Nick Frosst, the co-founder of a Canadian AI startup called Cohere, has been a musician his whole life. He loves to sing and hasn’t stopped since he started. In fact, he’s the lead singer of an indie rock band called Good Kid, which is made up of programmers.
Good Kid isn’t just a hobby; it’s a real band with over 2.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify and a huge following. The band even played at a big music festival called Lollapalooza and was nominated for a major music award.
The band started at the University of Toronto in 2015 as a way to have fun. All the members were studying computer science except one guitar player, who convinced everyone to switch to computer science. The band released its first single, Nomu, in 2015 and it did much better than they expected.
Good Kid released more singles and then its first album in 2018. The band has since released four more albums. In 2019, Frosst’s work partner, Aidan Gomez, and he launched Cohere, a company that offers AI models for big businesses. The company has grown a lot and is now worth $5.5 billion.
Even though Good Kid is popular, Frosst considers Cohere his real job. He spends most of his time working on AI and music is just something he enjoys in his free time. Finding a balance between the two hasn’t been hard; the band practices twice a week and when they go on tour, they work remotely on the bus before playing shows.
Frosst thinks that playing music helps him with his job at Cohere. It clears his mind and helps him focus. In fact, even when the band is making music, they are still thinking about AI.
