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here.About the Author:
Ellie is responsible for handling most forms of external content - social media, blog posts, and PR. Her favorite part about working at WindBorne is being able to interface with engineers who are constantly building something new (whether it be bots they program and kill or a new component for our balloons). Outside of work, Ellie enjoys visiting museums and learning about heirloom apples.
It's been a whirlwind introduction to life as the Content Lead at WindBorne. And as I edit this I chuckle at my own naïveté - such surprise after a series of tests, writing an article about the weather gap in Sub-Saharan Africa, and onsite interviews? I figured the best way to capture my week at WindBorne was to actively write down my thoughts as I navigated the company, people, and tech—absorbing as much Loonie (that's what we call ourselves at WindBorne) ethos as possible. So here are my moment-by-moment thoughts/feelings/highlights as I shifted gears - from identifying as a strategy consultant based in Brooklyn, New York to acclimatizing to the slowly dawning reality that I will be a newly minted San Franciscan come July. I hope to bring a few (or a lot - ideally a lot) of you along for the ride as I learn more about balloons and meteorology while also adapting to the temperature of this startup. Lucky for the both of us, I love a challenge and yapping.
Day 1 started with a chat with Alyssa (Executive Assistant), setting up my Brex card, and receiving a master Notion document that would serve as my lighthouse. And so it begins - the onboarding app downloading spree. Admittedly, I dealt with my potential overwhelm by leveraging an LLM to choose my health insurance for me. I needed to allocate my time to figuring out where that ever-persistent and odd drumming sound was coming from (spoiler: it was Zulip). By lunch, I was noshing on pad thai and feeling more comfortable with my new digital ecosystem. I amused myself with Zulip by clicking and absorbing the conversations between people I had yet to meet. Around 3 pm, the All Hands meeting began and I logged in on gmeet to see the unfamiliar faces of WindBorne - we launched into it. The All Hands started with a slideshow of self-submitted photos (standouts: a dog in a WindBorne bandana and a balloon returning to us after a brief stint at a French farm #cultured). I wasn’t sure what to expect next, but then we segued into discussing and celebrating the death of projects (the reasons being: either because they didn’t fully address the need or because something had evolved). Coming from the hallowed and bureaucratic halls of consulting… I found it to be a nice change of pace. Engineers are seemingly strange but practical people. I closed out the day by ordering tech that could help me better document WindBorne’s essence.
Day 2 brought a slight panic when I realized John Dean (Co-Founder/CEO) had messaged me overnight - there had been some miscommunication regarding my content cadence. He wanted something by end of week… it was Thursday. I jumped into a 1:1 with Julea (UI/UX Designer) to strategize content, and then spent some time exploring Met Gala photos for something topical for our Instagram (all the while simultaneously getting @'d by new colleagues on Zulip).
Pusha T with Swarovski crystals that look like rain? Lauryn Hill taking cover from the rain with a yellow umbrella? Bingo.
Thank you, Ana Wintour.
The platform learning curve continued as I worked to master both Zulip and Notion more fluidly. I then hopped on a call with Candice (Product Design) to ideate and learn about what her day-to-day work looked and felt like. We chatted about our balloons returning to HQ (blog from Candice to come) and how they all have stickers that help guide kind citizens through the process of getting our balloons back home. Feeling uplifted by Candice’s WindBorne tales, I finally found the creative spark for my Met meme.
Confirmation from John, an Instagram share, and a Zulip post later - my first WindBorne post. We gain 20 followers overnight. I treat myself to dinner with a friend to bask in the happenings of the day.
Day 3 began with breakfast with an old friend who creates e-learning journeys for Amazon. Dirty chai-fueled, I walked home and arrived to a door blocked by packages. I began to unpack my newly acquired content creation tools. Some strange ASMR testing happened (no, I will not be sharing these for the sake of all of us). I then got on a call with Haoxing (Machine Learning) to chat about WeatherMesh and exciting/upcoming updates. She proceeded to teach me about ECMWF and climatology - I guess conventionally weather forecasts aren’t so great after 15 days, but AI is helping to change that? Who would’ve thunk it. We wrapped up and I spend a few hours testing out our new camera and challenging ChatGPT to tell me I made the wrong decision (to ensure that I hadn’t). I get a text from John Dean. He needs as many Sephora gift cards as I can procure and he needs them now. I realize it isn’t John - I’m encouraged to post the incident on Zulip.
