Hidden Gems: Meet Daniela Cuellar Zapata of Wipp

Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniela Cuellar Zapata.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My family is part of Arizona’s pioneer history, and I grew up almost entirely in the state. I graduated from Arizona State University in 2019 with a B.S. in Economics and initially planned to pursue a PhD, but my traditionalist dad pushed me to enter the workforce instead.

At 21 I took an unorthodox role with PepsiCo Frito-Lay driving 16-wheeler semi trucks across the state of New Mexico. I would later move into sales leadership across a wide Southwest territory. By the end, I led ~30 full-time employees and we constantly topped national records in chip sales. Managing that team taught me the core lesson I still use today: people don’t respond to “information” the way we assume—they respond through psychology, incentives, and lived experience.

I lived through intense moments with my employees: a mass shooting, pandemic-era essential work, OSHA vaccine mandates, supply chain failures, COVID relief, and school closures, to name a few. Across a territory from Cheyenne to Denver, I heard radically different political views on the same real-world problems—and I realized something that stuck: most people feel government in their daily lives, but they don’t understand how policy decisions actually drive what’s happening to them, or how to communicate that back to leaders and feel like their voice matters.

That gap is what pulled me into U.S. politics. I left PepsiCo to pursue an MBA at Harvard, and started Wipp cross enrolled in an AI Venture Studio at MIT. I have been building full time since graduating, with the dream of making government legible and actionable: using AI to help people understand how policy affects them, and to help elected officials and candidates hear, prioritize, and respond on the kind of scale we all deserve.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No—it hasn’t been smooth. If an entrepreneur tells you building a company is a smooth road, I don’t believe them. This has been one of the toughest experiences of my life.

The hardest stretch was early fundraising. One VC, B Ventures, changed a term sheet 24 hours before wiring and tried to frame it as “how the big boys do it.” Moments like that forced me to learn fast—while also navigating this as a solo founder with a nontraditional background, student debt, and as a woman. I’ve cried, doubted myself, and still kept going.

I also had a co-founder walk away because she wasn’t willing to make the full-time commitment. And I’ve lost clients and investors along the way. But over the past year of doing this full-time, I’ve learned more than I thought possible—and I’m still here, building.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Wipp is government intelligence platform offering two products: one for SME and lobbyists who need to sort through the chaos of political information, and one for elected officials and candidates who want real-time constituent input and communicate with them at scale—fast, accurate, and on-message.

We turn scattered data inputs into clear priorities. The result: less chaos, better understanding of the people shaping policy, and the people most affected by it.

What sets Wipp apart is that it’s built specifically for politics. It’s not “AI copywriting.” It’s an operating system for constituent engagement and stakeholder strategy under real-world time pressure. Our two different products serve distinct ICPs but were built with the same purpose in mind: minimize political confusion, influence key policy shapers.

If you’re an elected official or running for office and want to respond faster, sharpen your messaging, and run a more disciplined operation, hire Wipp. If you are a small business or a lobbying shop drowning in manual workflows and too much information, we have a way to solve this for you.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I’m pretty libertarian about risk—probably because I’m still in my twenties and don’t have kids. To me, if there’s ever a time to build, it’s now. AI is changing everything so fast that a “safe” job today could look obsolete in a few years. If you’re thinking about starting a company, I genuinely think this is one of the best windows to do it. There is no such thing as time wasted in this era, only experience and knowledge to be gained.

That said, I’m not romantic about it. I’m bootstrapping while carrying student debt, and it can be extremely high-stress. But my view on risk is simple: there’s never a perfect time, so you either do it or you don’t. Most people picture risk like jumping off a cliff. I think it’s more like sailing. You can prepare—learn the craft, bring a compass, map the route—then head into open water. And in most cases, if you’re smart about it, you can still sail back to shore.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wipp.ai
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danicz/