Humans of Tepia: Deric

Introducing our newest hire: Deric McCurry, straight out of Austin, taking over the role of our Director of Accounts. Here’s Deric, in his own words!

1. What’s your earliest tech memory?

I didn’t want to work on a farm or outside my whole life, so I sold 5 goats to buy my first laptop when I was 11 to start learning the internet and programming.

2. What’s your day-to-day like?

My day to day at Tepia involves wearing a lot of hats. I serve 3 primary roles with the team: participating in leadership and business development, sales prospecting and client relationship, and external facing project management.

3. Developers are superstitious. Do you have a favourite computer superstition or ritual that probably doesn’t work – but you still do it anyway?

My favorite developing habit is having the ability to zone out in the work.

4. How did you end up working at Tepia?

I was approached by Abe when he was looking for development partnerships in Austin. At the time, I was leading another software development agency centered around no-code solutions. When Abe reached out and I got to learn more about Tepia over a few months, I felt like there was both a lot I could learn and a lot I can offer. It really felt like an awesome fit and an opportunity I had been looking for.

5. What attracted you to Tepia?

The team, the direction, and the culture. I believe the leadership group here is very solid and seasoned and there is a lot to learn, but also I saw a team that is hungry and eager to keep growing, and looking to stay on top of the game with innovation and efficiency.

This strikes me as a “find a way” kind of team, and that’s very much how I approach business.

6. What’s your favourite project that you’ve worked on so far?

Before coming to Tepia, I led the team and worked on a startup called GapScout that scraped customer feedback from the internet and then synthesized the feedback with AI-based classifiers. We broke down complex customer review data into bite-size data points to help businesses understand how customers really felt about their product. The tool was incredibly complex for a near one page app, but due to some legal issues it has been tabled for several months.

7. What’s your ultimate dream-big project – the one you’re working towards, the one that’ll blow all the other projects out of the water?

That’s a tough one. At heart I want to run my own business again, and I’m sitting on several ideas and projects, but right now none of them seem exciting enough to pursue. Over the past few years and through a couple of business failures and overcommitments, I’ve come to adopt the mantra of Derek Sivers, “If I’m not saying ‘Hell Yeah!’ to something, then I say no.” So, I’m just waiting on the idea of mine that make myself and others say “Hell Yeah!”