Nick Frost, co-founder of the $5.5 billion Canadian AI startup Cohere, has been a musician his whole life. He told TechCrunch that once he starts singing, he never stops. That hasn't changed now. In addition to his full-time job at Cohere, Frost is also the frontman for Good Kid, an indie rock band made up entirely of programmers.
Good Kid is more than just a group of friends who jam in someone's garage on the weekends: The band has 2.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, recently played Lollapalooza, was nominated for Breakthrough Group of the Year by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at this year's Juno Awards, and opened for Portugal the Man on his Canadian tour last fall.
Frost told TechCrunch that Good Kid formed as a hobby at the University of Toronto in 2015. All members were enrolled in computer science programs except for guitarist David Wood, who convinced him to switch. Good Kid released its first single, “Nomu,” in late 2015. Nomu's musical medley is reminiscent of indie pop-rock group Two Door Cinema Club, and Frost's vocals sound in a style comparable to Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke. Both Bloc Party and Two Door Cinema Club have been inspirations for the group.
“We didn't have high expectations,” Frost admits about releasing their first single, “we just wanted to make something we liked, not record a bunch of songs. It worked out better than we expected.”
Good Kid released a few singles before dropping their first self-titled EP in 2018. The band has since released four more albums, with their most recent coming out earlier this year.
About a year after the band's debut album was released in 2018, Frost launched Cohere with Aidan Gomez and Ivan Chang. Cohere has since grown into a notable startup providing AI models for enterprises. The company has raised more than $970 million in venture capital from backers including Salesforce, Nvidia, Cisco and Oracle, and is currently valued at $5.5 billion. As Good Kid's profile continues to grow, Frost said that while he's blessed to be a musician at that level, his work with Cohere and AI is his real career.
“Cohere is my life's work,” Frost says. “I spend most of my time [on] Cohere and music are what allow me to unwind and relax.”
Frost said balancing the two hasn't been too difficult. The band meets twice a week for two-hour practices. When Good Kid goes on tour, the band works remotely on the bus all day (they all work as programmers), then takes the stage at night to perform. Frost said he feels like being on the road allows him to focus more on his work for Cohere, since he doesn't have too many meetings.
“I think music is additive,” Frost says, “and being able to play music really helps me in my work at Cohere. Playing music clears my mind, gives me more time to focus, and makes me a smarter person.”
But even when the band members aren't focused on making music, they're thinking about AI: The band's first single, “Nomu,” written years before Cohere was founded, features the lyric “lost languages, unknown tokens,” a reference to the technology Frost's company would one day be founded on.
When the band played on the final day of Chicago's Lollapalooza festival in August, Frost said it was an amazing experience; he admitted he'd never even attended or played at a music festival before. Good Kid took the stage at 1:45pm and kicked off their setlist with No Time to Explain, just hours after Two Door Cinema Club, the band's inspiration, took to the stage.
Frost says he's grateful to have had such a successful music career without the fear that it might not work out, which is rare in the music industry.
“I feel very lucky to be in this situation, to be able to start making music for fun and out of creativity, not as a career aspiration,” he said.