Founder Interviews: Tyson Gern
Get to know one of our co-founders
At Initial Capacity, our team consists of individuals with unique journeys and a shared passion for software. From unexpected beginnings to deep expertise, these stories offer valuable insights into who we are and what drives us. To bring you closer to the people behind our work, we’re excited to launch a series of interviews, starting with one of our co-founders, Tyson Gern.
Sarah: Let’s start with your background, Tyson. How did you end up starting Initial Capacity?
Tyson: My background is in mathematics. I got my PhD in math from CU Boulder, and I originally thought I’d become a math professor. But the problems I was working on during my research — algebraic combinatorics — felt a little too far from real-world applications for me. I was solving things that might one day be useful for theoretical physics. What really excited me during grad school, though, was the teaching. I taught a calculus course every semester, and I loved it. But the problem in academia is that research is more valued than teaching, which didn’t sit well with me.
Luckily, I had to do a bit of programming for my research, and I ended up really enjoying it. So, I took some computer science classes at CU, liked that direction, and decided to pursue it. I actually interviewed with Mike Barinek, who’s now my co-founder. He was my first interview at Pivotal Labs back in 2012. I had researched a lot of companies in Boulder, and Pivotal’s collaborative nature stood out to me. I started reading up on test-driven development and Extreme Programming, loved the interview, and that’s how my software career began.
Sarah: How did the idea for Initial Capacity come about?
Tyson: That’s a great segue from my time at Pivotal Labs. I was there for about eight years, and every couple of years, my job would completely change. I started out in Boulder writing Ruby and Java, then moved to Dublin to help launch the office there. After that, I came back to the U.S. to help build a team of architects for a large automaker. I even got to return to teaching when I worked on the Education and PAL projects, which was a lot of fun.
When the pandemic hit, we went back to Pivotal Labs’ way of building software, tackling some COVID-specific problems, which was fascinating because we were reading a lot of research papers. But during that time, Pivotal went through big changes — the EMC acquisition, the Pivotal spinoff — and the focus shifted to working with bigger and bigger customers. That’s when I started feeling like I wanted more freedom in terms of the technologies we could use and the size of customers we worked with.
So, when we started Initial Capacity, the idea was, “Can we work with some of these cool companies in Boulder that we wouldn’t be able to work with at a larger company?” And since then, we’ve had the chance to work with some really interesting folks.
Sarah: What were some of the biggest challenges when you were just starting out?
Tyson: The biggest challenge was just taking the leap. We had a great group of people who wanted to work together, and we knew we needed to act before everyone went their separate ways. For me, it wasn’t an easy time — having a one-year-old at home and leaving a great job at VMware, where they took really good care of us. It was pretty scary to leave. But Mike and I were able to support each other through that.
Another big challenge has been figuring out how much we want to grow. Should we stay small, or if we grow, how do we do it in a way that feels right? We’ve been pretty conservative, making sure we don’t grow too quickly.
And then, as a founder of a small company, you have so many things to juggle — keeping up with technology, managing the logistics of an office, staying on top of labor laws when you hire in different places. It’s about finding that balance and staying focused on what matters.
Sarah: What was the initial vision for Initial Capacity, and how has it evolved?
Tyson: When we first started, we were very focused on developers and education. That’s still true to some extent, but it’s definitely evolved. Early on, we were teaching the Cloud Native Weekend and traveling to different places to deliver that content — Thailand, Amsterdam, even up in the mountains in Colorado. It was a blast, but as a company, we realized it was tough to balance both education and development at a high level.
After about a year and a half, we decided we needed to pivot. We had to ask ourselves why we were really here and what kept us together as a team. That’s when we came up with our slogan, “We solve hard problems.” That really sums up why we do what we do. It’s what got me into software development in the first place, and it helps communicate our value to customers. Everyone has complex problems, and that’s where we come in.
One cool thing we’ve done recently is working with a large customer to build their AI academy. Instead of owning all the content ourselves, we’re now focused on creating custom education tailored to each client. They get to own the content afterward, but we’re using what’s worked in the past to help them build something unique.
Sarah: What are some of the most interesting or challenging problems you’ve worked on?
Tyson: There are two types of problems I really enjoy — team challenges and technical challenges. On the team side, it’s been a lot of fun building things from the ground up. Working with our AI customers has been really exciting, especially when we were writing their first lines of code and building their team from scratch. We’ve helped grow teams from just four people to fifty developers, and scaling operations like that is something I really get a kick out of.
On the technical side, I love picking the right language for the job. One project that stands out was with a company that had grown wildly successful. It was a lot of fun to jump in and help them deal with the challenges of scaling beyond their expectations. We had to simulate the scale they were facing at their peak times, and solving that kind of problem is always satisfying.
Sarah: Alright, time for the rapid-fire round! Favorite day of the week?
Tyson: Thursday!
Sarah: Big dogs or small dogs?
Tyson: Hmm, what’s [Tyson’s dog] Finn? Big dog, right? Yeah, big dogs!
Sarah: What type of milk do you put in your cereal?
Tyson: Whatever’s around. With the kids, it’s usually whole milk.
Sarah: LA or NYC?
Tyson: Definitely New York.
Sarah: Say a word in Spanish!
Tyson: Capacidad!