Day 4 elected to torment myself by trying the Caltrain commute from SF to Palo Alto for 5 days. Here’s an overview of my first commute experience and first day in-person:
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Day 5 began with a chai latte at Juniper and a NYC-informed panic attack about making people wait in line while I awaited a text from Davy (Atlas Software Lead) informing of me which alternative milk to choose if soy wasn’t an option. 5 minutes passed. Panic amplified. He chose almond. After fighting for my life on one of the hills of SF, drinks in hand, I hitched a ride with Davy. We spent the commute chatting about how,
“[At WindBorne] we’re not doing something just weird and hard - we’re doing it so often, 24/7, that now it’s trivial and consistent. Now that we know things are systematically possible - how can we do it in a robust way / scale?”
We got to HQ and I convinced Davy to let me ask him another 30 minutes-worth of questions. We sat at his desk and he opened up his screen to show me how to find a live feed of all of our GSBs (Global Sounding Balloons). It was pretty insane to be able to witness, in live-time, a fleet of GSBs floating around the globe - quietly capturing atmospheric data and filling up the screen with each measured movement. Davy revealed that he sometimes leveraged WeatherMesh (our forecasting tool) to determine if he would drive with the top down on his convertible. Yes, he had checked WM before he driving us to work.
Confirming: my hair looked utterly bedraggled as I looked over his shoulder with wide eyes (now re-read this interaction with this updated mental image)
After getting some useful links from Davy, I walked over to moneyfarm (rip. we did a little moving around recently, but this specific office space was lovingly coined after some Loonies joked about how it was where the Business Ops people farmed money) to sit down and organize my thoughts on our future content strategy before meeting with Karen (Chief of Staff). Karen and I took a quick working lunch to discuss her recent travels and next steps for content. I returned to HQ to meet with Dana (Public Sector Growth) and John Dean separately. I pitched a possible idea regarding paragliding and both independently (and excitedly) suggested I try to custom order a WindBorne branded paragliding canopy. I had laughed when Dana suggested it, but then when John echoed the same sentiment I realized that neither of them had been joking.
Day 6 once again I was turned away from Sensors and became a Ballast girl (aka I took another manufacturing shift but this time I was tasked with building the component that contains a material that can be released to dictate the altitude of our balloons). I sulked momentarily on the manufacturing floor while all the technicians watched me with a glimmer of amusement. This was followed by three hours of ballast building.
Note: I screwed up the heat seal application process and that added time. I was consoled by Omar (Quality Control) that it was part and parcel of the Loonie initiation process. Consider me initiated.
I finished my ballast and headed to lunch. A Forkable meal later, I sat outside and watched as Jehan launched balloons. Afterwards, I took a meeting John Little (yes, he is 2/4 of our John collection) to discuss the format of our PBL Showcase. Half an hour later, we agreed to work in an iterative fashion by messaging one another on Zulip. I took my laptop outside for my final meeting of the day, where I chatted with Lyna (Head of Commercial Growth) about strategy and her love of ballroom dancing.
Day 7 four days in-person taught me that Loonies arrive later than my early-bird schedule. After adjusting my commute to arrive at 10 am, I spent a few hours completing my ValBal pre-launch training.
Takeaway: hydrogen is highly flammable and the flame is nearly invisible
Post-training, I met with the BizOps to kick off a monthly meeting that Karen established to drive visibility and alignment. We ate our sweetgreen x cote bowls, talked about potential event ideas, and began the process of pairing up to execute. To wrap up the day, I prodded Todd (Director of Meteorology) to clarify my understanding of soundings and the significance of what we were achieving with our balloons. PBL Showcase v1 is created.
Day 8 started with logging my time, a writing block, and content organization. By lunch, I met with Alyssa to plan for upcoming events. Around 1, I joined a PBL Showcase check-in with John^2 to garner feedback and agree on final state. John Little and I agree on getting the article hammered out over the weekend for a Monday blog post. We part ways. I join Jehan outside to launch my first balloon - it was magical. Work at WindBorne could be best described as overwhelming and exhilarating—the sky is quite literally the limit and I have the privilege of showing it.
TL;DR
8 days in and I:
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