Alumni Update: Daniela Munoz
By Riona Duncan
Last year, we connected with 2024 School of Computer Science graduate Daniela Munoz to learn more about her time at IDeATe, and how her experiences in the program set her up for success as she founded the startup Confetti.
Now, she’s back with a new venture, and we followed up to learn more about her latest work!
1. Can you share a little about what you have been working on since we talked to you last year?This past March, I founded LemonLime with my best friend of over a decade, Jordan, and his cat, Fish (aka Big Boss). It has been a sprint for us since day one. Less than two months after starting the company, we joined startup accelerator Y Combinator, and by June we had launched publicly. After wrapping up work on our previous startup Confetti, we took a step back to figure out what we wanted to build next. Experimenting with all of the newest technology in AI answered that for us very quickly. We realized that the limits of what small teams could accomplish were completely shifting. The potential was impossible to ignore, and we knew we had to be part of it. Before writing a line of code, we spent months talking to small business owners about how they were using AI, and the answer we kept hearing was that they weren’t. There’s a growing gap between what AI is capable of and how accessible it actually is to the businesses that can benefit from it the most. A large company has the means to put each new capability to work almost immediately. For a small business owner, that same technology still demands too much time, technical knowledge, and money. That’s why we built LemonLime. We’re leveling the playing field.
IDeATe taught me to get comfortable with pivoting. No build ever goes exactly to plan, and the best builders can change direction quickly without losing momentum. Back then, that meant last-minute redesigns before a showcase. At Confetti, it meant anything from reworking features to launching entirely new apps as we learned more about our users. This year, it was the most exciting pivot yet. IDeATe is where pivoting stopped feeling like a detour and started feeling like a normal part of building something new.
3. Are there any skills that you started learning in IDeATe that you still reach for? How have these skills evolved in your life and career?The skill I reach for the most is rapid prototyping. One of the biggest pitfalls I’ve seen other makers fall into is putting way too much time and effort into an idea before they even know whether it works. IDeATe taught me to test ideas sooner by building quickly, a skill that is a core competitive advantage of any startup, us included. We often ship products far before they’re polished, allowing us to learn from real user behavior and iterate significantly faster. Prototyping isn’t just about building, it’s the mindset that our whole team runs on: test early and often, learn quickly, and make improvements.
4. What advice did you get as an IDeATe student, and advice would you give to current students?
Some of the most meaningful advice I got in IDeATe was never said out loud. I spent three years working with Technical Specialist Cody Soska, and in that time he taught me that a no is rarely the end of anything. No matter the setback, he treated it as the next starting point. A startup is basically a machine for generating rejection, and what separates the people who keep building from the people who stall is what they do in the ten minutes after hearing no. Cody showed me what those ten minutes should look like years before I needed it.
My advice to current students: the world is changing faster than ever, and the specific tools you’re learning will age out faster than you think. That’s okay. The mindset you’re learning is what really matters. The willingness to try something new and to break things on the way to understanding them is what I use every single day. Normalize walking up to the unfamiliar expecting to be bad at it for a while and trust yourself to figure it out. Take the class that scares you a little and build the thing that is slightly too ambitious for you. Nobody building anything interesting ever feels ready, and IDeATe is the safest place you’ll ever have to practice that feeling.
About LemonLime: LemonLime fully automates sales and marketing for small businesses. Every morning, we send teams new leads, personalized outreach, branded content, everything that goes into getting them more customers. If you’re running a small business and want to see value on day one, check out lemonlime.com!