a high performance electric dirt bike. So where did the opportunity arise for you to become an entrepreneur or product innovator at the same time? And take this on. 

Colin Godby: always had an interest in entrepreneurship and the idea of creating something on my own. My parents weren't business people.

And so, my natural state as an engineer is to be risk-oriented and analytical and what that meant was my entrepreneurial journey was a little bit slower and more intentional than a lot of people. But I did build my career intentionally. Working within various startups that are venture-backed I saw those as steps towards the final outcome of me starting my own business.

And I really was focused on onboarding as much knowledge about the startup journey in each of those roles, whether it was how to build and scale teams quickly, or strategic decision-making around the market that you're working to expand or the market that you're working to capture market share.

Even how to manage through tough times because startups are tough, right? Once I kind of got to a point of maturity in my career and a point of confidence in my skill set of seeing this multiple times through, I really wanted to lean into the idea of starting something. I had the opportunity in a previous role at a company called Upco to actually lead as chief product officer for a global team and, set the strategy of the product roadmap over time.

This was basically my opportunity to be an entrepreneur with some resources. We went through this building growth phase and really a period of gathering insights and understanding of the marketplace and a domain that was off road vehicle, two wheel and electric. A lot of those learnings drove me to a personal realization about the benefits and power of this innovative product experience that is electric.

Basically, this idea that dirt bikes are high friction in terms of maintenance and the learning curve is high in terms of intimidation safety, risk, and electric, it really removes a lot of that friction. On a personal level, it allowed me to ride on two wheels in a way that I had always dreamed about without having the time to master the typical gas engine experience bike. 

So that was really when it came to front of mind that this was the right time. I had the skills, I had the right interest and seeing the opportunity within the market to really expand the user base of, riding motorcycles, specifically dirt bikes. Was a unique kind of period.

And so it's like I can't deny that all these things are coming together at this time. Unfortunately, the product that we had started to conceive and work on, we couldn't see through to the end at Upco. It was a really great opportunity to strike out on our own. Myself, along with my co-founders to build something that we believed was compelling and could reshape the market and, create a new growth phase for an industry that had been stagnating for, for a period.

Jeanne Gray: it sounds like in your experience at Upco and even in your other product innovation experience, that you were assessing the risks that. were occurring in other companies as they were developing their products and taking it to market and also being analytical as an engineer, you could sit back and watch others do it.

When you decided to break out and take this on, you did do it as a team. Step back and share a little bit about the conversations that you had in deciding if the personalities and the goals were similar for three of you co-founders. 

Colin Godby: It's a great question. One of the lessons that I learned about startups was you can move quickly alone, but you can move fast further as a team. Having that support system, especially in the early days of building a startup is important because it's really, really hard. We worked together previously, we realized we had a really great way of working. Our personalities were compatible, but we brought different skill sets and perspectives to the table.

My background is mostly in engineering and product. Jarrett, my co-founder and head of design is an industrial designer. So much more aesthetic art and design background. Then Neil has a product design and marketing background where he really dove into the human psychology of product marketing and sales.

We felt like this was a really nice, well-rounded trifecta of hitting the main points of business oriented around building an amazing product that connects emotionally with consumers that we can tell stories around and reach people. When we started Dust, I felt like I had a working history with Neil and Jarrett and we trusted each other.

We knew that we were compatible in terms of our professional working techniques, and then also on the skill and capability level, we knew we would fill each other's gaps and we could offer a cohesive experience product and also the ability to build a business.

Jeanne Gray: The three of you then are looking at a, an innovative product. basically three different eyeballs looking at your goal. You need to design it. You need to do prototyping. You need proof of concept. You need to know about the marketplace. Please share a little bit about the early steps that you said you had done some pre-development at Upco.

When it moved over to the three of you, how did the three of you come up with the initial five, six, seven steps that gets it off of the kitchen table and makes it a real startup? 

Colin Godby: I think it's interesting because you alluded to this idea previously that we're not the first mover in the marketplace and there are benefits of being first mover. If you've got plenty of resources, you can sort of set the tone and the narrative of this innovation, but there are a lot of pitfalls to being a first mover.  We've had it as the challenger brand, the opportunity and the benefit of learning from a lot of the first movers and their challenges and failures.

And so in my role at Upco, I was basically a student of these. Case studies or benchmarks out in the industry of why these other companies had failed and what was working for others and sort of triangulated this sweet spot in terms of the product offering and, the market opportunity. We worked on some of these ideas and tested them internally at Upco.

