Gerald Youngblood's parents bought him his first computer when he was about 8 years old. It was a Tandy Color Computer II. He was instantly enthralled with it and soon got curious about its inner workings, even going to swap meets in downtown Dallas early on Saturday mornings to find secondhand machines to work on.
“The first computer I bought at the swap meet and plugged in, it fizzled and there was smoke coming out of it,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know how I got to go back and try it again. But eventually I got it right, and I got it to work. And I’ve been hobby-building computers since then.”
Youngblood, now 41, has maintained that level of enthusiasm for technology through his early days as an entrepreneur, his years with chipmaker AMD and now as co-founder and CEO of Tankee Inc., a kid-safe gaming and content platform.
He may be a self-described PC nerd. But there’s a lot more to Youngblood than tech.
He likes to go fishing to escape the digital world. He was champion of Austin Poetry Slam in 2000 and was part of its national team that year. And, like many Americans, he was deeply affected by the police killing of George Floyd. But Youngblood said it was his lack of surprise at the violence that really shook him.
"I realized that I've been desensitized to, and taken for granted, things that should not be taken for granted," he said.
Even years before Floyd's death and the fight for racial justice in 2020, Youngblood had sat down with his younger brother to tell him "this is how you basically shut down your personality to survive an interaction with a police officer."
Youngblood himself said he was once kicked in the stomach by an Austin police officer on a mounted horse. But he never thought to even mention the story to his wife because he felt like it was just part of life.
"I just thought it was normal, like that's what happens," he said. "That is not normal. That should not be the acceptable thing. But it was a real eye-opening experience."
Then, this year, Youngblood said he had to sit down with his 11-year-old son to have a similar conversation to the one he had with his little brother. It felt like a turning point.
"I did not want to accept that my son has to subjugate himself in order to survive." he said. "I didn't want to repeat that cycle. And so that was big for me because I've taken my position as a leader in the community to talk to more people ... and to just be a lot more intentional about talking about our experience, and not accepting it."
How did you earn your first dollar? On my 15th birthday, I walked across the street to the grocery store and got a job. I really wanted to make my own money, and I knew that at 15 if I had parental permission, I could work. So that was my birthday gift to myself – going over to Kroger to be a package clerk.
It seems like everybody has a coming-to-Austin story. What's your's? I was born in Jackson [Mississippi]. But I grew up in Dallas. And I went to Tufts University in Boston. I wanted to go to Boston for the cold and all the universities up there. And then I realized that Boston is super expensive, and we did not have the money for Boston. So I actually dropped out of college, came back to Dallas and was working in tech. But what brought me to Austin was actually Dell. Dell was recruiting, I think everybody they could at that point, for part-time hackers. And so I actually was wooed by Dell. They flew me down to Austin, which for an 18-year-old at the time, was amazing. I got a car and I had to drive into the wilderness that was Round Rock at that point. That lasted about six months before I got scooped up by a dot-com company and the story went on from there.
When did you know you wanted to become a startup founder? I've been starting up different businesses for a while. I started a spoken word collective back in the day. We made that a business for a while. So, I was a professional artist and poet for a minute. I did consulting work, and I stopped that to go to AMD because I really wanted the experience of working with a multinational company. That turned into 11 years at AMD and having a lot of entrepreneurial experience there. But I really wanted to start a business, but I didn't know what that was going to be. That's when my son entered the picture and the stars aligned around the idea for Tankee. The chief HR officer at AMD asked me 'What would you rather tell your son in five years? Would you rather tell him you continued through the corporate ladder here or would you rather tell him you tried this idea on your own to make this company?' It was done at that moment, I knew that's what I wanted to tell J. — that I tried.
What's something about the Austin startup scene you'd like to see improved? There has definitely been a very strong bent towards SaaS businesses, whereas I think that we can have more diversity in the ecosystem, in terms of the types of companies that can can grow and thrive in the city. I think it's a really, really healthy ecosystem. But I think there could just be more focus on diversity in the backgrounds of the people who are getting funded because Austin is a very segregated city. I think it's getting better, and I see things like Capital Factory, and I just really respect what they're doing in being really intentional about diversity. Austin, overall, could do more in that respect.
What have been your go-to activities during the pandemic? Fishing ... [and] playing games with my son has been awesome. We created some private Minecraft servers for him and his friends to play on, and it's been the coolest thing because it gives him an environment to play in where I know there's not some other element out there that I have to worry about. And he and his friends have been so nice to me as a Minecraft player because I'm nowhere near as good as them. They'll invite me in like 'hey, you want to go beat the Ender Dragon with us?' I'm like 'yeah, that would be awesome.'
Once we get through the pandemic, what are you most excited for? Travel – 100%. That's really my family's passion. I'm really itching to just go somewhere, probably someplace that we've been just so that we can like sit on a beach and not be at our house. And then, secondly, somewhere that we we haven't gone yet. Maybe like Southeast Asia or, I don't know, Ecuador.
Austin's growth — keep it coming or slow it down? Keep it coming. I like the influx of new ideas and new people. And I also think it's hypocritical for me to not be a native Austinite who came here with Dell, which has probably grown and contributed to, you know, some some part of the Austin explosion years. So it'd be hypocritical for me to show up and then say, 'no, we're done now.' Keep it coming. Let's keep growing.
What's on your playlist these days? A mixture. Haim — the first time I saw them was at ACL. They're really good. Others are Run the Jewels — "RTJ4" came out fairly recently. Fiona Apple — "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" was like her lockdown album that she put out not too long ago.
Gerald Youngblood
Titles: Co-founder and CEO, Tankee; head of brand, consumer and creative services, NSF International
Age: 41
Family: Wife, Candice, who is also co-founder of Tankee; son, J., 11
Hometown: Jackson, Miss.
Education: MBA, University of Texas at Dallas
Email: gerald@tankee.com
