Bdaily spoke to Dylan McKee, CEO and co-founder of Nebula Labs, about“levelling up“, the future of tech in the North East, and how you can go from making apps in your bedroom to winning the Dynamo awards ‘Tech champion’.
Dylan nursed a reasonably priced porter, in a popular Whitley Bay watering-hole, as he described his first venture in the world of app development - myAltitude.
And it all started with a Christmas present.
“13 years ago now, I got the second iPhone, the iPhone 3G, as a Christmas present from my mum, and I really liked it. I was building websites and software, but not apps, and I realised that apps were really interesting and cool, and I thought, can I make one?”
Dylan shut himself away in his bedroom, doubling as a lab, and pondered the possibilities of this technological manna from heaven.
“The iPhone 3G was the first iPhone with an altimeter in, so the app used that piece of hardware to use the GPS chip and display a person’s altitude above sea level in an app form. It was one of the first apps to do this in the world. It was certainly the first to do it free of charge.”
The app subsequently gained a tremendous amount of traction upon release, especially in the mountainous areas of Europe and the Middle East. At its peak it recorded 150k weekly downloads and had users emailing Dylan for updates and new features.
So, Dylan knew there was a future in these new-fangled apps, and he knew he could build them. He was soon to discover he wasn’t the only one who knew both these things.
Job offers came in quickly, all before the young technologist had even started University. However, all but one had the appeal he was looking for.
“That happened a couple of times, I received a couple of offers and none of them quite fitted with what I wanted to do. And then I received a really attractive offer with a tech start-up that was backed by the Ignite accelerator programme.”
Although it was only a summer gig before embarking on a BSc in Computer Science at Newcastle University, it left a lasting impression.
“It was absolutely amazing and it opened the door to loads of contacts and experience and obviously a really good job as lead developer at a venture capital backed start-up”. Upon graduating with first class honours, Dylan and his co-founder Nic Flynn decided to go it alone. What was once dismissed by the co-founders as ‘a nice idea’ or mere fantasy became a reality. A reality with a Companies House form.
Despite such a daunting prospect Dylan and Nic saw the advantages of starting a website and app development firm from scratch.
Being your own boss always had its perks, but besides this, the founders found the fledgling firm could out-pace the larger tech companies.
“We can be a lot more cutting edge than larger teams because we have a choice over what technology we can use, which is really cool as a proper geek myself”.
“I think it’s allowed me a lot more creative freedom, in terms of what work we do, who we work with, whatt sectors we work in and more say over the work we do and the problems we are solving and the solutions we are building”.
Seeing these advantages, Dylan began to see where a firm like Nebula could fit into the regional economy and the regional and international interests the Newcastle tech scene was generating.
“It was a serious case of seeing a real gap for quality independent software development in the region and when we set it up, the region was going through a good growth period in terms of technology”.
“There was a lot of excitement, things like Campus North were around and thriving and doing really well. There were start-ups getting huge amount of backing and interest, like Gymplan”.
“There were some really exciting companies that were getting hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds worth of investments from either investors in the region or overseas and it felt like Newcastle was being put on the map.”
“There were not many people doing what we were doing in the region particularly for the market we were looking for like start-ups and then local government teams looking for start-up innovation, so it fitted really nicely”.
Nebula has since continued to work with various private clients, as well as local authorities and has seen a recent workforce expansion to cope with increasing demand and the increasing demand for niche technical skills and fluency in varying scripts and languages.
Having started out of Campus North and being nurtured by such ventures, I asked Dylan how he felt about the government’s levelling up agenda and whether he had seen any buzz, energy, or action.
“I think if anything it’s declined in the region in recent years. We’ve lost some really big, interesting things like Campus North, the JEREMIE2 Fund, with north star ventures investing in the region, which is coming to an end now.”
Sage moving and downsizing its presence in the region was also a cause of concern for Dylan and a further example of progress either halting or waning just as it was getting started.
Formally regional programmes changed their tunes too, according to Dylan, further demonstrating loss of regional focus for tech.
“Tech Nation used to be Tech North and just focus on the NE in 2016, it was really excellent at helping companies like Nebula for the first few years, and then it branded into a national programme in 2018 and it became a lot less regionally”
“It’s not a boom time or a golden era but we could be on the dawn of on in the future, but I think there still needs to be more focus from local and national government on tech in the region”
“There’s stuff going on in the North East but there’s not enough and it’s not seen enough on the national level”.
However, Dylan remains optimistic about the future of the region’s tech, after all there is no escaping innovation. And he was quick to quote regional success stories despite, what he sees as, a lacklustre levelling up programme.
“There some really strong upstarts in the region, Wordnerds is doing some amazing AI analysis and data work that is genuinely world leading and cutting edge in their field of natural language”
“There are also companies that are doing work in robotics that can be picked up on, there’s potential there definitely”.
“In healthtech and medtech too, there are firms like GeekyMedics, who started out of Newcastle University, and they are now used in almost every medical doctoral training course in the UK and have hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers”.
Nebula’s achievements were acknowledged by the wider business community last year when Dylan was dubbed ‘Tech Champion’ at the Dynamite 2021 awards.
What companies like Nebula demonstrate is despite misdirected funding, or issues with infrastructure, tech development and tech firms can still thrive in the region.
Natural talent and ability are abundant in the region.
Will Newcastle become the number one tech destination in the UK? It seems unlikely, but a future can be seen in bespoke and niche firms tackling problems larger firms are perhaps too lumbering to deal with effectively.
The North East can become the home to various Davids away from tech goliaths in Manchester, London, and abroad.
*By Austen Shakespeare, Correspondent, Bdaily