When we weren't able to see it through, we were able to hit the ground running at Dust. We had a pretty high level of confidence who our customers were going to be, what the product specification should be, and how we were actually going to tell the story and market this thing starting from scratch.

And I think we had the benefit of actually starting from scratch at Dust. We couldn't use any of the prior work. And in hindsight, I think. It actually was a massive benefit because it let us throw away the things that maybe you have this kind of attachment to or the sunk cost fallacy. We would have kept doing it this way if we would have kept the project rolling at Upco.

But starting from scratch, we were able to say, okay, this is actually better. And so we said right away that there's no iconic American brand in dirt bikes. We said there's a big opportunity for new riders to enter the sport with the right kind of innovation in the owning ownership experience. And we also said, because this is something that doesn't happen every day, there's a unique opportunity to tell this story and build a brand around our connectivity to the community and basically building it in public.

Those are the three principles that we started with quite a bit of conviction. It's an American brand for enthusiasts and new riders alike, building the company and the product in partnership with the community and telling that story was going to be exciting. This middle market performance offering was the right specific product to start with.

Jeanne Gray: Well, we'll definitely get more into the marketing strategy that you have. But. Now that the three of you are working together and you're all risk-takers, did you sit down and come up with a budget for an investment?  We're here and this is how far we have to get through prototyping proof of concept.

How did that unfold? Take the listener through your initial steps and you can share the dollar amount or not. Did you come up with a target date of where you were going to burn through your initial investment into the company to make it happen.

Colin Godby: It's really important part and I think another area that kind of sets us apart from similar companies, we started the company in 2023. Three. Which if folks have been following kind of the ebb and flow of the investment market, and especially in electric vehicles, 2023 was sort of the nuclear winter for investment.

We knew starting it as a potential benefit, sort of to the Warren Buffett mentality of the best time to start a business is in a downturn in the market. But we knew it was going to be hard because of that and we've had various people tell us that we were going to be chiseled out of stone if we were able to stay alive hardened.

When we started to share the idea with potential investors, we seeded the company with a little bit of founder investment, but it wouldn't be enough to get us through the first year of operation. So we started to approach investors and we got a lot of feedback that the idea was exciting, and they believed in the opportunity, but they wanted to see more, and they weren't going to invest on just a PowerPoint pitch deck.

We had to generate traction very quickly to be able to prove the demand and then to take investment to see us through this next phase of development. From the beginning, because of the nature of the market and the lack of liquidity and investment, we knew we were going to have to be quite lean, sharp and efficient in how we step through these development milestones.

We mapped out this phased approach to investment and development so that we could line up milestones that were compelling in terms of telling the story of progress and capability of the team and company so that we can then go back at each phase and look to raise incrementally more capital.

Having been through startups, we had all seen the situation where a startup is able to raise a substantial sum on a large valuation and not have a great plan on how to utilize that capital efficiently to reach the next phase. You end up not proving the point in the way that you need to raise more money at a higher valuation, and you get a down round or there are even difficulties in raising.

We wanted to be really practical and this is sort of the engineer shining through, right? Like, could we design this phase approach? So we started very early with crowdfunding and bringing customers. on board and actually in a unique way, spending money on a monthly basis, basically a premium subscription to join the journey with us to develop the bikes, allocate the first 50 bikes for them.

We were able to sign up 50 crowdfund customers paying monthly in a little over 24 hours when we opened it. That was the traction needed to go back to some of these potential investors and raise a small amount of angel investment...u. So under 500, 000, and we knew that if we had between 300,000 and 500, 000, we'd be able to get the initial proof of concept design and initial prototypes bill and start our marketing efforts to spread the word.

In 2023 we were able to raise that money in the summertime and work through the design and build effort so that in January of this year, 2024, we had our first functional prototypes rolling and we were able to prove the concept, generate more interest in demand because a real product was being built.

It proved our capability to move quite quickly through development and be sharp on spend and also use those prototypes for kind of content creation in this sort of storytelling methodology that we talked about this really open, transparent building public idea. On the back of that, we entered in our pre-seed fundraiser which is a larger target of over a million dollars to get us into production. All of the production intent, design validation, market development, and sales channel development, basically locking in our orders with both dealers as well as direct for the growth phase production phase of the business.

