About Me

Hi, I'm Nico, a backend developer with a special interest in security, web scraping, and distributed systems. I'm currently pursuing a liberal arts degree at the University of Austin in Texas, and I'm also an entrepreneur based in Austin, Texas. For over a decade, I've specialized in web scraping, distributed systems, and reverse-engineering the complex protection mechanisms of giants like Akamai, Cloudflare, and others. Originally from San Luis Obispo, California, I've built my career on tackling seemingly impossible technical challenges and delivering solutions that operate reliably at scale (with some growing pains).

I founded MINDWISE.IO back in 2016, at a time when digital card fraud was a huge problem and there were breaches reported almost every other month, millions and millions of cards were being sold. It was a hot time for that market and probably the peak. I would say since then it's mostly declined. Cards are of less quality and cost more. The business itself was targeted towards banks, but as it turns out, banks are not interested in individual fraud prevention solutions. They have insurance, and they also do not like integrating new technology and move at a glacial speed that does not fit with a startup. This whole experience taught me two valuable lessons:

Ideas are useless without execution. You need both.
You need to validate your market through actual A/B testing, not through intuition or hand-waving.

Despite not becoming a profitable enterprise, the experience taught me invaluable lessons. We were ultimately overshadowed by giants like Recorded Future, who operated on similar principles but launched ahead of us. Their approach offers an interesting case study:

They initially focused on presentation over substance – making their product look impressive even before delivering substantial value
This polished appearance attracted significant investment
With funding secured, they eventually built a product that delivered genuine value

This highlights a crucial lesson about bringing ideas to market: there's an element of strategic presentation necessary for success. You need to sell the vision before you can fully realize it. Of course, there's a critical difference between strategic positioning (Recorded Future) and outright fraud (Theranos) – the intent and ability to ultimately deliver on promises matters.

My journey began early in the trenches of digital communities, where I developed an obsession with understanding how systems work at their core. By "systems," I mean the intricate web that powers our modern world:

Governmental systems and their infrastructure: medicare, social security, etc.
Anti-bot protection mechanisms: cloudflare, akamai, etc.
Digital ecosystems that enable our daily computer interactions: the internet, social media, etc.
All the interconnected parts that make modern technology function seamlessly: the internet, social media, etc.

I'll be honest: these communities centered on hacking and exploitation more than on any pretense of making the world a better place. That said, they operated as a kind of meritocracy, rewarding technical skill above all else. However, the real-world impact of these activities proved far more harmful than my younger self anticipated. Call it naivety or willful ignorance, but I failed to fully grasp the consequences of my actions at the time.

This experience – witnessing how the digital underworld operates, followed by genuine regret for any participation – ultimately inspired me to build defenses against such exploitation. True defenses, not the constant scams that we are being sold left and right in American life that generally do not solve problems. Or if they do, they are problems that are intentionally created and then "solved" by this product. My exposure to these tactics from the inside gave me unique insights that I now channel into legitimate purposes:

Extracting data from heavily protected platforms (legally and ethically)
Building resilient distributed systems that can withstand attacks
Circumventing anti-automation measures for legitimate business needs

This transformation from motivation to understand systems for exploitation to protecting them represents the core of my professional evolution. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's what I've done.

My Technical Philosophy

My approach is rooted in methodical analysis and extreme ownership. I believe great engineering starts with understanding the 'why' – not just what needs to be built, but why it should be built in a specific way. I use systematic reverse-engineering, iterative testing, and robust architecture patterns to ensure the solutions I build can adapt to changing requirements and scale with demand.

I've learned that the best way to build a system is to build it in a way that is easy to understand and maintain. This is why I'm a big fan of the Unix philosophy. Good code for me is elegant, readable, and maintainable. Disclaimer: I reguarly fail at this with personal projects, but I try to apply it to my work as much as possible.

I strive to create systems that are both technically elegant and practically resilient. Whether I'm analyzing JavaScript protection mechanisms or architecting distributed data pipelines, my focus is always on delivering tangible value through well-engineered solutions.

