Mike McKiernan from Deckee Welcome to Day One

Hi, and welcome to day one, the podcast for regional startups and the organisations that support Australian entrepreneurship. Welcome to day one is brought to you by the city of Newcastle. The City of Newcastle is a big supporter of entrepreneurship in our region and has recently launched a brand new digital hub called Newihub. Newihub is a growing and vibrant community of Newcastle's startups & founders. It's a central hub where you can learn about what's going on in our ecosystem, with events, available jobs and other resources. I'll tell you more about Newihub later in the episode, but for now, let’s jump into the story of Mike McKiernan.

Deckee is a free mobile app designed to provide up to date information to people out on the water when boating, fishing or sailing in order to keep them safe. Deckee is approaching a million dollars raised through investors and is officially endorsed by three state governments in Australia. The Deckee app is also available for use worldwide, and international expansion is one of the priorities for the company moving forward. So how did Mike go from studying visual communications at Newcastle University to becoming an investor-backed entrepreneur overseeing a team of employees and scaling a tech company internationally? To answer that question, first, we need to go back to day one, and hear how a job Mike got as a student would reveal a whole set of problems he didn't even know existed.