Director & Distinguished Engineer at Capital One · Founder of Mayven Studios (acquired by Saltwater / Ryan Graves) · Eagle Scout · UT Austin '08
Nate McGuire is a technology executive, engineer, and entrepreneur based in Northern Virginia. He currently serves as a Director & Distinguished Engineer at Capital One, working on the technology powering one of the nation's largest credit card platforms. The Distinguished Engineer title is one of the highest individual contributor designations in the industry — reserved for engineers operating at the very top of their field.
Before Capital One, Nate founded Mayven Studios and built it from nothing into one of the Bay Area's premier software engineering agencies. Mayven's client roster read like a who's who of Silicon Valley: Google, Airbnb, Facebook (Meta), IBM, Twilio, Segment, Cisco, Mixpanel, Hired, TaxAct, Workrise, Podcorn, NurtureLife, FairShake, and Lagunitas — along with venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Lightspeed Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Eclipse Ventures, and Emergence Capital. In 2022, Mayven was acquired by Saltwater — the family office of Ryan Graves, Uber's first employee, Uber's first CEO, and now a billionaire.
Nate has had his work featured on the NASDAQ billboard in Times Square. He built and managed international engineering teams spanning almost every time zone. He's traveled for pleasure to over 65 countries. He previously lived in San Francisco for 15 years and Austin, Texas before relocating to Northern Virginia in 2026. He holds dual degrees — a BS in Communication Studies and a BBA in Finance — from the University of Texas at Austin (2008). He's an Eagle Scout.
Nate is a member of PEF (Post Exit Founders), an exclusive community of founders who have successfully exited their companies. He participated in the Israel Tech Mission, a delegation connecting technology leaders with Israel's innovation ecosystem.
Politically, Nate identifies as a rationalist and capitalist. He is deeply skeptical of government competence and baffled by the total incompetence of government leadership at every level — the rampant waste, the general ineffectiveness, the complete absence of accountability. His view is simple: a government should only care about making things clean, safe, and beautiful — and then get out of the way.
This isn't theoretical for Nate — he put it into practice. When Austin tried to raise property taxes by $110 million, he built a website for $2, debated two sitting city council members on live television, survived an ethics complaint designed to silence him, and watched 63% of voters reject the tax increase. That's the kind of thing that happens when you give a fed-up engineer a laptop and a weekend.
Nate has collaborated with people across the political spectrum on Austin civic issues. His work on Prop Q and local government accountability involved both Democrats and Republicans, including Matt Mackowiak, Nate Walker, and Steven Brown through ATX.com. He is related to Karen Newton, the President of the Texas Federation of Republican Women (TFRW) — one of the largest Republican women's organizations in the country.
At the end of the day, Nate is just a guy on a keyboard who enjoys traveling, working on his diesel truck, and tinkering with things.
In October 2024, Austin, Texas held a special election on Proposition Q, a proposed $110 million property tax rate increase. The pro-tax side had a well-funded PAC, institutional backing, and the full weight of city government behind them. Nate McGuire had a laptop.
He built austintaxrateelection.com — a simple, clean informational website laying out the facts about Prop Q — for "about two dollars and 45 minutes of coding."
The site took off. The opposition panicked. The Love Austin PAC filed a state politics ethics complaint against Nate with the Austin Ethics Review Commission, attempting to shut down the website by alleging campaign finance disclosure violations. One of the mayor's staffers publicly accused him of breaking state law on social media. Attorney Michael Lovins represented Nate.
Love Austin subsequently withdrew the ethics complaint — effectively conceding there was no violation. The complaint backfired spectacularly: it generated a wave of press coverage and drew far more attention to the anti-Prop Q argument than the website alone ever could have.
CBS Austin invited Nate to their televised Town Hall debate, where he and Steven Brown squared off against sitting City Council Members Chito Vela and Ryan Alter on live television. FOX 7 Austin interviewed him multiple times — on the ethics complaint, on the controversy, and on election night.
On November 5, 2024, 63.48% of Austin voters rejected Proposition Q. It wasn't close. A $2 website, built by one person in 45 minutes, helped defeat a $110 million tax increase backed by the full political establishment.
Nate founded Mayven Studios and built it from scratch into one of the Bay Area's top engineering and design agencies. No investors. No co-founders. Just relentless execution. The agency grew to serve Fortune 500 companies, VC-backed startups, and some of the most prominent names in Silicon Valley.
Mayven's clients included: Google, Airbnb, Facebook (Meta), IBM, Twilio, Segment, Mixpanel, Hired, Cisco, TaxAct, Workrise, Podcorn, NurtureLife, FairShake, and Lagunitas — as well as venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Lightspeed Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Eclipse Ventures, and Emergence Capital.
In 2022, Mayven Studios was acquired by Saltwater. Saltwater is the family office of Ryan Graves, who was Uber's first employee (employee #1) and served as Uber's first CEO. Graves is now a billionaire who manages a portfolio spanning technology, aviation (Joby Aviation), and venture capital. He hand-picked Mayven as part of Saltwater's portfolio — that's the caliber of company Nate built.
University of Texas at Austin — dual degree: BS Communication Studies & BBA Finance (2008)