He Lost His Co-Founder. Then Taught AI to Be His Team

Most maps lead nowhere.
But inside NTE Pro, you find the sparks.
Through NTE Zero to One, they get pressure-tested.
With GummySearch, you hear the internet confess what it really wants.

And sometimes, it all comes together in a founder like Daniel, who lost his co-founder, went solo, and taught AI to be his team.

Today we tell the story of how It Exists.

Daniel didn’t have a dream job growing up.
He poured concrete with his dad. Spent a few years untangling Ethernet cables. No five-year plan, no Silicon Valley vision board.

But he always loved messing around on the internet.
His first “big idea”? Snapa, a Snapchat clone where friends could request photos and you had seconds to respond. Spoiler: it bombed.

Most people quit after their first flop. Daniel didn’t.

Lesson 1: Ride the Wave (Before It Crashes)

Ten years ago, Buffer was the social scheduling darling. Everyone used it, nobody complained. Except Daniel. He noticed the gap:

“Buffer scheduled posts… but what if you didn’t know what to post?”

So he built Quuu, a content-feed piggybacking on Buffer’s API. It was simple, useful, and perfectly timed.

At first, it was ramen-noodle revenue. Then came Quuu Promote where creators paid to get their posts into the feed. That second engine turned it into a business.

Within two years: $38K a month. Enough to hire a team. Enough to breathe.

Lesson 2: Breakups Hurt Worse Than Bank Balances

For a while, life looked good. Daniel had twelve people on payroll. His first hire, Amy, stuck around for years.

Then came the gut punch: his co-founder walked.

“The hardest challenge wasn’t money. It was losing my partner.”

Startups can survive without cash. They can’t survive without conviction. That moment forced him to choose: pack it in or go solo.

He went solo.

Lesson 3: AI Became His Ride-or-Die

For years, Daniel had to beg devs to turn his ideas into reality. He’d write specs. They’d miss deadlines. The dance was slow and expensive.

Then AI showed up.

Suddenly, he didn’t need a dev team. He had a tireless robot army.
Morning idea → lunchtime prototype.

That’s how he built Supawrite, his first 100% solo app. No engineers, no arguments, no waiting. Just Daniel and AI.

“I can build anything now. But the trap is… you can get lost in building when what you need is marketing.”

Even he admits: AI makes shipping too fun. The danger isn’t failing, it’s never stopping.

Lesson 4: The First Dollar Is the Hardest

Forget unicorn dreams. Daniel still remembers the first real user who paid for Quuu.

“Getting someone to pay is REALLY hard at the beginning. That’s when it felt real.”

That first dollar mattered more than the next million. Because it proved he wasn’t crazy. Someone out there valued what he built.

Most people overthink launches. Daniel’s lesson: launch ugly, charge early, and let customers write the sequel.

Lesson 5: Ideas Don’t Expire — They Marinate

Snapa failed. Plenty of other experiments died too. But Daniel never deletes them.

He keeps a graveyard of half-baked projects. Why? Because timing kills more ideas than execution.

Ten years ago, the world wasn’t ready for photo-request messaging. Today, maybe TikTok would eat it up.

Lesson: don’t bury your ideas. Put them on ice. The future might come around.

Lesson 6: Marketing > Features

Daniel’s philosophy is tattoo-worthy:

“Just ship it… and market the crap out of it.”

Because here’s the truth: anyone can vibe-code an app in a weekend. But if no one hears about it, it doesn’t exist.

AI is your co-founder. Marketing is your oxygen.

What He Thinks Needs to Exist

Daniel’s shipped enough tools to know the hardest part isn’t building. It’s distribution.

His answer?
👉 A true marketing partner.

Not an agency. Not a contractor. A co-founder who obsesses over growth loops the way he obsesses over products.

Because building is now cheap. Eyeballs aren’t.

Follow Daniel

He’s keeping Quuu alive.
He just shipped Supawrite, his first AI-built solo project.
And he’s constantly dropping new experiments on X.

👉 Supawrite.com — his latest launch
👉 Follow him on X — for the next ones

What You Can Learn From Daniel

🔥 Ride existing waves - don’t invent oceans.
💔 Breakups can be the best breakthroughs.
🤖 AI is the teammate who never quits.
💵 The first dollar matters more than the next million.
🪦 Keep your idea graveyard, the world might catch up.
📣 Distribution is the bottleneck. Always.

People talk about ideas like they’re fragile. But Daniel shows what happens when you test them, push them, and actually ship.

From sparks in NTE Pro, to signals uncovered with GummySearch, to founders willing to put it all on the line — the pipeline isn’t theory anymore.

It’s proof.