About
I'm DaQuan Louden, DQ to most people, a self-taught software builder in Michigan. Two years ago I had no technical background at all. Today I design, build and run production web apps on my own through my company, FollowUs AI, and I'm looking for my first full-time role in tech.
How I got here
Before software I spent eight years in restaurants and sales: assistant manager, general manager, a year of high-volume outbound sales. I learned to run a floor on a bad night, train new people, read a P&L and keep calling after the fiftieth no. I still work in hospitality while I build.
In 2024 I started teaching myself to code by building real products rather than following tutorials. Each one went a little further than the last: a blog platform, a clip editor, a creator tool, an onboarding product. Most are retired now. The two that stuck are Guppy, a workout tracker for the web that is live and taking payments, and Bloomin, a goal-based savings concept that is in the design stage with a waitlist open.
Most of my code is written with coding agents, and I've learned what makes them reliable: clear written specs, repository-level instructions, design tokens they can't drift from, and reviewing the output as if I'd written it myself. I'm also working through freeCodeCamp's Certified Full Stack Developer curriculum so that I can write and reason about the code myself, not only direct an agent.
What I'm looking for
A full-time role in tech. I'm applying broadly, from support, IT and data to QA and engineering, because I'd rather get in and prove myself than wait for one perfect title. Remote, or on site in Michigan. I'm most at home in Next.js, TypeScript and React, with Convex, Supabase, Stripe and Vercel on the backend side, and I care a great deal about how software feels to use: fewer steps, fewer screens, plain language.
The resume has the details. If you're hiring, the contact page says how to reach me.
About this site
This site is the evidence. Every product on the home page is a real thing at a real URL; the screenshots and the film are captures of the live products, not mockups. The site itself is a static Next.js app on Vercel, built from one content file so that the HTML, the resume, the PDF and the Markdown versions all say the same thing.
Every page has a Markdown twin for AI agents and search tools: request any page with an Accept: text/markdown header, or open index.md and llms.txt directly.