Through 2024, we've, been doing both development marketing, as well as fundraising for that pre seed  and we're just now turning the corner on that. But one of the things maybe we can talk a little further on is our crowd equity community round that we've been raising on WeFunder in addition to the direct investment that we've taken from angels and family offices.

Jeanne Gray: I was going to say you've accomplished a heck of a lot since 2023 for a bunch of engineers who are usually slow and methodical you You're you're definitely dirt bikers racing forward. so yeah share a little bit about we funder and You know, there are a few fundamentals that people should know about of why Specific ones are successful and others Don't ever any traction.

There, there are some fundamentals they've got to get right. 

Colin Godby: Yeah. So I think because we had decided to build the company and product with the community involved, we identified or connected with the idea of also the ability for our audience to invest in the business. And I think it's important for people to understand that not all businesses well positioned to raise from the community.

I think that there needs to be some sort of emotional connection, a passion fit for these customers to take a risk, you know, early stage investment with startups is quite risky and we funder is amazing because it lets people have access to the potential larger upside of investing in early startups, but it also means that There's a lot of businesses that are early and won't make it.

so I think a lot of companies have to have a great ability to market themselves. They have to have a product that connects on a passion level for the general population. And they have to be sharp around how they're building the business, how they can share the financials and the strategy. I think there's a lot of companies that underestimate the amount of work that goes into building the campaign on we funder.

You really have to be serious about it and, and intentional with how you go and share the opportunity with people. So, but the benefit is now we've got an army of customers and followers that are now investors. Which creates this alignment and incentives for our community to, root for us and pull for us and, even make connections for us and, And I think that fuel is really important for startups where sometimes it feels like you're on an Island and, and trying to succeed with the world, you know pushing back.

So 

Jeanne Gray: now you've completed the, we fund around, 

Colin Godby: we're actually in the final stages of closing it over the next month or so. So there is actually still an opportunity to jump in and support dust. 

Jeanne Gray: And so when it does close. What are the expectations of this passionate group of people that, you know, are emotionally attached to your company and your, product?

Is there ongoing dialogue? Because you're going to be delivering the product in the future. So you've had to make some sort of commitment that, you know, you'll get the product at some later date. So building trust, but also how do you keep their appetite or their interest going once the deal closes?

Colin Godby: Yeah. One of the challenges we've seen with a lot of the crowdfund campaigns is you know, once the campaign closes, they stop communicating and then people actually start to. Morph from being supporters into being cynics. They're like, man, this company took my money and I haven't heard from them. And now, you know, I'm, I'm not super happy about this.

So with our early crowdfund backers on the product side, we've had monthly meetings where we literally create video call for all of our backers to jump on and interact with our team and ask questions. And we share sort of. Even further details than we share publicly about the business and the product.

And we really want this to be a learning opportunity for all of us. So that if they're interested in engineering, we can go deep in engineering. If they're interested in startups and, you know, fundraising, we can share our approach there. And so we want to deliver value on a monthly basis to these crowdfund backers, in addition to eventually getting the bike.

It's about the journey as it as much as the final product. I mean, that's been really important. for the, we fund our backers. Which they're actually getting an equity stake in the business. We will share our investor updates much in the same way that we do with the direct investment from angels and family offices that we've received.

And so they'll be getting basically monthly investor memos. And also we share our development progress. That we have with our product crowdfund backers so that they can see what's happening on the technical side of things as well. 

Jeanne Gray: Were you conservative in determining the delivery date? Of your first product to your, crowdfunding supporters.

Colin Godby: Yeah, it's a really good question. I think we started with a I wouldn't say conservative, but I think an achievable target, we had confidence in our ability to move quickly based on our experience. As operators and, and engineers and designers. And we also were confident that the specification that we were targeting was not going to need, I think, advanced innovation or science projects.

And that was one of our values from the beginning was no science projects. Because a lot of companies. Become enamored with sort of the next level of, technical innovation. And, this is where all the pitfalls are, the surprises and the gotchas and the, and the commercialization challenges, and not to say we don't have some of that, we definitely do.

But I think it was important for us not to spin our wheels on these science projects and, and that's been beneficial. I think candidly 2024, our fundraising has been more of an effort and taking more time than. We'd originally planned, and, that has effects to our development timeline in terms of the resources that are available to finalize, design and prototypes.

But because of our, our initial planning and, let's say achievable dates, we're able to stay on track and, keep things moving forward. And, now that we're turning the corner and closing this round and, closing out Wefunder, we'll be able to accelerate and latch on to our target of delivering bikes in 2025.

