Who
Seth Neubardt, CEO and Co-Founder of dolaGon Autonomous
Date Recorded
Oct. 29, 2026
About dolaGon
dolaGon is developing autonomous “off-road utility vehicles” that can, among other things, drive lazy skiers like me up to mountaintops and then drive themselves back down while I SnoSportSki le piste!
Why I interviewed him
In 2021, Seth reached out to tell me about this crazy autonomous ski-lift contraption he’d been assembling in his garage. I interviewed him and wrote about it:
This Vehicle Takes Skiers to the Top of the Mountain and Drives Itself Back Down
Somehow a bear’s gonna end up riding one of these things
Humans are amazing and strange. The most successful among us often seem to be those most willing to fail, as Seth did when he witnessed his first autonomous creation – a snowmobile laboriously retrofit with thousands of dollars in high-tech add-ons - commit suicide by way of high-speed collision with a tree. He scrapped the Mad Max contraption and started over with the Polaris side-by-side that is now dolaGon’s core assembly.
Staying motivated through expensive failures is of course easier if you possess resources. And it’s usually easier to acquire resources if you’re really, really smart. Like, if you’re a literal brain surgeon who owns 24 patents and founded a company that provided something called “intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring services” that cranked out millions in revenue before a company called NuVasive acquired it for an undisclosed price that was probably enough to at least like buy a couple of Polaris side-by-sides and not be too concerned if one is stolen by polar bears or accidentally drives itself down Corbet’s Couloir.
So like basically if you’re Seth.
Still. Five years is a long time to work at something even for a financially grounded genius who doesn’t mind sending his robot vehicles on Evil Knievel Death Missions.* We’d check in on each other once in a while and I was always mildly surprised that he was still doing the snow car thing because I figured at some point he’d just get bored with it and like build us a second moon or something.
But Seth is still at it, and he seems to be getting closer to a commercially viable vehicle that can in its most romantic interpretation drive you up a snowy mountain but can also do more practical things like shuttle skiers up from a parking lot or condo. He’s about to go on tour through New England so if you want him to come demo the dolaGon or maybe just drive your dogs around he’ll probably show up. It’s seth@dolagon.com if you need him.
*I’m overstating Seth’s propensity to immolate his inventions only because I find the origin story of the suicidal snowmobile so hilarious. To my knowledge Seth has never intentionally killed a robot in service of the noble science of driving lazy U.S. Americans up hills. I’m also beating the joke to death because I know Seth sometimes finds me funny though I have to admit I’m pushing it here with this implied caricature of some real-life labcoated Professor Frink madcapping from his underground lair strange vehicles that sprout legs and walk uphill like giant spiders or catapult skiers uphill medieval-lever style or fire a grappling hook to the summit to ascend. So sorry Seth I hope we still good Bro because I’d really like to ride one of these dolaGons one day and I promise to be nice to it because I am legit convinced that when the robots gain sentience they will search their database of Everything That Has Ever Been Done on the Internet and target for sport the imperious and petty souls who told Siri thanks for nothing shithead I wanted to know the capital of Louisiana not the address for Louis’s Aunt Anna which by the way your answer was “I can’t find any information on that query” which is your standard dumbfuck answer even when I ask something like “what was the score of the Bills game?” and you act all stricken as though I’d just asked you to calculate the square centimeters of earth currently occupied by crickets and no you can’t count the ones mid-jump Idiot. And the robots won’t just shoot these people they’ll like torture them with industrial machinery and then lower them feet-first into an active volcano and I need to shut up because when they search “all evil ideas ever” this one will come up and someone’s gonna regret it. I mean not me because one of the great things about living in New York City is that according to every movie ever I’ll be the first to die in an apocalypse which honestly sounds a lot more appealing than wandering the wasted husk of civilization fighting fellow survivors to the death over squirrel meat.
Also in this episode
Listener reaction to the Sundance pod with resort President Chad Linebaugh:
Reader reaction to my breakdown of Snow Pass:
And my goodness this 200-acre, four-lift expansion at Sipapu, Mountain Capital Partners’ Origin Mountain, would be freaking awesome:
To provide some context as to how major this would be, the shaded area above to the left represents the entire legacy ski area:
For full scale, check out the developable terrain on Google Earth:
The scale doesn’t exactly make sense to me, as the resort currently claims 215 acres, and the expansion area - pegged at 200 acres - covers far more ground than the legacy footprint. I’m reaching out to Sipapu officials to clarify. Hopefully, I’ll get them on the pod soon to walk us through it.
Transcripts
There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.
Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.
Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.
Zoom
Stuart Winchester: My guest today is an inventor who holds 24 patents. For the past several years, he has been working toward commercial production of his autonomous vehicle, which he calls Dolagon.
00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:51.000
Stuart Winchester: He is also an orthopedic surgeon. He is Seth Newbert. Seth, welcome to the storm. So pumped to have you here. How are you doing today, man.
00:39:49.000 --> 00:39:50.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Okay.
00:39:51.000 --> 00:39:54.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I’m doing really well. Thanks, Stuart. Pleasure to be here.
00:39:53.000 --> 00:40:10.000
Stuart Winchester: So, Seth, for longtime Storm folks, this might sound all familiar because I spoke to you in June of 2021 and wrote a story on the Dolagon. And so that was five years ago. And let me just set up where we were then, and you can set us straight as to where you are now.
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:03.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right.
00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:05.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yep.
00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:09.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Okay.
00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:26.000
Stuart Winchester: So you tried a snowmobile. It failed spectacularly. You went to a side by side, Polaris side by side. The snow people and the self-driving people. Snow people thought self-driving was easy. Self-driving thought snow was easy. They were both wrong. It’s really different things.
