Encoding Values for AI Success
Let’s put neural networks aside, and take a moment to train ourselves.
A few months ago, just before I began my Clostra internship, I looked over the core values page on the Clostra website. After a brief scan, I moved on to the next page. Little did I know that Clostra’s employees see these values as a serious call to action, and as a roadmap for the company’s unshakeable commitment to its customers. In fact, Clostra’s CEO, Stas, brings up Clostra’s values at every chance he gets - company meetings, in his vision statement entitled “The Clostra Way”, and more. At Clostra, we even have personalized Slack emojis for each core value! Now that I’ve spent several months at Clostra, I’ve come to appreciate the significance of our company values. I hope that after reading this blog post, you’ll feel the same way.
Respect 👊
Clostra is totally remote, and has been for several years. Our employees live in different time zones and work different hours. One of my coworkers likes to have meetings in the morning, relax in the afternoon, and code at night. I personally decided to take off a Friday-Saturday weekend instead of Saturday-Sunday, because as an Orthodox Jew, that makes my religious practice easier. Clostra respects its employees’ time, space, and needs. The company’s respect for us sets the tone for our respect for each other. Our managers respect their employees, our employees respect each other, and we all respect our customers. That means that we do things right - we work together with kindness and efficiency, and we create products with deliberation and care.
Integrity 🤝
Of course, the remote company model goes hand-in-hand with integrity. Because employees are free to choose their own hours, they are always expected to put in 100%. At Clostra, we love what we do, and we believe in going the extra mile to hone our projects to perfection. Employees tend to be passionate about their jobs, thinking over projects even in their spare time and really getting into the zone when they are at work. We trust our employees, and they have upheld that trust again and again.
Practicality 🔧
At Clostra, we look at complicated problems and create novel solutions that bring value to our customers. To help find errant data patterns, our anomaly detection tool, Keymaker, detects and predicts network anomalies with a 99% accuracy rate; to enhance the safety of personnel working around radioactive isotopes, our special nuclear materials detection (SNM) algorithm extends detection ranges beyond currently existing tools; and to help pilots or analysts understand threat environments or an area of interest, our computer vision tools immediately identify and categorize the things that they need to know about, even through heavy clutter. In short, we make a variety of incredible solutions to help our customers “see through the noise” and understand their own data, whatever it may be. Now that’s what we call practical.
Results 📈
As a remote company, Clostra is structurally results-driven. After all, Clostra employees are motivated to see results on a given project, not to clock out at the end of the day. Over the past few years, we have consistently produced excellent results. Our customers keep coming back, we have seen an uptick in revenue, and we are continually growing our team. Whenever we hit a new milestone of success, we don’t slow down to take a break. Instead, we look for new ways to broaden and deepen our company’s performance. While there is no such thing as perfect, we work hard to make our company the best it can be.
Durability 🛡
When Stas set out to create Clostra in 2013, he and the early team prioritized the company’s future. Stas had worked throughout Silicon Valley, and he knew the flaws inherent to the start-up system. He saw the downside of relying on investors up close, as he watched small businesses collapse or cease to exist after being bought out by larger companies. So when Stas created Clostra, he committed to keeping it a privately held company. That means no investors, and no debt. Even though Clostra had to follow a more unconventional path to success, the decision paid off. As we face the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, Clostra remains debt-free and safe. Our employees and customers alike can feel secure in Clostra’s future, knowing that our company isn’t going anywhere.
Excellence 👏
Excellence is evident in all of Clostra’s actions, and especially in our recruiting and hiring process. While we are sometimes driven to recruit for specific technical roles or to meet a certain need, we mostly recruit to find the very best people—innovative problem-solvers who can step up to meet dynamic software engineering and machine learning needs. We seek out talented, lifelong learners who are motivated by the work we do and who will contribute at their highest levels. We seek out people who will constantly adapt and grow by challenging themselves. We know that many amazing things are done by people doing them for the first time. We aren’t afraid to hire for aptitude and enthusiasm, then train for skills. We hire for excellence.
As a whole, Clostra’s values make up the motivating force that drives our company. Our values move us towards the type of success that both employees and customers can feel good about. At the end of the day, we strive to hire talented people, give them the room to grow and learn, and enable them to jump into their projects with a true sense of investment. We create interesting and novel products, and we go above and beyond for our customers. We keep the future in mind, building a company to last. With core values like ours, Clostra is here to stay.