Meet Marco

Beautiful people making beautiful work. Raindrop is full of talented and creative characters. Just Raindrop Things is a new blog series where we feature our Raindroppers.


Get to know your Director of Web Development, Marco!

What’s your favorite brand and why?

Nintendo has managed to charm me for my entire life so I’d probably go with them. Their ability to leverage computing power to entertain I always found fascinating growing up and from a branding perspective.. they took an 8-bit sprite, named it Mario, gave it a background in plumbing, and made a globally recognized character out of it. Pretty impressive.

Word around the office is you’re pretty good at building the internet. Can you tell us a bit about how you got into coding/web development?

I started coding when I was about ten or eleven years old. I would attempt to develop my own video games on the family computer (see, Nintendo really did win me over). I made little online games as a hobby and then started creating websites at about the age of 13.

Fast forward into my twenties and I ended up taking something that was a self-taught hobby and decided to make it into a career.

What is the most memorable trip you’ve been on and what made it so special?

Two years ago, I took a trip to Italy with the intention of exploring the country where my ancestors came from (and to eat quality pizza). I took a one-way ticket over and immediately had the desire to explore more. I ended up buying train tickets around Italy for two months, up to Switzerland after (please go here), England, Scotland, Egypt, Thailand, and ended up in Korea. I started to miss my family, friends, and San Diego so after eight months I bought a ticket back.

In terms of what made it special, being able to see the world through different lenses and connect with various types of people. The friends I made in Egypt had similar concerns, goals, and desires as my friends in Korea; it might seem trivial but recognizing that humans are very alike regardless of country was an important takeaway for me.

If you had to pick three meals to eat for the rest of your life, what would they be?

Potatoes (convinced the potato is the best food to have ever existed but that’s a conversation for another day), sushi, and my mom’s pinto beans. My mom’s pinto beans would also be on your list too if you tried them. They are delicious.

What’s a recent project you completed that you’re especially proud of?

I’m really proud of the work we did on the San Diego Museum of Art website. I made a half joke to the CEO that he should frame a screenshot of the website’s code and put it up at the museum because it’s a work of art; still waiting to hear back.

What is something on the top of your bucket list?

Figure out a way to help people generally in a positive and meaningful way before I die. Something that is akin to the invention of the Internet – generally helps people without being politically motivated or meant for an exclusive group of people. I’m still trying to figure out what that looks like.