WHO? Nate Boland

ROLE: Owner of Mean Peak, a design agency based out of BTV! Nate is a jack of all trades, having created numerous entrepreneurial ventures since he first became a teenager. “My high school offered an internship program… I went through a one-person startup and from there something just sparked and I was like this is really cool,” Nate explains. He made his first company at the age of thirteen.

BIGGEST WIN IN THE PAST YEAR:  “Probably pursuing things more within the VCET space,” Nate explains. “For the first few years I didn’t actively use the space as much… and as of last year I’ve been starting to get involved with the companies and networking in the space to grow and find opportunity.”

HOW? Nate’s roots in design stem from entering design challenges in his youth. “I was twelve or thirteen when I first started getting into graphic design. My designs were trash at first…” Nate laughs, “but video game community design challenges helped me develop those skills.” His experience with coding began sophomore year of high school. He learned HTML and CSS, largely on his own. “That got the ball rolling, and then I just kept trying new things” says Nate. “Hyperfocus is this very real thing for me. You do things fast and often, and it pulls you in. If you can devote 100% of an hour being fully engulfed in what you’re learning, you can learn stuff really fast.”

Mean Peak: Specializing in UI/UX, graphic design, and web development, Mean Peak is now Nate’s sole venture. “I’ve been learning and working with businesses within VCET, like Monte Verde Media which got me really interested in the agency life and has helped me grow my skills” says Nate. He is currently a junior at Champlain College, studying cybersecurity. Much of his design skill set is self-taught. “I’ve been teaching myself [programming language] PHP, and I’m hoping to be proficient by the second quarter of 2019,” he explains.

NATE & THE FUTURE: “I’ve always been one to try and plan my life pretty far ahead… I can see it more vividly now. I can see what I want to do and I can see it happening. Everything I’ve been doing for the past 6 years has been helping pave the way for the UX and UI work I wish to do in the future,” Nate explains. He is excited to expand his technical skill with regard to SEO practices and web development.

FUN: Nate started an Instagram page dedicated to yo-yo tricks called TrickSquare. “I ran that for about a year and a half…” Nate explains. “TrickSquare ran a contest that consistently had 50 to 200 entries. Yo-yo companies like Duncan sponsored it and sent me yo-yos.” He is grateful for this endeavor because it taught him social media management.

Aside from his stint with yo-yo flair, Nate genuinely loves learning new skills. “All I can think about right now is learning more PHP.” He’s into cars, rubik’s puzzles, assembling computers, and will most likely pick up anything he can reverse-engineer. “Oh and I ski too” he adds, possibly just to appease the common Vermonter.