In this current moment of AI enthusiasm, I feel compelled to stress a critical point: I don't believe in "vibe coding" – the practice of writing code without truly understanding how it works. In a real, functional engineering organization, this approach is dangerous. Here's why:

Systems lack self-knowledge: The code we write cannot explain itself or understand its own operation
Knowledge transfer is crucial: When engineers don't understand their systems, institutional knowledge evaporates
Real consequences await: Without deep understanding, we risk catastrophic failures – planes falling from the sky, critical infrastructure collapsing – with no one able to diagnose or fix the problems

While AI clearly has staying power and many valuable applications, it's our responsibility to use it as a tool, not a crutch. We must maintain our understanding of the systems we build, even as AI assists us in building them more efficiently.

The Pivot to Liberal Arts

Here's something I haven't mentioned yet: I'm insatiably curious about everything. My interests span far beyond technology:

Literature, philosophy, and history – my intellectual passions and probably where I have the most natural talent.
Computer science and mathematics – my professional foundations, and where I have the most work experience (obviously)
Medicine – In my younger years, I vacillated between medicine and computer science. With medical devices, I see an opportunity for a marriage of the two that can materially improve people's lives.

When I stumbled upon a 60 Minutes segment about an experimental university offering free, merit-based education, something clicked. The University of Austin represented everything I'd been searching for: a place where learning exists for its own sake, not as a rubber stamp for employment.

I thought, "Why not? What do I have to lose?" So I applied – and got in.

For the next four years, I'll be pursuing a liberal arts degree at this soon-to-be-accredited institution. What makes UATX unique in the American educational landscape is its commitment to genuine intellectual inquiry. Students are there to learn, not just to collect credentials. There is rigor, and I expect to be humbled, challenged, and pushed to determine what I believe and why.

I firmly believe that education shouldn't be reduced to a job pipeline. The fact that higher education has been mass-marketed as career training – all underwritten by taxpayers – represents a fundamental betrayal of what universities should be.

What Drives Me

What keeps me excited about my engineering work is the intellectual challenge of building complex systems and the satisfaction of finding elegant ways to make them work. There's something deeply rewarding about taking on projects that others consider impossible.

I'm particularly drawn to projects where technical excellence meets meaningful impact – helping businesses access the data they need to make informed decisions, enabling researchers to gather insights at scale, or building systems that democratize access to information. This philosophy directly drove my work at MINDWISE.IO, where I'm applying AI and analytics to help developers be more productive and focused in their work.

Technical Achievements

Over the years, I've successfully reverse-engineered and automated some of the most sophisticated anti-bot systems in the industry. These achievements demonstrate my deep understanding of modern security mechanisms and ability to operate at scale:

Ticketmaster – Revitalized Automatiq's ticket inventory management backend, a system that was built to be a black box and was not designed to be easily understood or maintained. Figured out how to break/fool their anti-automation measures and get access to acounts at scale (millions of accounts).
Vivid Seats – Automated high-volume ticket acquisitions despite robust anti-automation measures
SeatGeek – Circumvented their bot detection for large-scale operations
Nike – Defeated their infamous anti-bot systems for limited release purchases.
Walmart – Automated inventory monitoring and purchasing at scale
Kohl's – Bypassed their shields for price monitoring at scale
Amazon – Successfully operated automation despite their sophisticated detection mechanisms, both price tracking and automated extraction of account data.
Citibank – Automated extraction of account data at scale. Submission/execution of automated workflows on behalf of users.
Crypto marketplaces – Multiple platforms (unable to name due to confidentiality agreements)
Dark web marketplaces – Comprehensive experience across the entire ecosystem from A to Z, extraction of huge amounts of data pipelined into bigquery for analysis.

These experiences have given me unparalleled insight into how modern anti-automation systems work – knowledge I now apply to help legitimate businesses with their data extraction and automation needs.

Beyond the Code

When I'm not coding or studying, you'll find me deeply engaged with literature, philosophy, and history. I'm a nerd, okay?

My online presence spans multiple platforms where I engage with both technical and academic communities. You can find me on GitHub, LinkedIn.

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to browse my projects or get in touch if you'd like to ask any advice, or if you have a project that you think I'd be a good fit for. I will be working part-time for the next four years, so contracting and consulting are the name of the game.

Preferred contact: Signal
Email: nicomeemes@gmail.com
Resume: Download PDF