This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tatiana Birgisson and Jake Stauch, the COO and CEO of Serval, which integrates AI agents in IT service management. Before joining Serval, Birgisson was VP of Growth at Rippling. Birgisson and Stauch are married and live in Oakland. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
Jake Stauch: There was this entrepreneurship living group at Duke that was not able to get funding because there were no women in the group.
Tatiana Birgisson: 18 guys. Not a good look.
JS: Certainly, you could find somebody, and so they did find Tatiana. We were dating different people. Then we ended up not dating other people.
TB: Our relationships fell apart within a few weeks of each other. We were sad together in college.
JS: Very lonely, drunk college students. We got into this summer program together, so we were basically living in the same group, but instead of 18 of us, now there were three. That’s how it happened.
In the early days of our relationship, we were working very closely on each other’s companies. Tatiana was on the board of NeuroPlus, my company. I was on the board at Mati, her company. Even though we were solo founders, we kind of acted as each other’s cofounders. We always worked really well together.
We had a baby right around the time I was starting my company, and it was not going to make sense for us to be unemployed while we’re new parents. But Tatiana still wanted to start a company, and here I am running Serval, and things are starting to work, and we’re about to raise our Series A. It was like: You could do your own company, or I need you here.
This is a best-case scenario, because Tatiana wanted to be a founder, but also didn’t have a team or an idea…
TB: Or the technical chops. It’s not a great recipe for success for a great VC to invest in you.
JS: It was missing some ingredients, and we had a company that was really taking off.
Serval
TB: It needed a lot of sales and marketing. Everybody around us was like, “This is the most obvious thing in the world.” To me, it was the most non-obvious thing. I was very sure I would never work for my husband. I would start a company with him, never for. It took a lot to be ready for that.
It can be done. We’ve seen it with a couple of friends. An entrepreneur hired his wife as an EA/office manager. In that case, it worked really beautifully for them because she loved being in service of an organization and liked helping her husband with his dream.
JS: Melissa and Doug were at our wedding. The toy company founders. Great couple. They’re a big inspiration for us, and we saw it work for them as equal counterparts.
TB: With six or seven kids, too. We’re not doing that.
JS: We were always people that talked about work non-stop. It was 95% of our conversation.
TB: Even when we were rock climbing or out skiing together on vacation, we’d still be brainstorming ideas. It’s just intellectual stimulation that you don’t want to turn off or compartmentalize. That just feels wrong for us.
JS: But we were working at different places. I’d talk about my startup, and that whole cast of characters. Maybe it’s mildly interesting to Tatiana, but it’s not the most exciting thing because she’s not living it. Then she tells me about what’s going on at Rippling, and it’s mildly interesting. I don’t know who these people are. I don’t really care about HR software. It’s like watching a TV show that you don’t care that much about.
TB: It’s like Jake watching a rom-com. He’ll put up with it to watch it with me.
JS: But now, it’s very engaging. We’re on the same team, and everything is super relevant. We don’t work together over the course of the day, and so when we talk about work at home, it’s like catching up on things that are super relevant and meaningful.
Serval
TB: By the time we hit the pillow, we’re pretty done with the day. Any kind of talking has ceased by that point. But there’s no “off limits” time.
I do try to spend some time in the evenings with our daughter, who’s a 2-year-old. We try to carve out family time with her and focusing on her development, reading her books, and helping her learn how to climb on the wall (?) she has in her room.
Then we get back online after bedtime.
JS: We try to carve out Saturdays as family days, but I think that we’re mildly successful at that. Sunday’s just a regular workday for us.
TB: We’ve started bringing our daughter with us to trips that we’re both going on. When we were in Orlando for a conference, she got to go to Disney World and meet Rapunzel.
JS: Getting back from a long day at a conference and she’s just…
TB: …So happy to see us. It’s so beautiful and so much fun.
