Architect Trades Blueprints for Wireframes

Meet Dylan Dechant. This born builder has decided to leave architecture behind for the fast-paced and creative world  of startups. Dechant is just about to finish up the Ruby on Rails Immersive course at The Iron Yard and is looking for his big break into an early-stage tech company. Get the scoop on him below:

What past tech projects have you worked on?
Oh man, too many to count these past 12 weeks at The Iron Yard.  At one point in my life I had one of the largest song lyrics websites on the net with over 400,000 unique songs, that's my current tech claim to fame.  Right now I'm working on a home management/inventory app (think mint.com for your home), which is really exciting, its great talking to people about it and people telling me how they lack something like that in their life. We're not even close to releasing it as an MVP and yet the high highs and the low lows that most startups talk about are already kicking in!  I've also designed and deployed many small websites for photographers and architects, as well as a web developer/graphic designer for UNCC.

What are your best technical or creative skills?
My best technical or creative skills?  I'd like to think I can bridge the gap with both of those, going from highly technical topics to highly creative concepts.  I come from the world of architecture (buildings not software), where the ability to convey complex technical solutions in a 'user friendly' way was very important.  I really enjoy thinking through the whole product cycle, who is the user, how do they interact with it, how does that translate into a back end, and then back again.  Architecture was highly creative and technical which means I was constantly back and forth between the creative, beautiful, visual side and the technical black and white side.

What’s next on your list to learn?
Right now I would like to gain a better understanding of a javascript framework, angular looks pretty interesting to me right now, though, meteor looks pretty cool too, I really just want to learn all the things at this point.

What’s your ideal internship/job?
Working for a company whose methodology or product is really something I believe in.  Whether that's helping individual users or large companies.  I'm pretty partial right now to the new 'smart home' movement that's just now taking off, this is what happens when you make the jump from architecture to software!  I understand buildings and I understand software, why not capitalize on that?

Interested in startups?
I am very interested in working for a startup especially getting in on the ground floor and really contributing to their business model or product and being able to not only contribute solid code, but also solid ideas.

Post graduation plans?
Too many plans really, there aren't enough hours in the day.  I've put a couple personal projects on hold since The Iron Yard is so demanding, I would like to at least start on a few of them.  Also finding the right fit for me in the industry, did I mention I am available for hire?