About
A pilot who builds digital businesses.
Pylon8 exists because most aviation businesses are stuck with a digital presence that doesn't reflect the quality of what they actually do.
I'm Nathan Van Kempen, a certified flight instructor and a professional software engineer based in Honolulu. I know your business because I've lived it on the flight line, and I know how to build the system around it because I've shipped production software for a living. I also shoot aviation photography and video, available on request and on location when a project calls for it.
Pylon8 is founder-led. Strategy, creative direction, and core execution stay directly with me. When a project calls for additional production capacity or a specialized discipline, I bring in trusted collaborators, without adding the layers of account management that inflate cost and lose information between handoffs.
That gives you one person who understands your operation from the ramp to the codebase to the camera, and a bench of specialists for the moments that call for scale. Never anonymous subcontractors, never work you haven't approved.
Under the hood (for the technically curious)
Every site is hand-built on Next.js with TypeScript and React. No WordPress, no page builders, no template bloat. Deployed on managed edge infrastructure for auto-scaling, global delivery, and near-instant page loads.
SEO is structured end-to-end: LocalBusiness, Course, FAQ, Article, and Service schema where relevant, sitemap automation, and clean semantic markup. Analytics wired through GA4 and Google Search Console, with event tracking tuned to the conversions that actually matter.
Lead capture forms validate server-side, route to email and CRM simultaneously, and are rate-limited for spam protection without CAPTCHA friction.
- Credentials
- Certified Flight Instructor (CFI)
Professional software engineer
Aviation photography and video (on request)
B.A. Computer Science, Data Science & A.I., University of San Diego - Based in
- Honolulu, Hawaii
- Personal site
- nathanv.dev
- @nathanvankempen
- Focus
- Websites, growth, creative, and systems for aviation businesses
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