Today on our show, you’ll get to know one of our team members here at Startup High Country, and the man with his finger on the pulse of ALL things tech in the High Country, Declan Nishiyama.
Something I’ve always taken for granted about Declan was a false assumption that his life has always revolved around software development and coding, however, I found out during this interview that that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, practically all of Declan’s coding and tech skills have been self-taught, and his journey into the world of development has been anything but straight-forward.
In today’s episode you’ll learn how some false, yet well-intentioned advice combined with a close call with the FBI led Declan far away from the tech world, but then, how a harrowingly close call for what could have been a catastrophic chemical explosion helped propel Declan back into the world of software development.
You’ll also learn a bit about AI, gaining clarity in your business, and ways to get involved in the tech scene here in the High Country.
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Note - Transcripts are created using AI technology and may not read 100% accurately. We apologize for any misspellings or mistakes.
1 (2s):
I mean, to be honest, I was like 14 years old and I was addicted to gambling. I was using party poker and I was having a lot of fun programming and I just like saw that there was a flaw in their system. They didn't have like, that you attempted too many passwords, so you get kicked out. So it was just like, I just wrote a script that would like try passwords over and over and over again.
2 (24s):
And how old were you again?
1 (26s):
Fourteen
2 (40s):
Welcome to Made in the High Country, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of Western North Carolina's entrepreneurial ecosystem and the people within it. Today on our show, you'll get to know one of our team members here at Start High Country and the man with his finger on the pulses of all things tech in the high country. Declan Nishiyama Declan's, the guy to go to for any and all tech solutions. He's the one our team leans on for website coding and technical integrations. And he's also the guy who's always showing up to lend a support for anything related to entrepreneurship in the high country. Declan currently runs a local software development company called Mountain Dev.
2 (1m 23s):
There he runs a team of developers and designers where they help build beautiful software to bring business ideas to life. Now, something I've always taken for granted about Declan was a false assumption that his life has always revolved around software development and coding. However, I found out during this interview that that wasn't the case at all. In fact, practically all of Declan's coding and tech skills have been self taught and his journey into the world of development has been anything but straightforward. In today's episode, you'll learn how some false yet well-intentioned advice combined with a close call with the FBI led Declan far away from the tech world, but then how a harrowingly close call for what could have been a catastrophic chemical explosion helped propel Declan back into the world of software development.
2 (2m 16s):
You'll also learn a bit about AI gaining clarity in your business and ways to get involved in the tech scene here in the high country. Declan was born in Santa Monica, California, but grew up in a small, economically depressed area of Kentucky where he was fortunate enough to be introduced to coding at a young age.
1 (2m 36s):
Yeah, I I actually started programming, I remember like grade school really getting into it and like I had a math professor who I really loved Mr. Worthington, who took us and, and got us going with like just a program where you could write, you could like make shapes and things programmatically and, and I kind of like really got in interested in it and like a little addicted and made a little superman game where you'd fly through the sky and avoid clouds and birds. And if I remember correctly, I won a, like a competition with that software.
2 (3m 10s):
You don't remember, You're too young.
1 (3m 13s):
I, I remember going to like the local university and talking to people and cuz I remember somebody telling me like, You look like a programmer, which I took to mean that I looked really nerdy. So maybe they were giving me a compliment, but, and then I, I did a little bit more programming in high school. I took a couple classes and we also entered a competition then, but got third place. And I remember it was unfortunate because we were, we were expected to win. We like drove way out of our way to go to this competition and like you, like we were the team that was like the opposite of the underdog and then ended up getting third and it was like a very, very big letdown. But that was because of poor planning and being a high schooler, you know.
2 (3m 54s):
So it sounds like you kind of kept your toe in the water of the software and coding world throughout grade school and into high school. So I'm curious, I'm looking at your bio here and I'm, I'm expecting to see some sort of college study in software or at least the tech industry, but no, all I see here is a degree from NC State in chemical engineering and then straight outta college. You worked for four years in Texas for an energy company. So what happened? Did you lose interest in coding by the time you were applying for college or something? Or what happened?
1 (4m 33s):
Yeah, when I was in high school I was told that all the coding was gonna be done in India and there was no room for developers. So
2 (4m 39s):
Who told you that?
1 (4m 41s):
Who did tell me that? My parents and somebody who was in development at the time making a good living but didn't think there was a future.
