With blond hair cut high and tight and a bayonet-sharp jaw line, Kai Kloepfer bears a striking resemblance to Duke, the heroic (albeit fictional) G.I. Joe sergeant who spent the 1980s thwarting Cobra Commander’s plans for global domination. The backdrop for today’s Zoom call does little to quash the comparison.
Flanked by American and Colorado flags, Kloepfer sits in front of a solid blue wall with the name of his company, Biofire, stenciled across its surface. The effect is imposing—like he’s beaming in from the Pentagon. It’s also, however, a bit of a charade. Kloepfer rotates his computer to his left and, through a glass partition, reveals Biofire’s employee kitchen, which looks like your run-of-the-mill tech company’s break room. There is fancy coffee, a pod for private phone calls, and a set of comfortable leather chairs under another Biofire sign, this one set into a leafy plant wall. “Pretend you never saw that,” Kloepfer jokes.
If Biofire’s Broomfield headquarters feels like a movie set, that only makes sense. After all, a startup’s culture emanates from its founder, and this 26-year-old founder isn’t what he appears to be. Or, rather, he’s not what he appears to be. Yes, Kloepfer’s firm makes pistols, but the Boulder-area native spent his formative years in a mostly gun-free household dreaming up science fair projects that were so sophisticated they sparked suspicions of undue parental influence. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and peppers conversations with phrases such as, “so it was actually a very sophisticated seven-factor heterogeneous sensor fusion solution.” But he’s self-aware enough to follow that up with, “I feel