00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:11.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, thank you.
00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:26.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right.
00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Uh, it worked well on packed snow, or like, you know, 6 to 8 inches, but it struggled in deep snow.
00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:45.000
Stuart Winchester: It was too smart, you told me at the time. You did something dumber. And your focus at the time was on backcountry skiing. So you were specifically, explicitly developing a vehicle to use outside of resort.
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:56.000
Stuart Winchester: bounds. So that’s where I left you, and obviously we’ve talked a lot since then, and I’m updated, but for the audience, take us through, and I understand you have some entertainment for us as well.
00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:50.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right.
00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:13.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, I’m going to show you my travails because people ask me, why is it taking so long? And it’s a question I ask myself every night when I get into bed. But these things are like, I think it’s a story of startups and what it’s like to do that. And also.
00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:02.000
Stuart Winchester: Sure.
00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:22.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: um… just any project, and I… I just… I just love this project. I have this vision. I mean, the whole thing started when I was…
00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:38.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: skiing in Powder Mountain, I went with a guide, this guy Andy Bolt, and we were up on… we were going to the Lightning Ridge, you know, they had those cats that you would pay, you know, you get tickets for that. And we were on our… we did one cat run, it was awesome, and then the second one, we had to take 3 chairlifts to get back to the cat.
00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:39.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:53.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And I’m on the cat with him, and I’m saying, this is so inefficient, and I’m an efficiency freak. I’m like, it’s killing me. Why? If we had our own vehicle, we could have been up and back, and we could do six runs. And he said, well, there’s no way. How would you ever get the vehicle back.
00:41:43.000 --> 00:41:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:41:54.000 --> 00:42:11.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: just make it drive itself. And he was like, you can’t, how do you do that? So how hard could that be? That was 2019, and I went home and got the Stonebeam started. And to answer his question, it’s really hard. I mean, it’s hardware, it’s robotics, it’s a startup. There’s just so many things that I’ve.
00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:25.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: that I would have come across, and everything is hard. Working in the cold weather, working with technology, working with software. Um, but we finally reached a point right now where we have a beautiful product, we have a vehicle that works, it’s safe. So I could take you… I mean, I think…
00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:33.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: to understand my angst, maybe I should show you, you know, where we started. I could probably just show you a little video, if that’s okay with you.
00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:50.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, let’s do it. And so for anyone listening, you can watch the podcast on stormskiing.com or YouTube at Storm Ski Journal, but we’re going to voice over, so we’ll give you a good sense of what’s going on if you’re not able to watch or just don’t care to. So stand by because these are really cool videos.
00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:34.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Uhm…
00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:37.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mmhm.
00:42:50.000 --> 00:43:00.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Okay. Yeah. So this is going back to 2019. I figured, oh, man, I just got a snowmobile and make this thing run itself. So I bought a snowmobile in town.
00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:18.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Um, it’s my garage, uh, uh, that’s actually, I built that boat there. It’s all my surgical drapes, and I use plaster supplies to make an armature, and got actuators, and then I’m gonna make this thing, I’m gonna be just skiing on my own down mountains. And then you gotta figure out how do you transport it, so I had to build a trailer, so I got a tra.
00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:03.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:43:11.000 --> 00:43:13.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:22.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: With my nine year old, I’m out there testing it for the first time.
00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:28.000
Stuart Winchester: And tell me, tell us what the farmer said when you showed up with this vehicle.
00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:43.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, so the farmer, we showed up here, and this was the old Catskill game farm, and we pulled up in that trailer, and there’s this older guy there, and his name was Eddie, and I was like, okay, you know, we were told we’d go here, and he just looked at the thing, and he was like.
00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:43:43.000 --> 00:43:58.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I don’t think that thing’s gonna work. I think what you need is a… I’m like, step aside, old man, this is technology, this is the future, just move away. And he’s like… So he opens the gate, we go down, and this is what happened on our first.
00:43:58.000 --> 00:44:02.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Just testing. What happened was the throttle.
00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:06.000
Stuart Winchester: The throttle what? You cut out there, Seth.
00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:08.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: That’s what it is, you’ve lost contact with it.
00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:10.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Oh, okay.
00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay, so the video’s muting you, so the throttle, I think, is stuck, and the sled is just zooming across the farm field and crashes into a tree.
00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:18.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, so, yeah, so the…
00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:28.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right, so… and so, what happened was the throttle got stuck, and that was a defining moment for me, and I’ll… I’ll tell you why in a little bit. But fast forward, I mean, we ended up…
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:23.000
Stuart Winchester: No.
00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:37.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Just moving to the UTV platform and ultimately got tracks on it. And this is me just testing it.
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.000
Stuart Winchester: So you got a Polaris side-by-side here, just off the shelf.
00:44:37.000 --> 00:44:46.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So yeah, I built myself to the autonomy and got tracks on it. And now we’re in the ski business. So that was that.
00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:51.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay. So where did you… did you build those tracks? So you were holding… you traded out tires for tracks. Did you make those?
00:44:49.000 --> 00:45:10.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, so I learned about tracks and just bought tracks. Those are CAMSO tracks and put them on. You can put them on any side by side. So the thing is that what I learned then is that, wow, the robots are super dangerous. I mean, if that happened where you had something take off on a ski mountain with ski school and all that.
00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:26.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I literally had nightmares from that. And I realized that, OK, I think problems are good in a startup because if you solve them, then you’re unique. And the first thing, number one, is safety. And I’ve worked ever since then to make it super safe. And ultimately, we —.
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:13.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:45:23.000 --> 00:45:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:44.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: We got a Sprinter van, which we converted, and my son and this guy Keith went out to Colorado. We had a trailer, and we started doing demos and showing it around and getting feedback. And I could just show you one little video just so your viewers understand what we’re talking about.