2 (4m 52s):
Mm, okay. Yeah, I could see how that would be pretty persuasive. Was that it?
1 (4m 58s):
I I actually remember another instance that I think was pretty crucial, which was a time that I hacked into a poker site when I was in high school.
2 (5m 7s):
Oh my goodness.
1 (5m 8s):
Yeah. That, that was pretty bad and it had a lot of fallout and, and I think I got a lot more pushback from my parents to go in that direction after that. But
2 (5m 19s):
I think that is every parent's fear. Yeah. When their kids start learning to code and stuff, you know? So yeah. Why, why did you do it?
1 (5m 26s):
Yeah, I was, I was, I mean to be honest, I was like, you know, I was like 14 years old and I was, I was addicted to gambling. I was using party poker and just like, you know, that that dopamine rush of, you know, winning or I'm actually reading a book right now called Dopamine Nation that's really cool. Talks about how that risk and reward, you know, kind of like hijacks your brain. Yeah. But yeah, I was just addicted to it and I was having a lot of fun programming and I just like saw that there was a flaw in their system. They didn't have like that you attempted too many passwords so you get kicked out. So it was just like, I just wrote a script that would like try passwords over and over and over again.
2 (6m 7s):
And how old were you again?
1 (6m 9s):
Like 14.
2 (6m 10s):
Okay. Yeah. Wow.
1 (6m 12s):
And I really, I regret it a lot now, but I also see it as like something that was pretty formative for me. You know, it was, I think it was lucky to have this bad situation happen and get caught and like have the fall out of that because, you know, it's shaped how I think about, you know, I think it shaped my morality a lot. Like, you know, I really feel like it was the wrong thing to do and I think that's good. Now know
2 (6m 37s):
Partly because Declan was a minor at the time. There were no serious repercussions from the poker site hacking incident, but it has long since impacted Declan's morality and decision making when it comes to tech and business. And it was also a big factor in his parents' further dissuading him from pursuing a career in that world. So he became a chemical engineer, but he quickly realized that working for a large energy company in Texas was not his dream job.
1 (7m 8s):
I realized I guess eight years too late that I didn't wanna be a chemical engineer. Yeah. And so my first job, I was at an energy company in Texas and it just like really didn't mesh with my personality or my interests. There was a lot of bureaucracy and then there was a lot of danger too. Like I almost was in a big explosion while I was down there. And so that was pretty terrifying.
2 (7m 37s):
Tell me more, tell me that story.
1 (7m 39s):
Yeah. Yeah, so we had, we almost had an incident called a levy, which is just like, if you can imagine your propane tank for your grill exploding, it was like that but times, you know, like a thousand, if, if it had happened we would've leveled everything within three miles.
2 (7m 57s):
Wow. Was that experience what kind of led you to, to pivot and leave and go towards tech?
1 (8m 4s):
Yeah, I think that, and like a couple other close calls just kind of like weighed on my psyche. Like I, I remember having nightmares about things like that. So yeah, eventually that kind of drove me away. But also too, like that was kind of the push and then the pull was like me really getting interested in AI and technology
2 (8m 28s):
Knowing that he needed to make a change. Declan started making plans to return to school to pursue a master's in business administration. But as you know, to get into most graduate programs you have to take the GRE exam. It was through this studying process that Declan was able to utilize his coding skills once again to help him with his weakest spot on the exam. His vocabulary, he created a software called Etiology Explorer, which used AI and natural language processing to convert Wikipedia articles into a database of word evolutions. Declan, tell me more about that process.
1 (9m 8s):
Yeah, that one, that one came out of me really just getting obliterated by the gre. My vocabulary was atrocious and so I like finally realized that I, I learned words, new words a lot faster if I would connect them words. I already know it was actually a lot of this was just data processing and creating a big database that I used NLP to create, which is all about text and like, you know, like analyzing a book and finding a meaning or generating text that's actually been really huge. So like you give it a prompt and it will generate a whole, you know, paragraph copy.
1 (9m 48s):
Like I think Jarvis or Jasper ai, I think they change their name, they do like marketing copy and they generate text for you based on some input,
2 (9m 57s):
So. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Did they have to change your name cuz of Iron Man you think?
1 (10m 2s):
I think, yeah, maybe that's why they started. Yeah, I'll bet that's why.
