Danny Neess  •  Copenhagen, Denmark

nee.ss

Born and raised in Copenhagen. Poker pro turned entrepreneur. Father, builder, student of life. Obsessed with how things work — and why most of them could be done better.

55.6°N  12.6°E
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The story so far

No degree. No inheritance. Just curiosity, risk, and a very high tolerance for starting over.

2002–07

Strategy games & late nights

Diablo II and StarCraft until sunrise at a friend's place. Competitive by nature from the start — always wanting to be one of the best at whatever I was doing. That didn't come from school. It came from games.

2007–14

Professional poker

Went broke twice before it clicked. Ran $400 up to six figures. Beat Isildur1 online. Won a heads-up tournament against Bryn Kenney and Daniel Colman before either of them were famous. Quit in 2014 when the passion ran dry. Learned everything worth knowing about risk, psychology, and what money does to your head when you have too much of it at 25.

2014–18

Six startups. Four failures.

A beverage company. A food subscription service (acquired in 8 months). A dropshipping business. Most didn't work. All of them taught me something. The failures hurt more than the poker losses ever did because you can't blame variance in business — only yourself.

2018–24

AvalonKing — $0 to $1MM in 15 months

Co-founded an automotive care brand with $10K. Met my co-founder in a Facebook group, flew to Dusseldorf, shook hands on a rough plan. Figured out that you don't sell the sausage, you sell the sizzle. Grew it into one of the fastest-growing DIY automotive brands in the world. Exited. Proud of it.

Now

Building again. Solo this time.

Living in Kastrup with Camilla and our daughter. Running GP75 — building, investing in, and advising vertical AI startups. Always planning the next trip somewhere. Quietly trying to be better at all of it.

What I'm into

The stuff that hijacks my brain when I'm supposed to be working.

01

Formula 1 & cars

Got deep into F1 about five years ago and haven't left. The engineering is genuinely breathtaking. Driving an F1 car is still on the list.

02

Longevity

NAD, fasting, working out 3-4x a week. The science of aging is moving fast. Paying attention early before it becomes mainstream.

03

Thai food

Not the cautious, adapted-for-Europeans kind. The real thing. One of the main reasons Southeast Asia stays near the top of the travel list.

04

Investing

BTC, ETH, SOL, Danish and international equities. The poker background helps — comfortable with variance, good at not panic-selling.

05

Sci-Fi & books

Non-fiction and business for reading. Sci-Fi and adventure for everything else. Curiosity is the one trait I actively try to protect in myself.

06

Travel

Always a trip being planned somewhere. Good food, warm weather, and something worth exploring. The one thing I never feel like I'm doing enough of.

How I think

Things I've learned the hard way and keep returning to.

01

Positivity is a skill, not a trait.

It took me years to start looking for the upside instead of the downside. When the shift happened, it was probably the single biggest contributor to anything that's worked since.

02

You don't sell the sausage. You sell the sizzle.

Features describe what something does. Benefits describe how it makes someone feel. Most products fail because people confuse the two. The best marketing is just understanding people well enough to talk to them like a trusted friend.

03

Plans are just educated guesses.

Make a plan. Then stay dynamic enough to change it. Small teams can turn faster than big ones. That's the actual advantage.

04

If it can't be tracked, it can't be scaled.

Data is always there if you know where to look. The companies that figure this out early consistently beat the ones that don't.

05

No one gets there without failing first.

Six startups before one worked. Went broke twice in poker before it clicked. The failures were the education. The only real mistake is not starting, or stopping before something clicks.

Writing
Apr 2021 My professional poker career → Oct 2020 How we grew from $0 to $1MM in 15 months with $10K →
All writing →

Currently building

GP75

A portfolio holding company that builds, invests in, and advises vertical AI startups. The thesis is simple: the most durable AI companies will be the ones that go deep on a specific industry rather than wide on everything.

gp75.com →

"I'm just a regular guy from Denmark with no education and no special talent. I just want this really f***ing bad."

AvalonKing article — 2020

danny
@nee.ss

Always open to an interesting conversation. Business, poker psychology, longevity science, the F1 season — whatever you've got.

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