Dust Moto

Looks interesting. kinda between the Varg and a Sur-ron. 35 HP . Going for lighter weight and les HP.  

I skimmed the site, is that  bike something they will be making and the project they talk about is a new bike? Or is that just a render to get people interested in becoming a part of the project? And the real finished bike may not look exactly like that? Cool that more brands are getting into the market. It said its a US company too. 

Gonna have to see a lot more than a shady render before I start making payments on a $5000 bike. Let alone $10,000 MSRP. 

you're not wrong, but it's absolutely insane what specialized and some of these mtb co's are getting for top end eMTBs. 10K for this, if it's legit, is a relative steal. 

bike looks good. lower weight and mid-level horsepower is the way. there's just too much torque to set high top-end HP targets, you just can't make them peaky enough to be fun in that way, especially with the attendant weight that comes along with all that. mid-power, usable power band, light weight, good chassis. that's the way. 

“We will work all angles to do right” sounds like you’re fucked out of $5K if it doesn’t work out. 

As someone who owns a business started from scratch and has worked my ass off to build it over the years, my advice is these people either need to commit to this like they believe with everything they have that their bikes will be the best and the business will be a success come hell or high water, or they stop now before taking people's money.  Seems like they aren't all in based on those statements.  If you start a business and aren't all in from the get go, chance of success is <10% (pretty much going to come down to luck).

The crowdfunding thing, for something like this, always feels weird to me. To help out someone truly in need or a sick kid or something, fair enough, not talking about that.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, maybe I don't get it, whatever, fair enough if that's the case.

Expecting random people out there to find your idea, without any liability to repay what you 'owe' (I know they don't technically owe it, and that's kind of my point) feels pretty greasy.

Like yourself, my business (granted, way smaller and not trying to do something as ambitious as theirs) has come from my money and my work, and if I wanted a cash injection it'd be a loan or something I'd repay, I wouldn't be asking random people to pay my way and if it goes tits up "sorry, thanks for the dollar, but... bye".

You’re not old-fashioned, it is weird.

To frame it like you’ll be a part of this cool club (Founders50) is a funny way to pitch a purchase as an investment. Sure, you get a $10K MSRP bike for $5K, but the pricing is arbitrary. Who’s to say that when you get it, it’s not a $5K bike in terms of quality?

Stark had (and still has) doubters with $100 deposits, and you’re asking buyers for $5K for a bike that may not happen, with no refund if it goes south? You’re crazy.

I know it says they’ll “do right by the Founders50 crew” if it doesn’t pan out, but personally, I’m going to need something more absolute and less weaselly when it comes to the state of my $5K if it doesn’t work. That’s a purposefully empty statement they’re using to give you confidence, while covering their asses and keeping your money if it fails.

I think I'd need to see they have more funding secured than just $250k over 20 months from crowd funding. That won't keep the lights on very long.

I see the issues with the crowd funding. 

The guys behind it are pretty legit if you look at the products they have helped bring to market. I am looking at it like they are trying to get a more realistic level of interest. With the Varg $100 is little enough that people could have  put it down as an impulse buy and will not go through with it.  Asking people to buy the bike at wholesale gives You a much more accurate level of interest . And being involved in the process sounds cool if You have a vote on how stuff is done. 

 If they had an option to pay $5 more per month , but that would insure your payments so You either got the bike or full refund plus interest , I think they could get those 50 spots filled easy .    I would consider doing it if that was an option. As it is I will watch and hope for the best for them. 

The issue of big players moving into that market are going to happen. They are staying with low voltage units and I know for sure KTM is also looking at this style of bike.

Anyone got a photo?

At least its not the god awful rigid looking cake

If you want non-dilutive capital to fund your business, crowd funding is a good path for the owners of the business.

Flip side, If a professional investor doesn't believe in your business enough to fund it, crowdfunding may be the only path.

Not really. 

Hi all! 

Colin from Dust Moto here. Maybe quick little background on me, and then some context on what we are trying to do! 

I grew up in southern California, eventually going to high school in Murrieta. Surrounded by the moto scene, but mostly focused my passions on BMX and eventually gravity MTB. Growing up would always jump on motos with friends, but my mom prevented me from getting my own (D'oh!). Raced DH at the Southridge series in Fontana, built my own gearbox DH bike a decade+ ago for racing. I placed 3rd at the Enduro World Series race in Aspen in 2016 for Open Mens.  I've co-driven in the baja 500 and 1000, as well as the Transsyberia Rallye in a Porsche Cayenne with Ryan Millen. Pretty handy around a track on 4 wheels, on or off-road. Have gotten into moto more as an adult, consider myself an intermediate rider on a gas bike, but definitely more proficient on an eMoto (more on that later).

My career has taken me through Rod Millen's workshop (MillenWorks) working on race cars, concept cars, EV powertrain demonstrators and theme parks. I have done individual contributor as well as leadership work at Skullcandy (headphones), Walt Disney Imagineering (actual theme park rides), Sphero (robot toys), Glowforge (robot lasers) and last at UBCO (electric motorbikes, like a modern Honda CT90 with 2wd). All that to try and build some credibility - I have experience delivering products on time at mass-scale, including highly complex vehicle systems. 

The prompt for Dust came up after a bit of a boom-bust cycle at UBCO. Unfortunately we could not see our product plans through to fruition, but we had been working in the eMoto space a while with research, development and even prototypes. When we departed, I felt even more strongly about opportunity to do something for the US market, and core customer, something that UBCO was not able to do as a kiwi business focused on utility and adventure. 

