Joshua Schnell

Founder / CPTO @ Quii.app

About

Building the anti-social network. Fighting loneliness with proximity, not platforms. I've spent 15 years inside social media, ad tech, and AI—and watched it all go sideways. At Digg (11M users), I led the AI transformation that brought ML-driven personalization and NLP to content discovery, trying to save what was once "the homepage of the internet." At Diem, I was CTO for a social platform born from the loneliness epidemic—building real-time moderation, behavioral analytics, and privacy-first infrastructure for women searching for connection, not just content. At BuySellAds, I ran product for a privacy-first ad marketplace serving 30K+ SMBs while writing AdTech Weekly—a newsletter exposing the surveillance economy that's hollowed out the web. I also advised Pando Daily (Sarah Lacy's fearless Silicon Valley publication) on product and growth—right in the thick of the battle over tech accountability, free speech, and who gets to control the narrative. The pattern? Every platform I touched was fighting the same losing battle: trying to build human connection on top of server farms and surveillance infrastructure. So I'm building Quii—a social platform that only exists when you're physically present. No servers. No ads. No algorithmic feeds. No permanent records. Just peer-to-peer connection that requires you to actually show up. Digital connection should require physical presence. When you leave the room, you leave the network. I've built AI pipelines, vector search systems, LLM orchestration, and behavioral embeddings at scale. But the real work isn't making AI smarter—it's making technology human again. Blockchain identity. Mesh networking. Ephemeral by design. This is the anti-social network. And it's built for a world that's lonelier than ever—but doesn't have to be.

Country

Canada

City

Ottawa

Industry

Computer Software

Skill

Cloud Computing, Cloud Security, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Ubuntu, Load Balancing, User Acceptance Testing, User Acquisition, Editorial Project Management, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SaaS Development, SaaS Sales, Advertising Sales, Social Media, Digital Media, GraphQL, Stripe (Software), Newsletter Design, Community Development

Experience

Founder / CPTO

Quii.app

2023-9 - Present · 3 yrs 1 mo

Building the anti-social network—because the best conversations happen when you're actually in the room.

Advisor — Product Engineering & Design

Whimble

2025-10 - Present · 1 yr

Whimble is a CareTech platform that connects people with disabilities to on-demand personal care attendants, filling gaps when routine support systems fail.

Advisor — Product Growth

ZeroTek

2025-11 - Present · 11 mos

ZeroTek is an MSP-focused platform built to simplify and enhance the management of Okta for Managed Service Providers.

CTO — Interim

Diem

2023-6 - 2024-3 · 10 mos

Led AI infrastructure and product engineering for a social search platform built to fight the loneliness epidemic—building real-time ML moderation, privacy-first social tools, and behavioral systems for women seeking connection, not just content.

SVP Product Design & Engineering / GM — Platform Reinvention & AI Strategy

Digg

2019-6 - 2023-6 · 4 yrs 1 mo

Owned product and engineering for Digg's AI-powered reinvention, bringing ML personalization and semantic content discovery to a platform fighting to reclaim its place as the homepage of the internet—11M users, real-time feeds, and the battle for signal over noise.

Advisor — Growth

Cyrrus.io

2018-12 - 2020-4 · 1 yr 5 mos

A cloud Infrastructure platform that focused on building, managing, and deploying enterprise AWS/GCP environments.

Director of Product Design & Engineering — Marketing Platform

BuySellAds

2015-9 - 2019-6 · 3 yrs 10 mos

Ran product innovation team of designers and engineers building a self-serve ad marketplace platform building a privacy-first alternative in a surveillance-driven industry, while writing AdTech Weekly to shed light on what was happening across the industry — aka, building surveillance tools

Sr. Technical Product Manager

BuySellAds

2014-7 - 2015-9 · 1 yr 3 mos

Directed product strategy and execution for a marketplace serving 30K+ SMB advertisers, balancing privacy concerns with growth and monetization goals.

Technical Product Manager

BuySellAds

2013-8 - 2014-7 · 1 yr

Teamed up with designers and UX engineers to craft simple, intuitive interfaces that made navigating the self-serve ad marketplace easier to navigate for users—whether they were buying or managing their ads.

Advisor — Platform Growth

PandoDaily

2017-4 - 2019-2 · 1 yr 11 mos

Advised on the relaunch of Pando Daily, the renowned Silicon Valley publication that built its reputation holding tech power accountable—leading product and growth strategy to bring back one of the valley's most important editorial voices.

Advisor — Early Stage Growth

Authentic Jobs, Inc.

2015-9 - 2016-11 · 1 yr 3 mos

Technical Product Manager (Founder-Led Startup) / Hire 4

Guides.co

2012-9 - 2013-8 · 1 yr

Led 0→1 product development for a B2B knowledge platform, building intelligent authoring tools and collaboration features that scaled to 9.9M users across government agencies, enterprises, and franchises.