Dress Shoes and Hiking Boots – our company culture
Somewhere on 160 West
I had not been on a major highway for miles and the sun was dipping behind the mountains. For the previous 4 hours, I was treated to birch trees with changing leaves and mountain views as I drove from Colorado Springs to Durango. This was the leisure leg of a two-week trip for our young AI (Artificial Intelligence) company, Frontier Foundry. Two days ago, I was in Midtown Manhattan giving a talk on AI and cybersecurity to the New York State Bar Association. Six hours ago, I was giving a speech about critical infrastructure in space to a mixed group of private and government space professionals. As I drove down the winding mountain roads, I thought about what it was like to work at a startup, but not just any startup, ours. Radio stations were in and out, so I had plenty of time to reflect on life at Frontier Foundry, our team, and our culture. Looking over at the bag on the seat next to me, I saw something that perfectly represented what we are building.
I used to travel frequently for previous jobs, so my packing technique is legendary. Roll, not fold. Use the inside of shoes. NEVER check a bag. This efficiency always forced me to think about what I would bring and what I would not. What I noticed on the seat next to me was the antithesis of my normal packing, I had both my hiking boots and my fancy dress shoes. Normally, I would find a work around to not pack two items that take up so much space, but this trip called for it. I was speaking in New York and Colorado and in between I was going to visit some of the more remote national parks in Colorado. This is what Frontier Foundry is. Dress shoes and hiking boots.
Hours were spent around my cofounder’s dining room table through most of 2022 and half of 2023 figuring out what Frontier Foundry would be. It did not even have a name at that point, but we knew we were creating something that would not be the typical startup that followed the trodden path of so many that came before. We wanted to build for the biggest problems. Not admire problems. Not make incremental change. Not seek paths that would get us the highest valuation. We wanted to both build and implement. Find the problems that were once unimaginably difficult and bring our AI products, built by world leading domain experts, to bear. To make humans better by using AI to enhance their work. To use AI to de-risk missions and give an advantage to those working difficult problems every day. These are the hiking boots.
As an avid hiker, I have put many miles on many different pairs of boots. My current pair look beaten up, are faded, and have long ago lost the sparkle of the outdoor store where I bought them. However, they are an essential part of allowing me to do things that years ago I would have thought I could not. I have used them to climb mountains, do multiple day treks, and splash through rushing rivers. They are the first tools I grab when I am going to do something hard. Sure, I could take the bus to the top of the mountain adjacent to this one, but I do not want to do that. I want to do the hard thing and it is not getting any closer the longer I stand in the parking lot. At some point, I must put on my boots and get to the top.
At Frontier Foundry, we are not going to stand and look up at the mountain, we are going to the top. That means we are going to find difficult problems and start building. Once we are done building, we are going to implement it. Once implemented, we are going to measure success. We only bring in the top talent, the team you want to go up the mountain with you. All of us are ready to get dirty and do the demanding work. We are all ready to lend a hand and get us to the common goal. It is not easy, but we did not set out to do something easy. The summit is not getting any closer if you stay in the parking lot. And many people have seen the parking lot.
Next to my trusty boots were my dress shoes, reserved for speaking events when I pretend my preference isn’t wearing sandals. These shoes are meant to carry me into rooms where I might meet government officials from the highest level, fellow founders, potential clients, new partners, and other leading innovators. They are meant when I turn it on and represent the work Frontier Foundry is doing and emphasize the level of expertise, we all know as Lindsay, Matt, or Jake. It is also how I learn about innovative research, national security threats, financial models, and potential partners. This is the other half of working at Frontier Foundry.
Internally, we talk about being “On the Frontier and in the Foundry.” Being on the frontier is where bring our immense talent to learn about the hardest problems and conceptualize novel approaches to solve them. It’s our dress shoes. Being in the foundry is where we build and implement. It is where we do not admire mountainous problems and execute solutions. We kick off our dress shoes and slide on our hiking boots for the journey ahead. Always together.
My drive ended well after the sun went down as I drove down the main street in Durango. After breakfast at a local diner, I had a full day of meetings followed by a hike in Mesa Verde National Park. Every day, we do a version of this. We have meetings where we talk about hard problems then we transition over and start the work. We could do less or demand less of ourselves but that’s not how Frontier Foundry was built. It was built to bring the best domain experts together and start creating. To seek and to love the impossible, build the impossible’s foe, and look down on it from the summit. The odyssey through Colorado was a welcome break for me during a busy two weeks. We all need to step back and do whatever recharges you. Looking back on it now, I am simply proud of what we have built together so far and what is to come. There has never been a shortage of mountains.