Listening, First
In the winter of 2020, UltraSignup was transitioning to new ownership.
Some of you remember the early days—when Mark Gilligan was handling everything from customer support to backend engineering. Others have gotten to know the new team, with its distributed structure and evolving roadmap.
One of the first things we did was listen.
Not performatively. But the kind of listening you do when you're stepping into a community that’s existed long before you did. We interviewed race directors to understand what they needed—from the platform, from support, from the company.
One thing came up more than once:
“You don’t host events, so you can't understand the needs...”
They weren't wrong.
At the time, our team was made up of runners—people who cared deeply about the sport, but none who had directed a race. No one had dealt with permitting headaches or last-minute porta-potty logistics. No one had wrestled with course marking, or scrambled to find enough volunteers to staff aid stations. No one had navigated refund requests two weeks after an event—despite a clearly posted no-refunds policy. And none of us had faced the real stressors: sourcing merch, tracking down missing runners between aid stations, or watching wildfires inch closer to the course days before race day.
So, we made a deliberate choice: to hire RDs.
Not to give them special treatment. Not to blur lines. But to make sure the voice of the RD was in the room when we made decisions. Because if we only employed runners, we’d only ever see this business from the runner’s perspective.
That’s not neutrality. That’s bias.
How We Protect Fairness
We know how this can look from the outside. So we put clear boundaries in place—because trust matters.
Every UltraSignup employee is held to clear, non-negotiable standards—especially those who also direct races. Any employee who serves as an RD must disclose their events upon hire or when launching a new one. They cannot start or expand an event series, and they must request explicit permission to direct any race while employed here. These aren’t just formalities—violating these policies is grounds for immediate termination. The goal is simple: to ensure that no one working at UltraSignup has an unfair advantage over the RDs we serve.
When it comes to data, the rules are equally strict. Employees who direct races do not receive special access to competitor data, participant lists, or internal financials. They are explicitly prohibited from using company data to benefit their own events—or anyone else's. Access to sensitive information is tightly controlled based on job function, and we conduct regular audits to ensure those boundaries are respected.
No exceptions. No favors.
What We've Gained by Hiring Race Directors
Internally, having race directors on staff has changed how we operate—for the better. Before, our support team did their best to answer RD questions, but too often they were making informed guesses rather than offering lived experience. Questions like “How far in advance should I secure permits?” or “What’s a smart approach to ordering merch?” or “How do I handle course setup if volunteers don’t show?” didn’t have grounded answers.
Now, we have real expertise in-house. When race directors come to us with operational questions, we’re no longer theorizing—we’re drawing from people who’ve been in the trenches. And that shift matters. Because your success isn’t separate from ours. It’s directly connected.
Why We Believe This Matters
Hiring RDs isn't a workaround. It's a principled decision to build a company that understands the day-to-day challenges of the people it serves.
If we’re a platform that supports races, then we need people who know what it’s like to put one on.
But we also know the importance of boundaries, transparency, and accountability. That’s why our internal policies are strict—by design.
Because the trail and ultra community doesn’t run on corporate slogans. It runs on trust.
And if we’re going to serve that community well, we need some of it inside the organization.
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