Boston Startup Interview: Tyler Germain on AI, Automation, & Growing Two Startups

In this interview, we sit down with Tyler Germain, an entrepreneur who has launched two thriving ventures: Automation Unlocked, an agency specializing in business automation, and Dojo AI, a cutting-edge AI platform for custom model fine-tuning. Tyler shares his journey from entrepreneurial ventures as a teen to building innovative companies during the pandemic. He offers insights into the power of AI, the future of automation, and his approach to balancing data-driven decisions with entrepreneurial instinct.

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Let's start—could you share a little bit about your background and what inspired you to enter the startup world?

I think my whole life I've always been really entrepreneurial. When I was 10 years old, I was customizing Xbox controllers for my friends and building small businesses. When I was younger, I visited a screen-printing studio, and for some reason, I thought it was the coolest thing ever that the guy was just making T-shirts. In high school, I decided I wanted to get started, so I bought a screen-printing set and started making shirts for people. That was my first taste of building a real business. I grew that while I was in high school for two years, and I continued it a little when I was in college, but it kind of fell off—all my screen-printing equipment was two hours away at home, and I wasn’t able to keep it going.

So, I fell into the idea that I needed to just go to school, get my degree, and get a good job. I kind of lost that entrepreneurial drive. But during COVID, I had a lot of time to reflect, and I realized I wasn't progressing as much as I wanted at my job, so I wanted something for myself.

At the time, I was working as a data analyst at a company called Athletic Brewing, a non-alcoholic beer company. I learned some technical skills—how to use Python to get data from certain places, what an API is, and things like that. I felt like it was interesting information to share, so I started a Twitter account where I talked about data analysis and tried to grow my presence as a data analyst.

While I was doing that, I stumbled into the niche of automation and realized not many people were talking about business automation or workflow automation. Some people had used Zapier, but the tool I started using was Make.com, which is much more powerful. So I transitioned my content to focus on how people can use these tools, and why Make.com is often more powerful than Zapier. That’s how I got into this industry.

I was making content about automation, and a bunch of people reached out to me asking if I could build systems for them or show them how to do it. Slowly, over four or five months, I grew that into an agency, and by February 2023, I started Automation Unlocked. I was able to quit my job in May and run it full-time. I also have a co-founder, who’s actually my roommate here in Boston. We created it together—he’s a friend from college.

Since May, we've been running the agency, mainly working with creator-backed businesses. These are people with a presence on social media or a personal brand who also have a business behind it—whether it’s a course, program, or software. We help them build automated systems that make their businesses more efficient. So, Automation Unlocked is the agency I’m running, and we also have Dojo AI.

Dojo AI kind of spun out of work we were doing at the agency for clients. In July or August last year, we discovered a process called fine-tuning AI models. When we discovered that, it really changed the game because it made AI models much more customizable, and people loved it.

The two main purposes we used it for were: 1) conversing with people—talking to them in Instagram DMs and sounding like the actual person, and 2) generating content for social media that sounds like you. We built proof-of-concept systems for our agency clients and trained these models for them. But the process was kind of clunky, and building fine-tuned models was cumbersome and difficult for people to learn.

Over time, I started using Google Sheets and Airtable to pull together a basic system to fine-tune models, but I realized we needed a tool. So, I originally built Dojo as an internal tool, but after some friends tried it out and found it easy to use, we decided to launch it as a full software product.

Great! AI is such a trendy industry right now—building models must be an exciting space to be in.

Yeah, it was perfect timing to get into it. It’s been fun. Things change so quickly, and we’re always onto the next thing, figuring it out and offering new solutions. But that’s what I like—finding a problem and then solving it.

Given your involvement in AI and automation, which trends or technologies are you most excited about right now, and how are they influencing your work at Dojo and Automation Unlocked?

