Daze: Reinventing Messaging for a New Generation with Willem Simons

If you’ve ever watched a teenager text, you know it’s not just about words. It’s memes. Screenshots. Unhinged drawings. A perfectly timed “🤣” emoji that says more than a paragraph ever could. Willem Simons gets this in his bones and built a company around it.

Meet Daze, a Gen Z-native messaging platform that turns chat into creative self-expression. Forget cold blue bubbles. Daze lets users drag, doodle, remix, and play in their conversations. It’s art school meets iMessage meets cloudcore surrealism.

A Childhood of Play, Parachutes, and Possibility

Featured on Forbes 30 under 30, founder Willem Simons grew up in a world where imagination was currency. Born in Virginia to Dutch immigrants, his house was equal parts workshop and wonderland. His mom, once an undocumented immigrant, rose to become a CFO. His dad reinvented himself more times than a chameleon, from being a leather bag craftsman to real estate agent to electronic music producer. Creativity wasn’t just encouraged, it was lived.

And for Willem, it all started with building a LEGO parachute.

Yes, you read that right. At just six years old, Willem crafted a homemade parachute from LEGO bricks designed to save minifigs from imaginary house fires. He sold his first invention on eBay to his mom’s coworker. That tiny transaction planted the seed that building things, absurd, clever, whimsical things, could connect people.

From Snap Art to Something Deeper

Years later, that same spirit found a new outlet: Snapchat. Its doodle tools became a playground for Willem and his friends, who started making what they called “Snap art.” What began as playful drawings evolved into an exploration of identity, expression, and communication.

Reflecting on that experience years later, Willem wondered: what if a messaging platform was intentionally designed to unleash creativity instead of just deliver text?

This became the seed of his first startup, Muze, and eventually his current company, Daze. Initially, Daze was a journaling-meets-calendar app where users could create daily artifacts of their lives. Willem described the vision beautifully: “Your life is just a series of days. Each one deserves a canvas.”

But the real growth insight came later. Users either treated it like a journal or like an event planner. There was no middle ground. So Willem pivoted Daze into what it is today, a freeform messaging experience that supports doodles, GIF collages, and expressive chaos.

He kept the name Daze as a nod to both the days of the week and the dreamy, altered state that inspires creativity. Clouds became a recurring visual motif. “I remember cloud-gazing with my mom as a kid,” he said. “Trying to see images in the sky. That’s how imagination works. It’s your brain filling in the blanks.”

“Messaging Becomes The Playground” - Willem Simons, Founder of Daze

Today, Daze has found its core audience: middle and high schoolers who use texting not just to communicate but to hang out and feel seen. As Willem explained, “In high school, you text your friends all day because you can’t just drive over to hang out. 

According to eMarketer, Gen Z texts 10 times more than older generations and is twice as likely to use messaging apps to express emotion rather than just coordinate logistics. Daze meets them exactly where they are, right at the intersection of creativity and connection.

It’s no surprise that one of Daze’s most viral features is the ability to literally draw on the chat screen. It turns conversations into shared art.

The Launch Playbook: Parties, Content, and Community

Founder, Willem Simons

In the early days, the team tried a college ambassador program. They partnered with fraternities, hosted campus parties, and even experimented with in-person event seeding. But parties only happen so often. What people really need is a way to communicate every day.

So they shifted to a more organic approach. Content marketing via TikTok and Instagram became their go-to strategy, building community in the same spaces their users naturally live online.

The company is now 11 people strong, working across NYC, Florida, and Ukraine. While they’re semi-remote, they still eat lunch together daily in the office and throw occasional parties that are, according to Willem, “kind of wild.” The team vibes are strong, even as they figure out how to scale culture while growing.

What It’s Really Like to Be a Founder

Despite the dreamy visuals and playful product, building Daze has come with its challenges. Willem describes the hardest part as “being perpetually unhappy with the current version” of the product. That hunger to improve, while powerful, can also be exhausting.

He’s had to let go of team members, shelve beloved ideas, and constantly balance long-term vision with short-term pressure. Still, he says the journey has gotten less stressful over time. “The biggest stress in my first startup was interpersonal drama and politics,” he shared. “At Daze, we’ve created a culture where that doesn’t exist. That makes all the difference.”

On Leadership, Therapy, and the Meaning of It All

Leadership, for Willem, is about vision, delegation, and clarity. “It’s not about doing everything. It’s about knowing your blind spots and finding people who fill them,” he said.

His personal superpowers are creativity and product design. He taught himself to design interfaces because they couldn’t afford a designer. “If I had all the money in the world,” he said, “I’d still want Daze to exist.”

Willem’s also a fan of therapy. It helped him during his last company by offering clarity on the inner narratives that hold us back. “Some of the stories we tell ourselves aren’t rooted in reality,” he said. “Therapy helps shine a light on what’s real and what’s useful.”

His views on success have evolved too. “In high school, I cared a lot about money. Now I just want to create things that make the world better. It’s how I pulled myself out of nihilism. Creation gave me meaning.”

Final Words from the Filter

Willem sees humans as filters, each shaped by our personality and experiences, processing the world through our unique lens. Daze is his way of helping Gen Z share what they see through their own filters.

Willem doesn’t have a co-founder but says his CTO, the first person to join, feels like one. They met through a mutual friend and now they’re building the dream together. If you know great engineers, they’re always hiring.

Written by Alysha Malik.