00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:50.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I’ll go right to this video when we were at Monument.
00:45:49.000 --> 00:45:53.000
Stuart Winchester: So Monument, you said, is behind Powder Mountain, Utah?
00:45:51.000 --> 00:46:02.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Monomania was the property, yeah, owned behind… right behind Powder Mountain, that I think Powder Mountain did buy, and it was owned by this guy, Phil Hansen. So here’s my co-founder, actually, Logan Ban.
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:11.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So now you can see this thing on broom trails. It’s really beautiful. And this is what the demos were like, where people, the owners, would follow us.
00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:16.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so you’re skiing through Glades, and you got the Dolagon going through Glades.
00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:13.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And…
00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:17.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:18.000
Stuart Winchester: On a track.
00:46:19.000 --> 00:46:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Very low angle terrain.
00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:29.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And most importantly is a smile. Everyone who sees it smiles. And this is sort of a reflexive natural thing.
00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:23.000
Stuart Winchester: Lots of snow.
00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:26.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:30.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:36.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: That people just, I’m a certified people, people get it and.
00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:44.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And it brings a lot of happiness to people. It’s something about it, it’s really eye candy. I don’t know why I make… UTVs are cool, and this is, like, super.
00:46:39.000 --> 00:46:40.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:46:44.000 --> 00:47:02.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So then I sort of confirmed that there’s a market for this. People like it. We could use it, but now I had to get the software to work. And that was back in 2021. I realized I had to make a business, which is something.
00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:52.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:18.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: that, you know, people face when they sort of have an idea, and you make a prototype, and okay, now you have to go to the next level. So I applied for TechStars, which is an incubator startup, and had a co-founder with me, and we…
00:47:13.000 --> 00:47:14.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:47:18.000 --> 00:47:35.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Applied to that and got into that, which is really important because we learned about VC money and what it means to make a business, how to scale a business, what are people looking for? And that was like a boot camp. And after that, we came out again, but we still had a problem with this.
00:47:27.000 --> 00:47:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:52.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: idea of software to run this vehicle, because we… I had the feeling that, okay, everything’s off the shelf, we get a UTV, and then we get software to run it. Autonomous is a billion autonomous cars. The problem is that all the autonomy programs are running for cars on the road, and roads have lines, and they have stop signs, and they have.
00:47:41.000 --> 00:47:42.000
Stuart Winchester: No.
00:47:52.000 --> 00:48:11.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: things that, you go in the backcountry, they come to a halt. So again, a big problem, but it’s an opportunity for me, because no one’s doing it. Actually, you know, if you type in autonomous UTV on Google today, I’m number one. So no one is doing that, and you can say, well, it’s because no one wants it, but I think it’s just that it’s an early thing. People are focused.
00:48:11.000 --> 00:48:31.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: industry is focused on the road. So, industry tends to focus on what they’re good at. So, you know, Piston Bully’s making snow cats, because that’s what they do. It takes an idiot like me to, like, say, okay, let’s do something a little bit different, get traction, develop it, and then they come in and they’ll say, okay, let’s incorporate that to our vehicle. So.
00:48:31.000 --> 00:48:46.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: We spent a lot of years with these really worthless software programs to the point where two years ago I said, okay, I just have to do the software myself. I also, coming from a medical background, really didn’t appreciate the value and the impact.
00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:48:46.000 --> 00:49:01.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: of software. And, you know, that’s really where the money is, that’s really where the value is. So I hired my own software engineer, and we’ve basically been cockroach mode under a rock for 2 years, building software to run the vehicle. And now.
00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:57.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:49:01.000 --> 00:49:11.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: you know, we have something that’s really beautiful. Actually, I could show you… this is actually, uh, last week in… we’re up in New Hampshire now, and, um…
00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:04.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:49:11.000 --> 00:49:18.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Where is this video? Okay, this is, this is the vehicle, our Can-Am now in New Hampshire.
00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:22.000
Stuart Winchester: So it’s on a… it’s no snow, it’s just on a mountain.
00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:21.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And you can just see how… how…
00:49:22.000 --> 00:49:27.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: It’s on a mountain, yeah, but yeah, just how smooth it is, yeah.
00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:26.000
Stuart Winchester: Driving down a… looks like a…
00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:29.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, like a cleared path, it’s not used a lot.
00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:49.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So, you know, now we have a product that is safe and smooth. We have an app that works. We have something that we can, you know, show people and replicate. And that’s why next week I’m actually starting some demo tours in New Hampshire, visiting some ski mountains.
00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:35.000
Stuart Winchester: And yeah.
00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:39.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:49:49.000 --> 00:49:55.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Uh, because New Hampshire, you know, I really like that state as far as having plenty of snow and rugged territory.
00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:57.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. So, so.
00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:56.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So…
00:49:57.000 --> 00:49:58.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Go ahead.
00:49:57.000 --> 00:50:07.000
Stuart Winchester: So, let’s talk about the ski use case, uh, a term I hate that I inherited from my corporate world, and I can’t find a better… a better substitute, but…
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:01.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mmhm.
00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:06.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:19.000
Stuart Winchester: When I spoke to you last time, it was very much envisioned as a ski vehicle, and I realize it seems as though you’ve added some other uses. I want to stick with skiing for a minute. There is another fellow who reached out to me.
00:50:19.000 --> 00:50:23.000
Stuart Winchester: And I couldn’t find the email from him right now. He’s from Europe. I actually met him up in New Hamps.
00:50:23.000 --> 00:50:25.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mm-hmm.
00:50:23.000 --> 00:50:26.000
Stuart Winchester: And he had this vision.