2 (10m 6s):
And how did you build out Etymology Explorer? You hadn't been in the tech world for a while, you'd gone through, you know, four years of school, four years of this job in Texas, you know, how were you able to pull that off?
1 (10m 18s):
Like, everything that I did was self taught. I think I was using Corsa, there was like an open, I think it was a free course even just on mobile development and that was what allowed me to create my first mobile app, which was the first version of etymology Explorer, like, you know, eight years ago in 2014.
2 (10m 36s):
All right, so that site etymology Explorer has over 37,000 users. So obviously you weren't the only one who wanted to learn vocabulary in this way. That's so cool. So speaking of ai, you once said, we are in human's most important century of all time, since we will probably be the generation that develops general artificial intelligence. Why do you think that this is so crucial?
1 (11m 9s):
There's lots of different ways to kind of like talk about the problem, but one that makes the most sense is like, if you look at what technology or AI is doing nowadays, is taking over more and more decision making. Like it's recommending which movie you should watch. It's, you know, driving cars, it's doing a lot of different things. And so that's only going to continue to grow. And then if you think about like the motive behind that, it could be good or it could be bad. If the motivation behind that is bad, then it could lead to, you know, catastrophic consequences. Like if it's controlling nuclear, you know, nuclear bombs or something like it could be a very bad situation. I'm, I'm having trouble kind of conveying the enormity of it though because there's just, once we're able to create a machine that's as intelligent as a person or more intelligent, it, there's kind of like this asim toe that happens, like there's a very quick progression where it then becomes more and more intelligent cuz it can improve itself.
1 (12m 10s):
It sounds a little apocalyptic and you know, extravagant, but it's, it's very likely that there will be kind of like this explosion with, with the technology at some point.
2 (12m 22s):
Yeah, it's, it's not frightening at all to think about. Alright duck, let's take me, take me back. Bring me back to Texas. You had worked there for four years and then you decided okay, time to make a change and you're studying for the gre, take me from there.
1 (12m 40s):
Yeah, so then after four years I realized, you know, I was, I needed to do, I needed to get more involved in the things I was interested in, which were technology and software. So I went back and got my MBA at Georgia Tech. That was like a two year program, that was a great time. We were living in midtown Atlanta. Me, my wife and my dog Oni and just had a blast. I loved all my classmates. The program was great. And then, so then while I was there I was getting interested in product management as a way to get into technology and so got a role at Amazon, at Amazon Web Services to work as a product manager.
2 (13m 24s):
Yeah, take me, Yeah, what you were just talking about, like you decided you need to kind of follow through more with what you were actually passionate about. And it seems from my side hearing it, it seems like as soon as you allowed yourself to do that, your life sort of just kind of fell into place as it were. You started finding a lot more joy, a lot more career success, you know, is that accurate to say?
1 (13m 49s):
Yeah, that's interesting to, for you to say that. I, I I guess that it doesn't really feel like everything's fit into place because what happened was, you know, I went to AWS as a product manager and I was just jealous of the developers while I was there. Like they were getting decode and I was just, I, you know, like the most pessimistic views. I was just going to meetings like
2 (14m 16s):
Yeah, going to meetings and then like looking over at the coders and being like, I wish I was doing what you're doing. Right. Yeah. So take me from Amazon to the high country. How did that move happen?
1 (14m 29s):
Yeah, Amazon, So Amazon, I was out in Seattle and that was when my wife got pregnant and so we were feeling very far away from family at that time cuz it's, you know, 2000 miles away and it's very difficult to like get back and forth. So we always say if Seattle had been on the east coast we probably would've stayed, but, but yeah, we just, we just knew, you know, having a child, we'd want to be back closer to family. So we ended up, we had a free place to stay in Boone, so yeah, Christine's parents have a home that they're gonna retire into. My wife Christine's parents have a home they're gonna retire into.
1 (15m 11s):
And so right now they're not using it. So that was really lucky that we could kind of crash there when we moved back and then, you know, we were in this region and really fell in love with it. Christine had been, my wife had been coming up here yearly, you know, for vacations and stuff and so she'd always, she's, you know, she's very familiar with Tweety and the Mouse mine and everything like that. So, you know, is an easy sell for me to wanna stay here too.
2 (15m 39s):
And what were you doing for work at this time?
