Our mission is ambitious

Formic exists to create a world of abundance by outsourcing the drudgery of work to robots so that humans can be unleashed to do the creative, imaginative, collaborative, satisfying, society-advancing work we’re meant to do.

Realizing our mission will require us to rethink the status quo, stay on the cusp of today’s innovations, solve really hard technical and operational problems, and most importantly, remain fearlessly optimistic while we do it.

We’re in an old space doing new things and aspiring to new heights. Instead of thinking about all the small ways something won’t work, we think about all the big ways something can. We lean on the experience and perspective of our team mates coming from other industries to learn what is possible – this mix of viewpoints is one of our greatest strengths. The path forward might not always be immediately obvious–it’s still early days for Formic–but if we focus on our mission in everything we do, every day, we’ll always be headed in the right direction. We will create a world of abundance with the world’s largest robot workforce.

We exist to absorb complexity. We communicate with clarity. We are surprisingly, unexpectedly fast. We understand our robots are critical to the customers’ production. That is a responsibility we take seriously.

We are partners, not vendors. If the robot stops, we stop getting paid—our incentives are perfectly aligned with our customers’ production. We take on the responsibility of our robots being critical to your operation. We always choose to take the burden rather than make the customer experience worse. We communicate clearly, move with speed, and simplify operational and financial decisions, providing a superior experience to just buying a robot.

The only way to do the industry-shaping, tide-raising, high-impact work we are here to do is to deliver great work at a steady clip. As Kevin Kelly said, “many backward steps are made by standing still.” We must take decisive steps forward, as often as we can.

We’ll get there by taking accountability for our work, staying focused on what matters, and seeing things through to completion no matter what it takes to deliver on our promises. We refuse to be blocked, even when it’s unpleasant. We aspire to work efficiently and we’ll prioritize ruthlessly to get there by constantly asking ourselves if the “juice is worth the squeeze”. There will be times we have to say no to work and people we really, really want to say yes to. Those moments might be painful, but we have to constantly remind ourselves it’s worth the space it opens up for us to execute exceedingly well on the things that matter. We own our own work and our focus.

There will be times when the work in front of us feels big and hard to wrangle. So, we’ll break it up into smaller, more manageable pieces, polish them up, and get them out the door. (It’ll help us learn sooner and more often, anyway). We bias towards getting things done. We help our colleagues keep that spirit up, too.

We do all this without being asked or told, because that’s the kind of company, product, and reputation we all want to uphold together. This company is ours to build together. We’re still the underdog, but if we keep shipping great stuff and building great habits around urgency and focus, soon, the Formic way will become the most obvious way for a factory to build their workforce.

To build trust, we must be predictable. Ambiguity is the enemy of scale. Whether architecting Formic Core or managing a deployment, we work from first principles to find the right answer, not the popular one.

We champion the best decision, driven by truth and objective data, regardless of who proposes it. We operate without ego: if presented with new evidence, we readily abandon previous opinions. We actively pursue truth, even when it means challenging others. We debate thoroughly to reach the best conclusion. We embrace conflict solely in service of the truth, and never make it personal.

Think about the things around you that are made of rubber – tires, the soles of our shoes, pet toys, bouncy balls, brake pads, windshield wipers, medical gloves, balloons, surfaces of playgrounds, hoses. Now think of how reliable these things are across so many different use-cases, whether it’s rain or shine, or whether we’re walking, driving or biking, playing or working. Rubber does the trick because it is simultaneously incredibly durable and incredibly resilient.

At Formic, we work like rubber; when we fall we bounce back up. Dropping something shouldn’t necessarily mean breaking it. We are flexible enough to meet all kinds of challenges and are strong enough to get through them without falling apart. We should be able to move over gravel with grace. Everyday pokes and prods and pushes shouldn’t throw us off our game. When they come, we should be able to absorb them and reclaim our shape in no time…or, mold ourselves to the new normal if that’s what’s needed.

There’s going to be a lot thrown at us in the days, months, and years to come. We aspire to take it all in stride, with a spring in our step.

At Formic, we always work with a desire to make things easier and better for other team members. In a fast-paced, quickly-scaling organization like ours, a graceful baton pass is an act of kindness.

We are judicious with our asks, mindful of the costs of internal requests, and look for opportunities to be proactively helpful. We think about how to make useful information available to our colleagues (ex- in well-curated, discoverable documentation). If it’s buried in a Slack thread, it’s probably not usefully available. We unblock others and are responsive to help them sprint.

Before you ask someone else to do something (or even just give them an idea), consider, whether it’s actually important that they hear from you about this, whether now is the right time and whether this is the right forum (and if not, when/how?). When you’re on the receiving end of an idea, relentlessly determine who is the decision-maker, what the action is, and whether you are going to take action on it. Get comfortable with (the good kind of) process - they help us run more smoothly. Respect those others have established and honor the inkling that something you’re working on might require one.

Be generous with useful information. Share resources, tools, and tips that are likely to accelerate someone else’s progress. Make teaching and learning a part of your day, every day. Much of our work requires that we “stitch together” disparate areas (mechanical engineering, software, finance, legal, etc.). Helping each other lets us continue to build a better solution as we “connect” and produce seamless solutions using multiple disciplines and knowledge areas.