I’d say two things: 1) fine-tuning, which we talked about, and I think conversational fine-tuning is going to become a lot more popular in the coming year. We’re going to be having conversations with AI bots, and we want them to feel as natural as possible. We also want them to know as much as possible about the specific domain they’re interacting with.

The other thing I’m really excited about is image generation. A new model called Flux.1 just came out, and it’s far better than any other AI model currently available. You can create custom image pipelines, which we’ve been doing a lot of lately for our clients, and the results are incredible.

There are tools like Photo AI that allow you to upload images of yourself, train a model, and then generate pictures of yourself. We’re using the same infrastructure but building custom model pipelines for whatever our goal is.

I’m excited because I believe every company and influencer will need an AI model trained on themselves for their brand assets. For example, an eCommerce company won’t need to pay thousands for product photos if they can generate them for free—and they can place their products anywhere, even on the moon! I used to think AI-generated images wouldn’t look like the actual product, but recent advancements have produced results that are nearly indistinguishable from real photos.

I have a friend who runs a clothing brand, and he’s doing all his photography with AI models. They’re really good.

Yeah, it’s crazy how good they’ve gotten. You can take a regular picture of a shirt, and somehow it ends up on a model.

Given your background in startup management and business intelligence, how do you balance data-driven decision-making with entrepreneurial intuition?

It’s interesting. I love data—I've always been a data person. I like to have data available so I can dive into it when I need to. At Automation Unlocked and Dojo, we have tons of tracking set up to give us information about our users—fully anonymized, of course. This helps us make data-driven decisions when needed.

At Automation Unlocked, we not only track our data but also help our clients track theirs. We store as much information as possible within automations, which helps us figure out what went wrong if there’s an issue. We also provide dashboards for our clients so they can monitor how their systems are working and make improvements where needed.

What positive aspects or unique characteristics have you noticed about the Boston startup ecosystem as a founder or CEO of a startup?

This one was interesting because I’ve built my entire business on social media and haven’t interacted much with the startup scene in Boston. I really like Boston as a place, but I haven’t been too involved in the local startup ecosystem. I’d like to get started, but I haven’t found many like-minded founders in the area yet. Social media has been the main driver of our business growth.

I don’t know if this applies, but are there any other challenges you’ve encountered in the Boston market?

A challenge has been that a lot of our clients are bigger creators with personal brands, and not many of them are based in Boston or visit here often. That’s been a bit of an obstacle.

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As a founder of multiple ventures, how do you prioritize and manage your time effectively?

Time blocking. I set specific days to work on each company. I have three days a week for Automation Unlocked, and two days for Dojo. Of course, there’s overlap, but I try to block off as much of my schedule as possible to focus on one thing at a time. It’s a pretty basic approach, but it works for me.

What are your strategic goals and plans for both of your companies in 2024 and beyond?

For Dojo, the main goal is growth. We’re still in the early stages, and we want to get more users on the platform so they can better understand what fine-tuning is. Our goal is to make fine-tuning accessible to everyone—right now, it's mostly available to big companies or people with deep technical expertise. We want to democratize the ability for anyone to create their own AI model. It’s a long road, but that’s where we’re heading.

For Automation Unlocked, we’re shifting more towards high-level consulting, especially with larger enterprise businesses. Instead of just building systems for them, we’ll focus on teaching them how to use these tools effectively. We’ll still handle complex systems, but we also want to help companies with smaller aspects, like how to prompt ChatGPT correctly or create their own AI models with Dojo. I think this consulting side can add a lot of value.

That’s all from our side. Anything else you’d like to mention?

Just that you can follow me on Instagram and YouTube. And I have a community called Digital Operations, where I teach people how to build these kinds of systems.

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Tyler Germain's entrepreneurial story is a testament to leveraging passion and technical know-how to carve out success in the digital age. His work at Automation Unlocked and Dojo AI is helping businesses automate processes and harness the potential of custom AI models.

Are you a CEO or founder in the Boston area? We’d love to hear your story. Reach out to be featured in our series and share your insights with the community.