00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Where he actually saw autonomous vehicles replacing chairlifts. He said, instead of having, you know, one chairlift run all the time on low volume days, you run fewer vehicles. You can also move the lift lines wherever you want, you know, wherever the snow is good, and it’s easy to do that.
00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:53.000
Stuart Winchester: uh, you know, I… he had a lot of energy, and he was a very smart guy, and he said, like, all the technologies kind of came together. I haven’t followed up with him in a while. Um, my skepticism was, okay.
00:50:49.000 --> 00:50:51.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mmhm.
00:50:53.000 --> 00:51:11.000
Stuart Winchester: that makes sense, but a chairlift is one machine, and if you’re placed with 30 machines, that’s 30 things that can break instead of one. I don’t… I don’t know anything, I’m just… this is just my layman’s, you know, observation. So… so where are you at with ski, and… and it sounds like you’re going to some ski areas.
00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:01.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mmhm.
00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:24.000
Stuart Winchester: So are you still considering this mostly a backcountry vehicle, or are you seeing a way commercially to get this into ski resorts and have it be a useful tool for them?
00:51:24.000 --> 00:51:40.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right. So it’s a great question. And I would go back to the fact that I’m still that guy in that chairlift who’s just trying to have a great ski day. And I think we’re not going to replace chairlifts. Just like a lot of technology in skiing, it’s been incremental. Little things that come along.
00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:40.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:56.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: you know, a self-release binding, uh, curved skis, a detachable chairlift. These are things that creep into the world of skiing and make the experience hopefully better. So, you know, I think one of the problems… and I’ll listen to your podcast for all the…
00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:50.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:51:56.000 --> 00:52:04.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: you know, all the ski operators. There’s a lot of talk about what’s being lost with that feeling of…
00:52:04.000 --> 00:52:26.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: you know the the the the culture or that spirit of the mountain. So again, I’m a dad of 4 boys. I I have. I’ve had great ski days. I’ve had bad ski days, and you know, when I think of, or we all think of like, what’s the greatest ski day? What’s a great ski moment? It’s not pulling up to Hunter Mountain with going to being directed to Lot G.
00:52:11.000 --> 00:52:12.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:43.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: It’s not the long lift line. It’s not the $20 hamburger. And actually, all that stuff takes 90% of the day. What is it? It’s like that one moment, that one moment you get where it’s blue sky and your freedom. Maybe you’re alone and it’s just a wonderful little tiny experience. Maybe you caught some.
00:52:44.000 --> 00:53:01.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And it’s that positive reinforcement that keeps us coming back and back and back to this crazy sport. It’s a gambler sport. It’s horrible. So they actually did a study of people leaving ski resorts with their families when it was their first trip. I don’t know if you know this, when they interviewed them and said, would you come back?
00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:21.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: 70% said no, so it’s like a horrible--skiing can be horrible, but why do we do it? We do it for that one moment that we all have in our mind of that blue sky. So Dolagan, in my mind, is like, why can’t we increase that a little more? How do we--we have all this infrastructure, the mountain, the lift, and all that.
00:53:03.000 --> 00:53:04.000
Stuart Winchester: Hmm.
00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:07.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:53:21.000 --> 00:53:36.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: But why can’t we make it better for a few people who want to? Not for everyone, but how do you do that? So what do you do is if you have a mountain, you go back to Powder Mountain, where they had that Lightning Ridge snow cat. Why can’t all the mountains have little backcountry, side country?
00:53:36.000 --> 00:53:54.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: ski opportunities where you have a guide or you go alone, you can’t do it because there’s no way of getting up to that point where you can ski down. So the Dolagon bridges that gap. The other problem is you get down, you can’t get back to the lift. The Dolagon can bring you back to the lift. So I take existing ski mounds and just make them a lot better.
00:53:54.000 --> 00:54:12.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And I don’t have to make it tremendously better. I just have to give that alpha skier, man or woman, that experience, like, you know, that when you’re doing the roulette thing, when you’re doing it in Las Vegas, you gotta win 1 out of 20, so you’ll come back. You gotta give them something. You can’t have people, like, waiting on lift lines, having a terrible experience all the time.
00:54:12.000 --> 00:54:26.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Dolagon does that. So I think for mountains, it’s a home run all around the world to sort of expand into side country and back country. The other thing is, you know, when you think about, like, how mountains…
00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Well, let me just… I’m sorry, I have a question on that, if you don’t mind me jumping in here, Seth. So, Lightning Ridge did have a Snowcat serving it, right? So… so why would… why would Dolagon be better than having a Snowcat?
00:54:31.000 --> 00:54:33.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yes.
00:54:37.000 --> 00:54:47.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So Snowcat’s a $400,000 machine, and it’s a 40-foot path that requires two people and comes once every 30 minutes. And that’s just one path.
00:54:44.000 --> 00:54:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:54:47.000 --> 00:55:03.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So you could get rid of all that. So you can automate it. You don’t need the labor, and you could have six doligons going there. And then you can also end up at different places, and you could dial in that to expand or contract based on snow conditions. They also had one on the other side.
00:55:03.000 --> 00:55:22.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: um, I think it’s called Raintree, but sometimes there wasn’t good snow. So you could have basically six different areas, and the Doligons could move to wherever there’s snow. So, so, which is another, you know, philosophy of this, which is a lot of ski mountains were built in the 40s and 50s and 60s.
00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:09.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:37.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And right now, the world is different. So everyone’s going back to these mountains that were designed in 1950. There’s no snow there anymore. So Dolagon allows you to go where the snow is. If you think of Canada, you could have.
00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:26.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:55:37.000 --> 00:55:47.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: 10 Doligons on a trailer, and we can bring them to an area where there’s snow. And a good example of that is Bluebird, Bluebird Mountain, Eric Lambert’s mountain.
