Hi, I'm Daniel Entrenas
Hi! I'm Daniel Entrenas 👋 Software engineer by training, entrepreneur for as long as I can remember.
Over the years I've done a bit of everything online: code, SEO, games, apps, paid ads, teams… even an exit. Keep scrolling and I'll tell you how it all happened.
Level 1 — The CD-ROM years (age 13)
It all started when I was 13. Video games were my biggest passion, but making things excited me even more.
So my dad bought me a programming book. While I learned, I'd open the .html files on my favourite games' CDs just to see how they were built.
I still remember learning CSS by picking apart the Half-Life user manual. 🤓
Level 2 — Hello, World Wide Web (age 14)
That hunger to learn (and the games, of course) led to my first website. At 14, I published a very improvable video game site!
To me it was huge: anyone, on any computer in the world, could visit something I had made.
Level 3 — 56k and a community
Back then the internet wasn't on 24/7. I'd dial up on my humble 56k modem (sometimes in secret) to upload a new update every week.
Little by little, through the forum and the guestbook, a community grew. My first international friends? People in Mexico who knew my site!
Level 4 — Wrong turn (age 18)
Fast forward a few years: the site kept evolving as I kept teaching myself. Then, at 18, came a turning point.
I enrolled in Industrial Engineering… and got it completely wrong. Two or three months in, I knew it wasn't my place, so I left.
The free months before starting Software Engineering? I used them to take the site to the next level, rebuilding it almost from scratch.
Level 5 — Something called SEO
People were starting to talk about something called SEO, so I dug in and rebuilt the site to be search-engine friendly.
Traffic went exponential. If you searched “Nintendo” on Google, my site came up second!
Level 6 — The toolbar test (age 18–19)
My hobby suddenly took on another dimension: sponsors started showing up, and with them, my first tough decisions.
With millions of people visiting every month, I had to choose: more revenue, or taking care of my users.
Those were the days of sneaky browser toolbars that installed themselves with any download. I received hundreds of offers.
But one thing was always clear: my users came first. They'd chosen me for years, and I wasn't going to sell them. Without realising it, I'd made the best decision I could.
Level 7 — Thanks for playing
But everything that starts has an end. After more than ten years, I decided to close the site.
I didn't sell it. I simply said goodbye and thanked everyone for all those years. We had grown up together, and I needed new things to learn.
Level 8 — Co-op mode (2013)
Next, I co-founded a video game studio with friends from university. Nothing big came out of it, but I learned a ton.
Level 9 — Cracking the algorithm (2013)
In that transition, around 2013, I built Android apps with one goal: figure out how the store ranking algorithm worked.
Some of them did really well, racking up more than 200,000 organic downloads in under a month after launch.
Level 10 — Publishing at scale (2015–2018)
I'd struck gold. And, as life goes, I started doing the same for an international video game company based in my city.
In the three years I ran the department, I grew the team to 15 people, with annual revenue in the millions.
Level 11 — The HTML5 frontier (2018–2022)
After that, another international company came calling: build your own team here in your city, working remotely with us.
A whole new world for me: HTML5 games. While I was there, we helped shape new platforms that featured our games.
Level 12 — Founder mode (2020)
But the entrepreneur bug was still there. I felt stuck and needed to feel active again, so I co-founded a mobile app company with a partner.
For the first time, we left games behind to focus on B2C apps. I'd been in games long enough to know how hard competing there was getting.
Our first project worked wonderfully, and some time later we sold it: our first exit! 🎉
Level 13 — Data and paid ads
My role has always revolved around data analysis and marketing, especially paid ads.
TikTok Ads and Meta Ads became my new obsession: creatives, audiences, CPIs, ROAS… and the data behind every decision.
Level 14 — AI-first, 24/7 (today)
Today we keep building a portfolio of apps, this time assisted by AI, applying everything I've learned over the years.
We've built an infrastructure that lets us develop as if we had several departments working as one team, 24/7.
Bonus — Character sheet: my strengths
That's my story so far. Here's what all those levels turned into: my strongest skills.
- User acquisition and paid ads (Meta, TikTok, Apple Ads, Google)
- Data and product analytics
- Organic growth: SEO and ASO
- AI-first operations
- Team building and leadership
- Engineering
Continue? Let's talk
Building or growing an app? I'd love to hear about it. Book a call or drop me a line, and let's play the next level together.