Stu Stern, a lifelong musician and coder, launched the Boulder-based software company Gorilla Logic more than 15 years ago with co-founder Ed Schwarz.
Over the past decade-and-a-half, the pair has grown the company — which specializes in building software applications and providing consulting services for other organizations — from a small startup to a tech firm with hundreds of employees and operations in the United States and Costa Rica.
We chatted with Stern to learn more about the company.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How did you end up in Boulder?
I grew up in New Jersey, just outside of New York City. And I started working on Wall Street.
Ed and I lived together in New York and we had a band. We we roommates and bandmates and Wall Street computer guys.
I’m a very avid skier. My wife and I used to come out west for skiing. One year I just had an epiphany that we should live in the West and vacation in the East. That was in 1997. We moved within a year of that, so I’ve been here for 20 years.
Ed and I were both here at Sun Microsystems. And in 2002 we said, as geeks tend to do, ‘Hey, let’s go and do a startup!’
We’re still here more than 15 years later. This is such a tech hub now, but it’s sort of a lucky accident for me that we ended up here.
Q. Why did you choose to launch operations in Costa Rica?
Over the last 20 years or so, offshoring of software development has become more popular. It started mostly in India — people realized there were a lot of computer engineers in India and they were a lot cheaper than American engineers.
But over the past 10 years or so, there has really been a rise in what’s called agile methodology for software development. It’s really transformed the industry in many ways. It’s a highly collaborative process and you really need real-time communication throughout the day with all the members of the team.
It’s really hard to do that real-time communication if your team in India and asleep during the workday in the U.S. It’s the same for places like Eastern Europe or any other far-flung geography.
So people have started to look for places in the same time zone — like Central or South America — where you can also get some cost-savings advantages.
In places like Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, there’s lots of software engineers. So we had a choice and shopped around. We liked Costa Rica because of the close proximity — it’s just a couple of hours from Houston if you get on plane.
There’s a cultural aspect of it as well. In Costa Rica, they, of course, have their own unique culture, but we very much get each other. They watch American television, we get the same jokes. There’s also this level of optimism and positivity that’s pervasive there.
There just aren’t enough engineers here. So even if there wasn’t a cost advantage to operating in a place like Costa Rica, we would still need to go offshore to get the talent we need. It’s really just supply and demand — there isn’t the supply here in this country.
They have an amazing education system in Costa Rica. The quality of engineers there is absolutely the same as it is here in the U.S.
In 2013, we opened up there and hired the first couple of folks. It was really an experiment to see how it went. We grew to 20 people, then 120. Now we have about 300 people in the company — and that will be closer to 350 by July — and a quarter of those are in the U.S. We are growing much more rapidly in Costa Rica.
Q: Do you consider yourself a coder or an executive?
I’ve done all kinds of things in this business. I was a hands-on coding guy, but it seemed like a good idea to move into management. I don’t have a ton of time for it anymore, but sometimes I’ll still find myself getting sucked into a coding project.
In my heart, I’m an engineer but I’ve been an executive for a long time at this point.
Q: Gorilla Logic is an interesting name for a company. Where did it come from?
Honestly, we were just looking for a cool name with an available domain for a website.
At the time when we started I was listening to the band Gorillaz a lot. I was just driving in my car listening to the band and the name Gorilla Logic popped into my head. I thought it had a good ring to it. So I ran home and looked up the domain — it was available, so that’s what we named the company.
As a company, our people started calling themselves gorillas. It’s a mindset, it’s about being unstoppable. In software engineering you run into problems that are really hard to solve, so you have to have tenacity to just drive through it.
Q: You used to play in a band with Gorilla Logic cofounder Ed Schwarz and the company name is a reference to a band. How else do you involve music in your life?
We’ve always played music. Ed still lives in New York, but we play whenever we are together. We send recorded tracks back and forth all the time — he’ll record something then I’ll record something on top of it.
In our offices here in Boulder we have this permanent music installation. It’s got drums, speakers, and a keyboard. And we do a monthly event here called Geek Jam where folks get together and play. We have a similar set-up down in Costa Rica. So when we go down for meetings, we all play.
Music is very much a part of the culture of the company.
Lucas High: 303-684-5310, lhigh@times-call.com, twitter.com/lucashigh