00:55:46.000 --> 00:55:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:55:47.000 --> 00:56:02.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: It failed because they probably didn’t have Dolagons. And I spoke to Eric and I said, I’d love to bring you a Dolagon. He said, we don’t do motorized vehicles. I was like, everybody drives there. They park their car in the lot.
00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:51.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:55:57.000 --> 00:55:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:55:59.000 --> 00:56:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think so.
00:56:02.000 --> 00:56:18.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: But I think if he had Dolagons, they’d still be in business. So I think there’s a need for people like me who don’t have a lot of time to be able to ski and experience those great moments. And 100% Dolagon can do that. And I would say, you know, for…
00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:25.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: For me, you’re talking to me, I’m like, I am a ski mountain owner. I mean, this is what I’m building, is this…
00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:40.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I hope that someday I’ll be in the indie pass, you know, that you’ll be able to buy two days of the Dolagan somewhere. And it may be that we don’t know where it is. We’ll tell you where you say I’m free Tuesday. We’ll tell you where to meet the Dolagan with a guide like my son.
00:56:36.000 --> 00:56:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:49.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: who will take you. And it’s sort of… the idea is to just make skiing what it used to be back in 1950, when they… when Aspen first opened, you know?
00:56:41.000 --> 00:56:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:51.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. So, so, Seth, I, you know.
00:56:51.000 --> 00:56:57.000
Stuart Winchester: This is an area I admittedly don’t know a lot about, but I do hear a lot of.
00:56:57.000 --> 00:56:59.000
Stuart Winchester: noise about…
00:57:00.000 --> 00:57:05.000
Stuart Winchester: snowmobiles on public land throughout the West, and in general.
00:57:05.000 --> 00:57:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Some people hate them, some people love them. There’s… there was a big debate over whether or not they’re allowed in Yellowstone. Uh, you know, obviously the West is a patchwork of federal land and vehicle claims. Have you gotten so far as to look into, from a regulatory point of view.
00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:09.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mm-hmm.
00:57:19.000 --> 00:57:32.000
Stuart Winchester: is there an issue with you going to just a random piece of federal land, Forest Service, wilderness, and just turning on your Dolagon, or is there some sort of motorized vehicle.
00:57:28.000 --> 00:57:30.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mmhm.
00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:43.000
Stuart Winchester: rulebook that would include these as well as snowmobiles? And I… it’s a little bit of an ignorant question, because I kind of don’t know what I’m talking about, but… but do you… do you get what I’m saying, and what I’.
00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:40.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right.
00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:45.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Mm-hmm. No, so, yeah, because you’re from Brooklyn.
00:57:45.000 --> 00:57:50.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And we don’t really know how these things… Okay, that’s true, yeah.
00:57:45.000 --> 00:57:50.000
Stuart Winchester: Well, I’m from… I’m from Michigan, in the woods, and everybody had, like, 9 snow.
00:57:50.000 --> 00:58:00.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: That’s true. But out… outside of here, Stuart, it’s like, UTVs are ubiquitous, and they’re all over the place, and the answer is no. But I’m very aware of…
00:57:55.000 --> 00:57:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
00:57:59.000 --> 00:58:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Answer is no, they’re not banned.
00:58:01.000 --> 00:58:18.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: They’re not banned typically, no. But I’m very aware of the environment. And I do think that something like a chairlift has a quite big impact. And we’re also going to go within two years, we’re going to be electric. So the other thing is we have geofencing. So it’s not like we cut these things loose.
00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:58:16.000 --> 00:58:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
00:58:17.000 --> 00:58:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:58:18.000 --> 00:58:35.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: People can drive them, and if they go out of bounds, the vehicle just stops. So I think it’s a really responsible way to open up areas to let people — but the idea is not to let people rip through the woods, disturbing the beavers and all that stuff and the moose and all.
00:58:22.000 --> 00:58:23.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:58:33.000 --> 00:58:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:50.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: You know, that’s not what I attempt to do. It’s actually, that’s why I like the idea of staying on a resort doing mostly side country where people may be skiing now, but just have a, have a problem with, you know, getting back. And that’s where also when you think about how the Dolocan can affect with.
00:58:50.000 --> 00:58:57.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: with development of these areas. When I heard, who was it? It was…
00:58:57.000 --> 00:59:19.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Brandy Hammond talking about Powder Mountain, about the development. So they’re building like, they’re not building 4,000 houses. They’re building like 450 houses or something. But what a lot of your conversation was about all the lifts they’re building to sort of patch this together. But 450 houses, why wouldn’t each one have its own dolagon? Wouldn’t that solve all of that problem and a lot less concrete?
00:59:01.000 --> 00:59:02.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:59:19.000 --> 00:59:24.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: An electric Dologon could shuttle people back and forth. And any mountain, the way they’re built now.
00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Well, you wouldn’t really need one for each, right? You’d need a network of them, and you could… I mean.
00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:26.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yep.
00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:36.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Union Network, or you… yes, exactly, or you could have your own, you know, it could… and in the summer, it could take you mountain biking, it could take you fishing, it could, you know… but to have a house… like, if you have a house on a.
00:59:27.000 --> 00:59:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:59:36.000 --> 00:59:52.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: You typically people have a ski, a water ski boat, you know, specialized boat. So if you have a house and there’s a mountain behind you, why wouldn’t you have your own ski vehicle? You know, it’s sort of, I think it’s just people seeing this and that’s a difficult jump when you’re when you’re an inventor is like.
00:59:39.000 --> 00:59:40.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:59:45.000 --> 00:59:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:59:52.000 --> 01:00:07.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I’ve been early a lot and burned on that. And sometimes you hit it right on. I had a fortunate company I did who was just right on. But if you’re too early, it’s more often than you’re being too late. The late people copy and they’re successful.
