For The Love of Hard Problems

Loving hard problems can be lonely. Hard problems are loved by few and loathed by many. They are as enticing as they are difficult and will never love you back. There’s a reason that trying over and over at a hard problem is colloquially referred to as “banging your head against a wall.” But to all those inexplicably attracted to hard problems, we see you. Loving hard problems is why we built Frontier Foundry. That love requires us every day to take a contrarian look at how business is done in multiple industries and question how artificial intelligence (AI) is built by the mainstream vendors. But loving hard problems leads to innovation and innovation leads to breakthroughs. Inside the walls of Frontier Foundry, this is at the center of the culture we built and grow every day. We look at problems differently and we use that point of view to build differently. We encourage our people to embrace hard problems and to bring unique ideas to our build process. There is no shortage of hard problems in the world in 2025 with potentially more to come for multiple industries, government departments, and sectors. As we all look out into uncertainty, there are problems that feel like they are beyond the scope of what we can solve. In this moment, we invite you for a look inside our Foundry. We’d like to show you why we build what we build and how we bring the best engineering to our products and the best engagement with our customers and our audience. Culture has always been a critical part of our success, and we want to share our ethos. The readers of our Substack have gotten to know how we think about some of the most difficult technology related issues out there, but article will break the fourth wall and let you all see why we do what we do. Crazy Ideas A prerequisite for loving hard problems is embracing crazy ideas. Rather, ideas that others view as crazy. People view ideas as crazy when they cut against the accepted grain. It has always been much easier to follow a crowd than to go your own way. It’s actually in our DNA, which is why many people find those paths harder. At the New York University Center for Global Affairs where I teach , I always tell my classes one thing: I have one rule that I will never bend on. This will always be a safe space for creative thought. Creating safety is critical to pull the best ideas out of people. Many people don’t realize the ideas they have are exceptional because they’ve been conditioned to follow the pack. To push back against this cultural and biological reality, it is incumbent on leaders of organizations regardless of size to take the initiative the create safety. People must feel comfortable working through a partially formed idea aloud with their team or with their leadership. That the idea is not fully formed does not matter. What matters is that others can hear the idea and build on it, refine it, and whittle off the sharp edges. It’s not decision by committee; it’s safety by bringing in people with different experiences to listen. That creates a culture, and it creates innovation. At Frontier Foundry, the rule is the same. It is a safe space for creative thought where people can feel empowered to pursue the hard problems without the perception that someone will judge them or tell them they just don’t know. Someone will always listen, ask critical questions, and attempt to refine the idea into something great. That is my promise as a leader to those on our team. Loving the Chaos Safety for creative ideas blossoms into originality. If you have an idea that makes perfect sense to the very first person you share it with, you probably aren’t being very original. If the person questions you on the first communication, you might be onto something. Products must be communicated clearly to the target market, but that takes multiple iterations. The first discussion of an original idea is often rough and disjointed. Loving hard problems means loving this chaos. It means seeing through the word stumbling and the excitement to hear what’s really there. It means asking original questions in response, not questions out of a playbook. There will be time for the playbook later. Creative ideas often come out as chaos the first couple of times, and that chaos should feel right at home in the Foundry. Processes make organizations more efficient and introduce accountability. But providing a space for chaos is also important whether you are a startup or a government agency. This is an element of the Frontier Foundry culture that will never bend, and I’m proud of that. Share Hard Problems Hard problems are hardly in short supply for businesses, governments, and universities. The problems are highly personal to every organization and can cover a wide range of topics: Efficiency Cost cutting Workforce training Resilience Security Making sense of data Increasing your bottom line But your hard problem isn’t exactly like hard problems for your competitors. This is where following gets organizations into trouble. They believe that there are artificial barriers to entry in front of them and that AI tools are not for them. This is why we build. We build because there are too many artificial barriers to entry that are connected to the old ways at looking at problems. We build because we don’t believe that using AI means giving up your privacy. Going after these problems required us to solve some serious challenges in our engineering, our culture, and our marketing, but we built a company with people that were ready to solve those problems and excited by the opportunity to do something others hadn’t seen. Our products all align to this challenge. We built privacy preserving AI that can run in any environment as a way to solve hard problems for organizations that care about data privacy. It’s natural for leaders to hate hard problems because of a perception that they are expensive. Technology is challenging that perception and creating space for thinking more creatively about how to solve a problem. Rather than buying something off the shelf that only solves part of your problem, you should be able to buy something that solves all of your problem and enhances your vision for the organization. Getting AI right inside of organizations is a question many are trying to answer. Answers are out there, but they require space for creative thought. With all of our customers, we spend the time to understand the hardest problem. Making your hardest problems our problem is why we get out of bed. We’ve built a culture that loves this dynamic and engages with customers across sectors to lift that burden. Let someone else deal with your hardest problems while you grow. I know at least one company just crazy enough to embrace hard and produce value as a result. Subscribe now Leave a comment Connect with us: Substack , LinkedIn , Bluesky , X , Website To learn more about the services we offer, please visit our product page. Nick Reese is the cofounder and COO of Frontier Foundry and an adjunct professor of emerging technology at NYU. He is a veteran and a former US government policymaker on cyber and technology issues. Visit his LinkedIn here . This post was edited by Thomas Morin, Marketing Analyst at Frontier Foundry. View his LinkedIn here .