The Story of Fermyon: Building the Next Wave of Cloud Computing

Most tech founders don’t start with a PhD in philosophy. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Matt Butcher shared how his unlikely path from philosophy to programming shaped Fermyon’s vision for the future of cloud computing.

An Accidental Programmer

“When I was in high school, I decided what I really wanted to be was a philosopher,” Matt recalls. “I think I was probably the only person in my graduating class that had aspirations quite like that.” But fate had other plans. A scheduling mix-up placed him on a programming team instead of a lawn mowing crew, introducing him to software development just as the web was taking off.

Throughout his philosophy studies, Matt kept coding to pay the bills. “Side jobs in philosophy are few and far between, if there even are any. So I started writing code and building websites and all the stuff were all doing in the late 90s, early 2000s.”

From HP to Google: The Cloud Computing Journey

His entry into cloud computing came through HP Cloud, where his team aimed to compete with “this kind of upstart bookstore that had started leasing out their cloud services.” After HP, Matt moved to Google through an acquisition, where he got to see “inside of Google, sort of the great monolith that was the entire Borg world.”

The real turning point came at Microsoft, where Matt’s team became deeply involved in the Kubernetes ecosystem. They created Helm, a package manager now used by “about 70% of the Kubernetes using population,” and wrote “The Illustrated Children’s Guide to Kubernetes,” which became the official mascot of the project.

COVID as a Catalyst

When COVID hit, Matt’s team at Microsoft made a crucial decision. Instead of disengaging, they transformed their work approach. “We reworked our entire work schedule to be based around stand ups, went from, ‘What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today?’ to ‘How are you feeling today? What would make your day better?'”

This period of experimentation led to a crucial insight: the growing friction between developers and platform engineers in cloud computing needed a new solution. The team began exploring ways to make serverless functions more accessible and efficient.

The Leap to Fermyon

In October 2021, Matt and nine team members left Microsoft to found Fermyon. “I had the best job in all of Microsoft,” Matt admits. “I got to run this really cool open source team that was engaged with the community, engaged with customers, and always kind of being pushed to push the cutting edge.”

The decision wasn’t easy. “I was in a great job, great pay, stock is like shooting up, and I like the team and I like the stuff I’m doing.” But the vision of building a new kind of cloud computing platform was too compelling to ignore.

The Future of Cloud Computing

Looking ahead, Matt sees Fermyon playing a crucial role in the AI revolution. “We will provide the kind of high performance, low cost, extraordinarily developer friendly environment upon which that generation of applications is built.”

The company’s immediate focus is clear: making it possible for developers to go from “a blinking cursor to a deployed application in two minutes or less.” But their long-term vision is more ambitious. As Matt explains, they’re working to solve fundamental challenges in cloud computing, where “developers wanted to be able to build their code once and have it run on lots of different architectures, but the container ecosystem wasn’t quite set up that way.”

From its unconventional founding story to its ambitious vision for the future, Fermyon represents a new wave in cloud computing. It’s a story that shows how sometimes the best innovations come not from trying to create something entirely new, but from deeply understanding and solving the friction points in existing systems.