1 (15m 42s):
Yeah, so when I came back we, I was actually working on my wife's business, Mike Good Studios, which is really cool. That's a, she has an artist community and online courses for artists. And so we were trying to take her online course and scale it to a larger audience, which ended up not really going that well. So that was unfortunate, but it was good and that was like really good experience. And my wife really at that, that was when she really crystallized what her vision for the business is. You know, we, we thought maybe it was this but it was actually that and so that was, that was a really helpful,
2 (16m 25s):
You
1 (16m 25s):
Know Yeah. Thing that we
2 (16m 26s):
Did. Yeah, everyone's gonna fail at some point, but it's kinda what you learn out of that experience that matters.
1 (16m 32s):
Yeah, yeah. And it was, yeah, it was a big failure. Like we invested a lot of money and we spent a lot of time and it failed quite miserably. And, and so I, I actually, I look back on it and I'm like really happy about it in some regards because I think I spent a lot of my time like trying to avoid failing and so I'm glad to know that I can fail and still keep going.
2 (16m 58s):
So you learned a lot working, you know, through that process with your wife for her business, her art business might, could studios, you know, I have to ask, what, where does that name come from? Might could studios, so it's M I G h t C o u L D.
1 (17m 13s):
Yeah. Yeah. Her grandmother actually was, was born and raised in Glendale Springs, which is nearby. And so she was like a real mountain girl with no running water, you know, like they got their water from a creek and they, they would always, you know her the way she would talk with like, would be like, I might could do that or I might could say that or you know, is a, a real southern phrase phrase. But it's really cool too cuz you know, she's all about promoting artistic efforts and you know, the artistic mindset and like overcoming hurdles to art. And so I think the mic could philosophy is, is kind of core in that.
2 (17m 52s):
Now take me to how you got involved with Startup High Country.
1 (17m 56s):
When Christine and I came to the high country, we were really excited about startup high country and the Velocity Labs class that Jeffrey Scott was teaching. You know, we enrolled in that with her business, my Good studios, and really learned like that customer discovery process and you know, what we should be doing to be growing the business. And that stuff is, is very difficult and I think we could have, you know, taken those lessons to heart a little bit more. But what I think, you know, one of the best things that came out of that class though was the relationship with Jeffrey Scott, the, the organizer and teacher is just like a tremendous force up here for entrepreneurship and has just been an amazing mentor I've always wanted to try to surround myself with, I guess this is a little selfish, but I've always wanted to try to surround myself with other people who are entrepreneurs or doing, you know, new ventures, creative work.
1 (19m 5s):
And so it was just really refreshing and a blessing to meet Jeffrey Scott and you know, he's now introduced me to a big network of entrepreneurs who, you know, we can kinda lift each other up and work together and it's just been a great experience.
2 (19m 21s):
So after this, I, Chris, I know Christine kind of takes Mike Code studio, her art business in a slightly different direction that's really working for her now. She's grown a really fabulous business there. Maybe we'll have her on the show sometime to share about that. And then around this time you started freelancing, doing some software development and then about a year ago from, from this date, you, you opened Mountain Dev, which is your full service software development company. I wanna know what were some of those, some of that early stages of growing that business. Like, cuz I know, I mean we talked about this in the interview with James Bands about how one challenge for that kind of business starting that kind of business in the high country is finding the right talent for, for that in order to grow and to scale.
2 (20m 12s):
So what was that beginning like for you?
1 (20m 15s):
It's taken a lot of experimentation. Like the first many developers that I tried to work with, like I I was just inefficient. I was just like, I had no idea what I was doing overall. You know, I, I didn't know how to find good developers, I didn't know how to pick the right people. I just like struggled a lot with that regard. But, and so what ended up helping was that I could just, in the end, I could just do it myself, right? So that, that allowed it to like at least keep on limping along while I tried to figure out how to hire people who were good at what they were doing, what they did.
2 (20m 52s):
And what do you see for the future? What do you hope for for Mountain Dev?
1 (20m 57s):
Yeah. My, my dream is to have an office here downtown where we'll have, you know, like, I mean really ideally I'd like to start figuring out government contracting and, you know, be like a big pipeline for developers out of app state developers and like cis grads who would be like more like project managers.