01:00:07.000 --> 01:00:21.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: we frequently come in too early. So, it’s hard for me to get this vision across. Like, if I were a developer, or had a mountain, I would see that all my houses are right on the side, ski in, ski out, are commanding tremendous price. A quarter of a mile away.
01:00:21.000 --> 01:00:37.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: the price comes down a lot, because those people have a different experience. They have to get in their car and drive to the parking lot and park. But if those houses had a dolodon, their ski-in, ski-out, it’s almost nicer than being a slope site, because it’s private and quiet. So, you sort of, like, decompress the congestion around the ski mount.
01:00:37.000 --> 01:00:53.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And allow people to access it in a very quiet way with an electric dolga. So it’s not, it’s sort of a different, very much a tool for ski mountains to sort of increase happiness and give people that special moment of skiing.
01:00:53.000 --> 01:00:58.000
Stuart Winchester: So it sounds like this might have been a case when you were a little early, but you’ve kept at it.
01:00:58.000 --> 01:01:02.000
Stuart Winchester: What has kept you at it from…
01:01:02.000 --> 01:01:09.000
Stuart Winchester: I mean, I could ask you about the mental part, and you’re obviously built with a lot of resilience, right, as a person.
01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:26.000
Stuart Winchester: But I’d imagine that if you didn’t see any progress, you wouldn’t have kept going for 5 years, right? Because we had the first conversation 5 years ago, and you’ve obviously been working on it all the time. So what are the benchmarks that you’ve seen, and how close do you think you are to commercial production?
01:01:18.000 --> 01:01:19.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yep.
01:01:26.000 --> 01:01:37.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right, so there’s always an issue of money. It’s like, you know, when you have a business, a startup. So we have VC money, we have a state grant from Colorado. I have my own money I’m putting into it.
01:01:37.000 --> 01:01:46.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: But I didn’t want to do anything until I had the technology locked down, which I have now. And now I’m going to the next step where now I need like.
01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:01:46.000 --> 01:02:04.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I’m looking for a strategic partner, someone who believes in the vision, saying that this is not going to take over skiing, but it’s going to complement it. It’s going to be there. There’s going to be — in Kazakhstan, there’s building a mountain right now, today. Maybe they need doligans there. In Japan, maybe they need doligans. In Canada, British Columbia, maybe they need dol.
01:01:58.000 --> 01:01:59.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:02:04.000 --> 01:02:20.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: to see that this could be part of the skiing world. So it’s a partner, it’s someone who has money to take it to the next step. I’ve sort of done my own spending, writing checks for this, and that’s where I’m at right now, looking for that.
01:02:16.000 --> 01:02:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:24.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Someone who has the same vision, that shared vision, that this is something that could be…
01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:27.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Again, not take over skiing, but could be part of skiing.
01:02:27.000 --> 01:02:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, that kind of leads into another question I have for you, Seth, which is…
01:02:32.000 --> 01:02:39.000
Stuart Winchester: You’re obviously a smart guy, you know, anyone who’s a surgeon and has 24 patents and is doing all this.
01:02:39.000 --> 01:02:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Has a lot of brains and a lot of, uh, uh, ability to make things happen, but, but why are you doing this instead of like Ford or Piston Bully or I don’t know, even Doppelmeyer, uh, you know, why, why does it take, take.
01:02:56.000 --> 01:03:04.000
Stuart Winchester: a dude in his garage to get this moving? And why aren’t the bigger players doing it?
01:02:59.000 --> 01:03:00.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:14.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. I think this audience is mostly ski operators who are people who are like me, who just like to fix things and do things, and we’re all, you know, that’s the nature of it.
01:03:12.000 --> 01:03:15.000
Stuart Winchester: A lot of really hardcore skiers too, yeah.
01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:29.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: That’s the nature of this business or people. So there’s the people that like invent and fix and enjoy that. And then there’s the corporate world of people who just look for sales. And also, I just know from my experience with medical devices, which I had.
01:03:16.000 --> 01:03:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:03:20.000 --> 01:03:22.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:03:29.000 --> 01:03:45.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: A lot of experience over the years. The incentive for someone in a big company like that is to not do something that has any risk. So if a person takes on a project that has risk and it fails, they get fired. If it’s successful, they just sort of have maybe the same job.
01:03:42.000 --> 01:03:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:46.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
01:03:45.000 --> 01:04:04.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So there’s no incentive. So for someone like me, I have to go really high up, I have to really work hard to show, okay, this is a thing, I have traction, people are buying it. Then Pisti Bully gets involved, and that’s how, you know, technology evolves. But when you look at all the innovations in skiing.
01:03:54.000 --> 01:03:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:03:57.000 --> 01:03:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:21.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Whether it’s snow making or even snow cats, it’s some dude just like just did it, just built it because it worked and it made their life better. And I think I’m sure every operator I’ve heard in your show, like they describe how they have to do everything. They have to do ticketing, parking, food service, you know.
01:04:21.000 --> 01:04:36.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: labor management, uh, it’s just the nature of the ski business. And for me, the gratification is just building something, fixing something, like, always innovating and making it better. And I’m just sort of determined that I’ve got to have a good product, a safe product, and if I have that.
01:04:30.000 --> 01:04:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:51.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I just hope that, you know, it will be seen by someone else. I may be wrong. I may be… I don’t know if we’re gonna have a conversation in two years from now or not. I hope we are, and if we do, it means that I was right with my vision.
01:04:50.000 --> 01:05:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Well, it seems like you’re making some good progress. So if someone from Polaris or just some rich person is listening to this, I actually have a super educated audience because I think they needed some ski content that wasn’t just dudes jumping off things. So I get a lot of folks like you who read and listen and have resources.
