Meet the Founders: Courier

(header image by Bryan Garcia Luna)

Courier is one of our favorite sock brands for running and cycling. We love how they bring creative intention to an article of clothing that is often an afterthought, and how they've designed their products around feelings. We asked their team 5 quick questions to get to know the people behind the brand a bit better. 

Tell us about yourselves—who are you and what is Courier? 

Courier creates high-performance socks for multi-passionate athletes. We’re built on the belief that your socks are not an accessory but rather a critical piece of performance gear that deserve the same level of intention as the rest of your kit. We create socks meticulously engineered to enhance every run and ride.

We’re a small, tight-knit team of five founders with deep roots in performance, brand, and product, from Nike, lululemon, and Stance to Fox Racing and early-stage startups. We shared a frustration: while running shoes were seeing NASA-level innovation and cycling clothing was being designed like Formula 1 gear, socks were the forgotten category.

The biggest issue we found was nailing the type of socks we wanted to wear for our runs and rides- the cushioned ones lacked breathability, while the breathable ones offered no support. It was a Goldilocks problem with no real solution, especially for athletes like us moving fluidly between ride and run, trail and road.

So we built our own, developing sensation-based design and technical knit innovation that could do both. Our patent-pending courierPOD and courierPOCKET technology work together to manage heat and moisture, reduce pressure, and support natural movement. We launched with two styles- the HiFi Sock and the LoFi Sock— designed around how you want to feel on your run or ride, with more on the way this fall and winter.

Why socks? What is special about your story that led you to create socks?

Our co-founder Matt ruptured his Achilles playing rugby a few months before a long-awaited bikepacking trip through the French Alps. While begrudgingly riding an e-bike at his surgeon's orders near La Clusaz, his Achilles covered in KT tape, he got to thinking: why are socks treated as mere shoe liners, shouldn’t they make you feel a certain way like the rest of your kit does?

As a product nerd (his nickname is "Top Goots"- a Kiwi twist on “Top Gear” for his obsession with riding and running gear) Matt couldn't understand why socks weren't getting the same level of consideration and innovation as running and cycling shoes were. He returned back to the US, set to finalize his plans to open a Real Fruit ice cream truck, before meeting Tom, a former world-class middle distance runner with similar sock frustrations who convinced him to ditch his dessert dreams and start building socks instead.

Great businesses need great people, so they brought in Kate (operations wizard) and Madeline (brand builder), then found a product developer who'd spent decades designing innovative socks at Nike, lululemon, Stance, and Burton. Freed from the usual (corporate?) constraints, he helped us invent the system that powers Courier today. We launched the HiFi and LoFi in September 2024—about a year after Matt’s fateful ride up that Alpine col.

You feature a lot of real runners and cyclists in your campaigns—tell us what is compelling to you about using real athletes. 

Half our founding team are Kiwis, and there's something in New Zealand culture about being quietly competitive but always humble, multi-faceted, and going full gas at anything you try. It's not unusual to meet up for an afternoon mountain bike ride and find out halfway through the climb that your friend already ran a casual solo trail marathon that morning. 

Kiwi culture has this effortless approach to athleticism—laid-back in demeanor but fierce in discipline, embracing versatility while chasing excellence. That mindset shaped our entire brand and led us to create for the "Renaissance Athlete," designing socks equally considered for a 50-mile trail race or a cycling trip across the Pyrenees, probably because our customer is doing both in the same trip.

That's why we tell our brand story through real people who embody that spirit. We want to celebrate the artists who train for solo ultra attempts throughout NYC in their spare time, or the cyclists who refuse to pick one specialization and instead dedicate their lives to mastery of it all. These real athletes actually put our gear through what we designed it for. Their stories validate what we've built and we hope they inspire others to embrace versatility over specialization.

Similarly, you tap creatives who are also athletes—what to you is the interesting part of the intersection between creativity and athleticism? 

We heard this quote a few years back that stuck: "interested people are interesting." The most fascinating people to share a long run or beer with are innately curious, game to try new things, often unexpected, and always multi-dimensional.

The intersection of creativity and athleticism perfectly embodies the Renaissance spirit we champion. Just like Leonardo da Vinci wasn't just a painter but also an anatomist, botanist, and engineer, modern Renaissance Athletes often excel in both physical and creative pursuits. 

Creative athletes understand nuance in ways pure specialists might miss. We designed our socks for feeling and sensation. When people ask "which sock is best for a long run?" it's not about "light" versus "thick"—it's how do you want to feel? High-touch, connected, energized (HiFi), or more grounded, composed, steady (LoFi)? No one understands designing to evoke sensations better than creatives. They don't just snap pictures to communicate a message, they create to communicate a feeling.

Anything else our community should know? 

Our logo is inspired by the Kererū, a native New Zealand wood pigeon with a bit of a drinking problem. This vibrant, majestic bird overindulges on fermented berries, making its post-feast flights hilariously chaotic. That balance of beauty and personality is at the heart of Courier- we take our performance and product seriously, but not ourselves. 

We’re also still a small, self- and friends-funded team, building Courier on nights and weekends after our day jobs. The dream is to see more runners and riders both embracing versatility and rethinking how they see socks, and for that momentum to carry us into doing this full time. Huge thanks to every person who’s given our socks a go, and to Renegade for backing the little guys and giving brands like ours a place to grow.

Thanks to Madeline and the Courier team for your time and thoughtfulness!