TIKITA TOLLEY
Crafting Systems in the Age of AI
You can just do things. I dropped out of uni and co-founded Daeda Tech, where I build HubSpot apps and Chrome extensions. Now I'm teaching myself electronics and 3D printing and documenting it on YouTube as I go.
4 years ago I taught myself to code, catching the curve of learning just before AI got good.
Opus/Codex is now at the point that writing code is a waste of time.
I've heard I'm in a bubble, by midway through 2026 I have released a hubspot app,
a chrome extension, an MCP, built 2nd brains and grown my company site - this is faster than anything I could have done before AI.
We are approaching a time when bringing an idea to life will be less like clicking
around a screen and more like carving clay;
the future is limited by, as my husband says, imagination, magic words and the willingness
to add friction into your life.
Physics Dropout
As a kid, I was pretty fascinated with space. This led eventually to physics. I had planned out my life path to be an astronaut or at least try.
But when I excitedly arrived at university to do my life’s dream I realised I was so burnt out I would never achieve it. So I dropped out to take a gap year and upskill.
The Gap Year and a Half
One module at uni I failed was programming. So at the beginning of my gap year I started to learn to code. My aim being by the end of the year to be able to build the connect 4 game from the programming module. I got a job at McDonald’s (employee of the month in my first month) and at the same time met Jack at salsa dancing! He became my mentor in code and accelerated my learning.
I decided to tutor maths and physics to boost my personal statement for when I returned to uni, but ended up loving the job - and by the end had 11 students. Jack and I then decided we would take this gap year opportunity to see a bit of the world. I left McDonald’s and tutoring and we headed off to Thailand.
Travelling Asia
We ended up doing a trip for 5 and a half months from Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. I documented it all on YouTube. Everyday was filled with coding small projects, achieving the connect 4 build, my 1st attempt at a full stack app, and physics study preparing for my time at Manchester uni.
The 2nd Uni Experience
When we arrived back in the UK and moved to Manchester, I was finally on the ball, winning a scholarship for being top 10 in the year. But over time I became disillusioned. I realised 1: uni isn’t what is used to be, and 2: my dreams had changed.
On the side I started Scrape Shack - a custom web scraping service - took Upwork contracts for frontend and data work, and shipped a couple of full-stack webapps like AI 20 Questions and Realty Compare. Made about £30 from it all.
I dropped out a 2nd time to pursue an adventure of building apps in SE Asia instead.
Building Daeda Tech While Abroad
My husband and I co-founded Daeda Tech in 2024, building apps for HubSpot users. We spent the next 21 months in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam: a year in Chiang Mai, then one to three months each in Kuala Lumpur, Da Nang and Phuket, before ending back in Da Nang.
Founding Daeda is where I learned how to build a working app that users rely on: shipping a full-stack product with payments, marketing, brand, and customer support.
My first real test was a Stardew Valley GPT - it grew faster than anything I’d built, tying with the top Stardew GPT on the ChatGPT store with 1K chats and a 4.2 rating, before OpenAI took it down for “violent content” (almost certainly a Reddit hater - my appeals couldn’t win).
I spent a few months deep in the Shopify space too - Daeda Wishlist, a Recently Viewed Products extension, merchant forums - before deciding Shopify wasn’t the right fit.
Going all in as a GPT dev looked like a possible path, so I shipped ten more: five small ones to build up the portfolio, then a suite for HubSpot teams. None of them repeated Stardew.
Jack had been building in the HubSpot space all through 2025 and we decided to join forces. I went from co-building Auto Associations Pro to solo-shipping fast: Clean Dial, then Dynamic Dropdowns, built in a week with installs in the first few hours of launch.
On the side, Cursor Aura and Convert Time came out of this stretch too, free chrome extensions with steady daily installs.
In 2026 we went all in on Daeda AI, the spine between your AI and HubSpot. I own distribution: growing traffic to daeda.tech through AEO and technical SEO. Between us we’ve now shipped a mix of apps and chrome extensions, with Daeda Essentials as our flagship.
Back To England And Exploring Hardware
I’ve always collected old tech hoping to build something cool but never had the mindset of “you can just do stuff”.
Back at uni in Manchester, as part of the robotics society, I attempted to build a buggy robot which I got moving but couldn’t finish because the development board broke.
Once we returned to the UK in June 2026 I finally switched my mindset. I’ve started vlogging my progress on socials like TikTok and built electronics projects like a mushroom LED keyring and a smart plant moisture monitor as well as started 3D printing at DoES Liverpool makerspace.
I talk about all my builds on substack: Code & Solder
A Focus on Continually Learning
This journey has flipped my understanding of the world on its head, and 2025 was the year where I questioned a lot about my life’s purpose and the weirdness that anything exists at all. I began to explore philosophy of life and history, writing what I thought about in my Curious Descent Substack. I came to the conclusion that my ideas on happiness and life were too focused on the future - there was always the next goal to reach; but life is happening right now and to experience the great range that life can offer I believe is its purpose. I’m now attempting to focus purely on creating, apps or systems or art, and reducing time spent consuming unless it’s peak content.
If you relate, come join the convo
- Code & Solder - App/Hardware build logs
- Curious Descent - Philosophy & big questions
- YouTube - Project videos