2 (21m 20s):
Oh, that's so needed. So yeah, thank you for, for working towards building that. It's so crazy to me that you can build this really world class software development company in the middle of the high country, which is, you know, small, it's remote in a lot of, a lot of people's standards.
1 (21m 36s):
Yeah, that is really crazy. And, and that's one thing I'm really excited about and I think Boone will stand out, you know, as, as we become more of a global connected economy and with the rise of remote work. Cause remote work's only gonna get easier and better over time as new tools are developed. But yeah, like being able to work from anywhere makes you feel like you should definitely be living in the best place you can. And so I feel like Boone fits that definitely. And so it's so cool that I can just work with these people in the Philippines and Tunisia and the Ukraine from right here, you know, looking out over, you know, looking out this window at Boone.
1 (22m 19s):
So
2 (22m 20s):
It's a beautiful thing. Well I know that if anyone's interested in working in development, I'm sure your company's always hiring, but are there other reasons or are there other ways that you wanna direct people to get in touch with you?
1 (22m 34s):
Yeah, oh, I'd, you know, I'd really love giving people technical advice, you know, I mean advice on technical aspects of their business. So, you know, sometimes that's like, you know, how should I go about getting this developed? And you know, obviously we have a specialty in that, but a lot of times it's like, you know, what kind of tools should I be using to solve this problem? Like, like it's so crazy how many different email services there are and CRMs and you know, so kind of like navigating that is a lot is a challenge and we spend a lot of time with that and Mike Could studios and so I've got a lot of experience kind of like, you know, what stack of tools should you use best for your business and which ones should you avoid and how can we get them to talk to each other?
1 (23m 18s):
How can we automate our processes to best, you know, support our business? So I really like helping people solve those problems, but then also to like, when it comes to like more advanced software that I like to talk to talk about as well.
2 (23m 34s):
So what's next for Declan? Do you have any projects you're working on that you're excited about?
1 (23m 39s):
You know, one thing I'm really excited about is Rsac Financial, which is all the metrics that matter for the Intrepid entrepreneur. And that's a project I'm working on with Jeffrey Scott. And that one is going to be software as a service for helping people to really, you know, kind of like simplify the financial perspective of, of your business. So like what actually matters to look at and then what you can do about it when things are not where they need to be. But then also we're gonna try to be a little bit higher touch, so it's gonna involve a coach often and then a bookkeeper as well.
1 (24m 20s):
So like a lot of times with entrepreneurs, you can't get any good insight from your financials because they're out of whack. And so that's one of the problems we're gonna try to solve is keeping your metrics, your, your financials accurate and using them as the resource that they can be because there's so much you can get from that. But a lot of times it's just, it's not in estate where it's ready to be used.
2 (24m 45s):
Oh my gosh, yes. Sign me up as your first customer. That is so, that is so great. Yeah, it's really, financials are kind of the more boring side of entrepreneurism. I know it's, no, no one gets started or builds a company because they love looking at their books, but it's so essential. But even if you're, in my experience, even if you're on top of your books, it still doesn't necessarily tell you the information that you need to make the best decisions for your business. So I totally, I totally see the need for that service and best of luck getting that developed. That's so exciting. All right, Declan, before you go, we have one more question for you, and that is, what is the most high country thing that you've done lately?
1 (25m 33s):
You know, I think that's going to the Bearden Campground recently to go camping over the weekend, and it was a blast, you know, going and hiking around, there's a really neat lake with, you know, fishing side and a swimming side. So we went out on, on our inner tubes out there. So yeah, that, that's definitely one of 'em. Another one that comes to mind, I went yesterday to Center 45, which is our local climbing gym. It's actually just down the hill from me, climbing and bouldering. It feels like a, a unique resource to this area. I mean, there's a lot of different places to climb, but, you know, boom's got some really nice places to go and do that locally.
2 (26m 21s):
Thanks so much for listening to today's show. This episode was produced and edited by me, Samantha Wright, community Director at Startup High Country. Learn more about our events, workshops, and ways to get involved with Startup High country@startuphc.com. A special thank you to Matt Wasson for the creation of some of our music startup High Country is supported by NC idea, a private foundation that supports entrepreneurship in North Carolina through grants and innovative programs. Thank you as well to the Wataga EDC for their support and for helping build the entrepreneurial landscape of Western North Carolina. I'm Samantha Wright and you've been listening to Made in the High Country.