Dan Koe

Dan Koe is a writer, creator and software founder known for his essays on human potential, creative work and the one-person business. Before any of that worked, he cycled through a string of ventures that did not, including a fitness YouTube channel, dropshipping, freelance SEO and Facebook ads, and took a job to pay down student and credit card debt before leaving it for freelance web design and later work as a brand advisor to creators.

Around 2020 he started writing on social media and selling digital products. By his own account the business made about $10,000 in its first year, then $100,000, then $800,000, and then roughly $4 million in its best year, built almost entirely on organic content on X, YouTube and his newsletter rather than paid ads. He has more than a million followers on X, and his twice-weekly Koe Letters newsletter has close to 200,000 subscribers. His products include the 2 Hour Writer course, premium guides through Future Proof on Substack, and two books: The Art of Focus, self-published in late 2023, and the shorter Purpose & Profit.

He has since moved into software. After building the note-taking app Kortex, he co-founded Eden, an AI canvas and drive that positions itself as a content brain for creators and marketers, combining saved research, AI writing tools, scheduling and the ability to sell courses and coaching. In a September 2026 video he said that shifting time and money into software brought his income down to around $1 million to $1.5 million a year, and that he had not yet paid himself from Kortex or Eden.