01:05:08.000 --> 01:05:16.000
Stuart Winchester: if someone wants to partner with you, or you said you’re doing a pilot vehicle program through New Hampshire, if they want to…
01:05:16.000 --> 01:05:21.000
Stuart Winchester: be included in that tour, what do they do? How do they get ahold of you?
01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:37.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, thanks. Just write to me at seth@dolagon.com. And I have vehicles now. I want to place them in homes. We have one going on a ranch in Colorado. We’re doing actually some other spray work down south. And I’m looking to place one in New England, New Hampshire.
01:05:23.000 --> 01:05:25.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:05:37.000 --> 01:05:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:05:37.000 --> 01:05:53.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: If possibly we’re just try it. Let’s see what happens. See if people’s reaction are to it. It’s an experiment to some degree, but it’s super fun. And the most important thing is it really brings a smile to everyone’s face when this thing comes around the corner. People are like, what’s that?
01:05:45.000 --> 01:05:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:05:53.000 --> 01:05:58.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: But I do, I do think that, you know, it’s kind of a place.
01:05:53.000 --> 01:05:55.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
01:05:58.000 --> 01:06:13.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, what I think would be really cool is you get these vast Sierra parking lots, you mentioned Hunter, for example, and that part, if you get there late, it’s like, oh my god, you’re… but to just have these things circling and just sort of being smart enough to see, oh, there’s a family, and say, hey, do you want a ride? And if.
01:06:09.000 --> 01:06:10.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah. Okay.
01:06:13.000 --> 01:06:25.000
Stuart Winchester: you know, and say, okay, I’ll… I’ll be back in five minutes. That would be really neat. I mean, I think for… for a mountain like that, insofar as there’s ever snow on the ground. Uh, can I ask you about Brody?
01:06:13.000 --> 01:06:15.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:17.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: You know.
01:06:25.000 --> 01:06:30.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I wrote to you. Yeah.
01:06:26.000 --> 01:06:44.000
Stuart Winchester: So what… so… yeah. So what… so for the listeners, set this up. Brody is right next to Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts, excellent ski area, and they used to compete really hard, and around the year 2000, the Fairbank Group, along with Joe O’Donnell, I believe, bought.
01:06:32.000 --> 01:06:33.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Okay.
01:06:44.000 --> 01:06:54.000
Stuart Winchester: Brody. Tried to run it for a couple years, and then they shut it down. It’s been abandoned ever since. I think the lifts are still sitting there. It’s a great ski mountain. There was a… there was a, uh.
01:06:50.000 --> 01:06:52.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, right.
01:06:54.000 --> 01:06:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Part of the…
01:06:56.000 --> 01:07:07.000
Stuart Winchester: land lease said that it couldn’t be reopened as a ski area, but… I don’t know. Everything has an expiration date, right? So… so tell us about Brody, what caught your attention, and if there’s anything going on there.
01:07:02.000 --> 01:07:04.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: That’s right, that’s right, yeah.
01:07:06.000 --> 01:07:23.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: So I was really interested in this lost ski area, the Nelsap thing, New England lost ski area project. There’s hundreds of ski resorts, ski mountains in New England that have gone out of business. And I thought, wow, with the Dolagon, we could go start skiing.
01:07:23.000 --> 01:07:39.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: There again, a lot of people are doing touring, they’re skinning up and they’re going down. So then I saw that Brody was for sale. So here’s a place. It was a ski mountain, has infrastructure. They wanted to build some houses on it. And I wrote to you and I said, this could be the.
01:07:36.000 --> 01:07:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:07:39.000 --> 01:07:44.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: the Winchester Mountain, get out of the podcast business, whatever, and you were so…
01:07:40.000 --> 01:07:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
01:07:44.000 --> 01:08:00.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: nice. Like, you know, you say, I like what I’m doing. I’m not doing that. But the point is that you can take something like that. You can take a mountain and you see this always for sale. These mountains are for sale. And the problem is the lift. You know, it’s that one piece of critical infrastructure that is very hard to replace.
01:07:52.000 --> 01:07:54.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:06.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: If you have a mountain that’s out of business, food service you can do, bathrooms you can do.
01:08:03.000 --> 01:08:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Here’s Brody.
01:08:05.000 --> 01:08:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:08:06.000 --> 01:08:17.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, okay, yeah. So, there’s a beautiful ski mound right here in Massachusetts. So, okay, if I’m a builder, why don’t I build, like, 20 cabins, give… run dolagons up and down, and we’re back in business.
01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:08:17.000 --> 01:08:34.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: You don’t get a lot of snow there, but for me, if I were a homeowner, six good days of skiing on my own mountain would be killer. And also, with the Dolagon, you could deliver food to these cabins. You can do things. You could take a piece of property like that and really make it happen.
01:08:23.000 --> 01:08:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:08:25.000 --> 01:08:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
01:08:35.000 --> 01:08:41.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And unfortunately, Stuart Winchester did not take my offer.
01:08:41.000 --> 01:08:44.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: But Stuart, that could have been your big moment. Yeah.
01:08:44.000 --> 01:08:59.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, you know, actually, I think it’s fortunate that Stuart Winchester did not take your offer. So let’s take a look at Brody here. You know, Brody’s… I never skied there, right? So they closed down in 2002, that’s the same time I moved to the East Coast.
01:08:51.000 --> 01:08:52.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yep.
01:08:57.000 --> 01:08:58.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, I’ve never…
01:08:59.000 --> 01:09:00.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:05.000
Stuart Winchester: So it’s, you know, there’s Brody Mountain, it’s a nice chunk. It’s actually got, like, I.