Jeanne Gray: You mentioned that you intentionally did not build your innovation in stealth, but actually it was part of a more of a community experience. So the design aspects of the electric bike, can you link it or describe it as to how your target user or rider is anticipating getting your bike and what they will experience it?

when they actually get it to fulfill to to fulfill their their expectations and and the rush that they're going to get. 

Colin Godby: Yeah, I think the one of the most innovative things that we're doing is kind of at the system level. So basically we're, we're innovating the category of, of bike in the sizing and performance that we're offering.

A lot of the current gasoline powered bikes have gotten larger and more difficult to operate. And extremely powerful and capable. And we saw that there's an interest for people to have that capability or performance without all of the challenges around the size and maintenance and noise, so we decided to make a slightly more compact.

bike with a lower seat height and a slightly shorter wheelbase. It's still very much a full size motorcycle for adults, but it's much more approachable in terms of people being able to stand over the bike control it. The weight is lower than most electric dirt bikes, but the power is still compelling and in line with, some of the market leaders on the gas side.

And so that means is it's a very dynamic, agile, easy to handle. But very fun writing experience in an automotive, it's kind of like a lightweight sports car versus a heavyweight muscle car. You know, we're going for a lightweight. really dynamic and responsive ride that is not intimidating for a wide range of riders.

Jeanne Gray: that's what I was thinking is this is less intimidating for the person getting on the bike for the first time. 

Colin Godby: It's exactly a big piece of it and I think there's so many people that have, Had an interest in riding motorcycle or dirt bikes, but because of the nature of learning on a typical gas bike with clutch and gear shifts and the noise, it keeps people away.

and so there's a lot of people that now have the opportunity with bikes like ours. You can hop on it's simple hand operation and you can get rolling having fun in a matter of minutes, rather than. Multiple rides to have your first smile, you know, cause you're so afraid of what's happening and you don't want to get hurt.

And so this is kind of the big piece of innovation is the quality of the build being an American brand and the performance that we're delivering while simultaneously being approachable for a wider audience. the competitors on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of quality and price can't deliver the quality of experience and performance.

And the competitors at the higher end of the spectrum are still building full sized bikes that are heavy and have an intimidation factor. So we're trying to find that happy 

Jeanne Gray: So I'm pretty excited for you. I'm not a dirt biker, but maybe it's so well thought out. And it sounds like when you went through the design and develop phase that you took it as an opportunity to solidify.

Your perception of, of who would be wanting this type of bike? Cause it's different from like the gas motor bikes that are out there. So when when should we expect the actual launch into the market? You, I think you were saying sometime in 2025. 

Colin Godby: Yeah, correct. So when we built the first proof of concept prototypes is really from the startup perspective to answer the questions.

Is this going to be fun? Is it desirable? And is there demand, you know, kind of like the concept of the MVP product and software, like, is this something that people would actually pay real money for? And, and once we did that, we were able to learn quite a bit with these proof of concept bikes, getting them out in the real world and feedback from pro riders and novices alike, and that shaped our final development steps, allowed us to go towards.

I think the higher investment in development finalizing the commercialized design with confidence. And I think that's a key piece that a lot of startups sometimes misses, especially in hardware or vehicles. These things are very capital intensive to build and design. And sometimes they go too far on the design too early and they realize they're off the mark and it's very expensive and time consuming to shift.

So these incremental steps, you might kind of be slightly off the Path, but if you manage it correctly, you can get back on track and keep the schedule cost in check. So that's kind of helped create the situation where we can. Start shipping bikes in 2025, our first crowdfund backers, the founders, 50 group and first 100, you know, those 150 bikes that have been allocated for these groups, we'll start to ship sort of in the middle of the year on summertime.

And then we'll start to. Bikes to real time customers and pre order customers towards the latter half of the year. 

Jeanne Gray: And those initial groups are, I'm guessing will be great word of mouth advocates for what you, what you've given to them in the Prize of being first users, you know, in the bike. So, well, it's been great speaking with you, Colin.

I'm excited for you. I love to talk to innovators and their thinking. So thank you for being on experience voices. 

Colin Godby: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a lot of fun talking about dust and showing the startup journey.

Jeanne Gray: You have been listening to the podcast series, Experienced Voices. To hear more and subscribe, visit americanentrepreneurship. com forward slash podcast, where you will also find a form for listener feedback.