So, we separated, took our knowledge and experience and have started Dust from scratch. None of us are independently wealthy, and we are 100%  all in. I've literally put everything we've got into making this successful - no one is taking on more risk for F50 than me and the team. 

You can read a lot about our thinking and philosophy in our newsletter (www.dustmoto.com) but to boil it down:
- America NEEDS a domestic brand it can get behind.
- BUT, that brand shouldn't be built in isolation or without the industry/customers involved - we don't know everything! 
- We don't want to take tech VC money (done that before, and also look how that went for Alta), rather involve the industry
- We think electric is not ready to replace all dirt bikes, and so we should build something awesome that sits besides 250s and 450s in your garage. 
- Hype is in easy supply for electric stuff, especially with the action coming from Asia, and so we are conservative and transparent. 
- We want to build real dirt bikes, but in innovative categories. Not mountain bikes with motors, but also not just replacing what gas bikes already can do. Electric moto can turn middling riders like me into advanced riders because of simplicity of controls, and the barriers being reduced around gear changes (read the reviews on the Stark, even fast riders are faster because they can focus on good footwork).
- Because of the simplicity of the eMoto experience, we can pull more riders into the sport, which will help the industry at large thrive. 

With that stuff in mind we came up with F50 to let us bring as many strong insights to the table, as early as possible to build the eMoto with best likelihood of success. We want this to be extremely open and transparent, not only to reduce risk for backers, but also to bring the rest of the industry on the journey with us. Monthly payments lets people bail if they think things are going awry, and also creates a strong forcing function for us - every month we are working to earn your backing. We think this will build good will and eventually more excitement when we open up sales further. On the financial side, it is beneficial to be revenue positive from an early stage with our backers, but we are also raising money to fund operations. Many of the initial F50 members actually help that equation with their own connectivity. 

That's a lot, and hopefully I've hit on most of the comments. I'm an open book, and understand this approach can bring some doubt. But, I hope at least you trust that there is some intentionality here, we are real credible people, and the thing I want most is to build an amazing bike and brand, for the good of the industry. 

Shoot me an email, or text. Ill be available. 

Colin
colin@dustmoto.com

435-729-9903

Great question. A lot of this stuff is legal stuff you will find in any crowdfund campaign. Its important to make the distinction that this is NOT a pre-order which is governed by the FTC, this is a crowdfund campaign. We are committed to delivering the perk of the program. No other outcome makes any sense for anyone. 

Crowdfund backing is going directly into building prototypes over the next couple months. It will cost about $75k to build two prototypes, so as you can tell, there is other money involved to make it happen. After that, we dive deeper into development so we create full validation programs with small fleets of bikes early next year. Beyond that, production intent bikes during the summer and ramping production in the fall. 

The program is a commitment, we don't take that lightly. A journey where we get to build something really cool together. Especially if you've always wanted the chance to build a noteworthy product but don't have the means to do otherwise. 

I'm confident we will make it, but as with anything in life, sometimes there is risk involved to make something good happen. Fabricate something out of thin air. Its not for everyone. 

 

I think people are looking at the crowd funding thing wrong, or at least from the wrong angle.  There are a lot of opportunities that normal people are not allowed to invest in, yes that's correct, there are things you are not allowed to invest in unless you are an accredited investor (aka independently wealthy, what would we do without Uncle Sam looking out for the safety of us peasants. . .).  This includes startup companies looking for series funding, etc.  I look at crowdfunding and similar platforms as somewhat of a democratization of investment opportunity, clearly there is a lot of risk (as many have pointed out), but I believe it's a lot better for the average person to have the opportunity to be involved in something they might believe is worth funding than just have the opportunity taken away from them completely.  If you don't have confidence in it then don't sign up as a funder, it's as simple as that.

I also don't think it's fair to apply the same moral standards of a personal loan to a crowd funding effort.  You can't build a business like this without funding, and that funding has to come from somewhere.  It's absolutely impossible for anyone starting a company like this to guarantee that it will be successful or if anyone will ever get their investment back regardless of how much effort they put in, so I actually appreciate the realistic language used rather than just telling everyone exactly what they want to hear and leaving them shocked if the company doesn't pan out.  I'm not in a position to risk that much money at the moment, but I wish these guys the best and it would be great to have another American e-bike offering come to market, there's a lot of good that can come from that.    

That's fair. I appreciate it's a personal choice and if someone wants to throw their money into the pot and they have faith in it, then I guess it's good that they have the chance and we're all blessed with free will.

I don't want to sound any more pessimistic than I already have, so if the folks behind it do have a personal interest in moto, then best of luck to them and I hope it works out for them and they can deliver what they're aiming to, for themselves and their backers 👍

               Is it just me, or is that bike pretty damn good looking ?

They've come a long way since August of '23 

Working prototype.

https://www.rideapart.com/reviews/715000/first-ride-review-dust-moto-al…

I liked Josh Hill’s vid, was good to see him trying to qualify for SX. Not sure on the potential success of the Dust Moto. Sounds like it’s too slow and small for serious moto.

There're still developing the bike. They are aiming for 50% more power and increased range over the prototype you've seen in action. Think of this bike as being somewhat in the same category as the Sur Ron Ultra Bee, but better in almost every way. For shorter riders, it just might be the ideal bike.

I just did an Industry Insights with their CEO. It should be out Friday

Very cool! I’ve been watching this develop from the start and really excited to see what’s coming!