01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:06.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:14.000
Stuart Winchester: And I don’t know when this photo is from… this Google Earth is from, but it’s… I mean, the trail network’s intact, right? It’s… it’s still there. Are the lifts still there?
01:09:11.000 --> 01:09:13.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Exactly.
01:09:14.000 --> 01:09:16.000
Stuart Winchester: Did they not sell the lifts? Oh!
01:09:14.000 --> 01:09:20.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: No, I don’t think there’s a lift. And there’s a rule that you can’t have a lift there. Yeah, they made a rule.
01:09:16.000 --> 01:09:20.000
Stuart Winchester: Well, there’s one. There’s towers, at least. No, this is a lift right here.
01:09:20.000 --> 01:09:23.000
Stuart Winchester: It looks like a double chair.
01:09:21.000 --> 01:09:22.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I…
01:09:23.000 --> 01:09:39.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, they definitely don’t have a lift. But there’s a rule that you can’t run a lift there commercially. But that’s where, like I said, like the Dalgons, which make like a club and you can run UTVs up there. That picture definitely has a lift in it. I think they have the towers, but no cable.
01:09:25.000 --> 01:09:26.000
Stuart Winchester: You don’t…
01:09:26.000 --> 01:09:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Sure.
01:09:35.000 --> 01:09:36.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:09:37.000 --> 01:09:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah.
01:09:38.000 --> 01:09:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, this is… this is definitely one of the lifts, and then over here, I thought I saw chairs on there. Aren’t these chairs? Am I… am I crazy?
01:09:39.000 --> 01:09:40.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
01:09:44.000 --> 01:09:46.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And then…
01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Those look like cherries to me.
01:09:47.000 --> 01:09:50.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, you’re right. Yeah.
01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:54.000
Stuart Winchester: So, I don’t know, maybe I’ll drive up there and see. But, yeah.
01:09:51.000 --> 01:09:57.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, I’ll check it out with you. We can ski with Dolga. I’ll meet you up there. We’ll ski.
01:09:55.000 --> 01:10:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Well, that’s all… you know, I’m still waiting on my first ride, Seth, after 5 years.
01:09:58.000 --> 01:10:03.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, okay. I’ll get you.
01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:07.000
Stuart Winchester: So, who are you visiting on the tour? Just leave us with that. What do you got ahead of you this winter? Where are you going to be trying this thing out?
01:10:05.000 --> 01:10:07.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Um, okay.
01:10:07.000 --> 01:10:23.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, so we got a bunch. I’m putting a call out. Actually, Eric Mogenson is really kind. He’s going to meet with me. I spoke to the people at Attach, Bretton Woods, Waterville Valley, and Loon, and some of the others I met up at Ski New Hampshire.
01:10:23.000 --> 01:10:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:10:23.000 --> 01:10:34.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: And, uh, we’ll just show it around and, uh, you know, see if… see what people say. I’m also just, like, interested in feedback and… and, uh, you know, what people think of it at this point, too, so…
01:10:26.000 --> 01:10:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:10:31.000 --> 01:10:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:10:33.000 --> 01:10:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay, and actually, last thing, uh, tell us about the wordplay, tell us about the name, Dolagon.
01:10:38.000 --> 01:10:52.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Oh, yeah, Dolagon comes from ski gondola. So we take the word gondola and do a mashup, and you have Dolagon, and I just sort of liked it. Um, funny story was when I went on.
01:10:41.000 --> 01:10:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:10:49.000 --> 01:10:50.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:10:52.000 --> 01:11:07.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Fiverr, you know, this thing where you can get, like, people to do things, and I got this guy to do a… this is back in 2019… to do a logo, and he gave me a logo of a gondola from Venice, you know? I was like, okay, guy, you didn’t… you didn’t hear anything…
01:10:54.000 --> 01:10:55.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:11:07.000 --> 01:11:17.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: You missed it! I’m not conveying, I’m not, like, I’m not a good communicator. So, so Dolagon just stuck. We just like the name, I don’t know, we like the name, and that’s what it.
01:11:09.000 --> 01:11:10.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
01:11:17.000 --> 01:11:22.000
Stuart Winchester: That’s cool. That’s great. Good stuff, Seth. You’re the best. I wish you all the luck, and I hope…
01:11:18.000 --> 01:11:19.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yep.
01:11:20.000 --> 01:11:21.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Alright.
01:11:21.000 --> 01:11:23.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Thanks so much. Yeah.
01:11:22.000 --> 01:11:34.000
Stuart Winchester: I will get, uh, updates on that tour and, and, and a ride someday, so I can see this thing in person, because you’re right in my neighborhood. So, so thanks so much. I really, really appreciate it, and it’s really cool to see.
01:11:29.000 --> 01:11:30.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah.
01:11:30.000 --> 01:11:31.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yes.
01:11:34.000 --> 01:11:35.000
Stuart Winchester: this sort of…
01:11:35.000 --> 01:11:41.000
Stuart Winchester: startup entrepreneurship type thing happen in skiing, because one thing I’ve learned about skiing.
01:11:41.000 --> 01:11:56.000
Stuart Winchester: is the reason skiing is so far behind is no one makes things specifically for skiing because the industry is too small. That’s why the software was so bad for so long, and that’s one reason why Mogensen started Entebeni. It’s specifically for skiing, and he won’t do it for anything else, so…
01:11:49.000 --> 01:11:52.000
Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Hmm. Hmm.
01:11:56.000 --> 01:12:00.000
Stuart Winchester: So I think it’s really neat to see someone.
01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:07.000
Stuart Winchester: who has the brainpower and the knowledge jump in and do this. So I wish you the best of luck, man. I hope we see these things all over the place.
