Danilo Stern-Sapad

Founder & CEO

Founder & CEO of Hyperion360. Y Combinator solo founder and 3x CTO including at a unicorn. 20+ years building and scaling global engineering teams of hundreds of people for Fortune 500 companies and top startups. In high school created the 3rd most popular online game in North America with 40+ million hits per month.

Articles by Danilo Stern-Sapad

From Goals to Greatness: Goal-Setting Psychology and the SMART Goals Framework

For decades, psychologists have puzzled over a question that seems, at the surface, almost too simple: why do some people accomplish what they set out to do, while others fail? If you take two groups of people, with nearly identical skills and resources, and ask them to achieve the same task. One group will consistently outperform the other, not by a small margin, but a lot. The high-performing group doesn’t just have high hopes for the future; they have clearly defined, specific, and time-bound goals. They don’t just say, “I want to do well”; they say, “I want to score above 90% on this task, and I have exactly three hours to do it.”

The Art and Science of Pitching Investors: How to Create a Pitch Deck and Raise Like a Pro

In the bustling streets of San Francisco, you step out of a rideshare, feeling ready to take on the world. You have a story to tell, a vision to share, and only a few precious minutes to convince a room full of skeptical eyes and crossed arms. How will you do it? There’s an art and a science to pitching investors. The good news is it’s definitely not rocket science. If you want to rise above the rest and distinguish yourself from the countless pitches and decks they see every day, read on.

How to Build a Successful Startup: Essential Advice from Y Combinator and Unicorn Founders 🚀

Building a startup is both an exhilarating and daunting endeavor. It is an ongoing process of learning, adapting, and overcoming challenges. However, building a successful startup is even more challenging — it requires the right approach, the right mindset, the right guidance, and ultimately the elusive product-market fit (PMF). In this article I’ll cover the most essential advice for early-stage startups.

How to Develop a Growth Mindset as a Leader to Transform Your Team

Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Our mindset influences our behaviors, decisions, and interactions, all of which contribute to our overall performance and achievement, both personally and professionally. It’s a tool so powerful that it determines the trajectory of our lives.

How to Shape Business Opportunities through Business Model Generation

Designing an effective business model can be the difference between success and failure — at the very least, it indicates strong leadership and effective planning. This article will explore how to shape business opportunities and generate a robust business model that drive your venture forward.

How to Recognize Business Opportunities and Validate Your Ideas

With the rapid advancements in technology and the increasingly interconnected global marketplace, the world is teeming with opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs. The key is to understand how to recognize these opportunities and determine whether you’re ready to embrace the startup life.

How to Win the Fight Against Deepfake Voice Cloning: Your Business Defense Strategy

You’re working from home, and your phone rings. It’s your boss, and she sounds frantic. She tells you there’s an emergency, and she needs you to wire some money to a vendor right away. She says she’ll explain everything later, but she needs you to act fast. You trust your boss, and you want to help her out. Only it’s not your boss. It’s a scammer using voice cloning technology to impersonate her! How would you know the difference? And what would you do to protect yourself and your company from this form of fraud? In this article, we’ll explore the rise of voice cloning scams, how they work, and how you can protect yourself and your business from them.

How to Embrace a Remote-Friendly Culture: Strategies for Success and Overcoming Challenges

Remote work is the future of work. While this brings tremendous opportunities, it also presents unique challenges. This article outlines key strategies to foster a remote-friendly culture, along with ways to address the potential risks associated with remote work. I’ve built and managed teams of hundreds of people and if there’s one trend I know modern employees care about, it’s remote work.

How to Find and Pick a Good Company Name & Domain Name for SEO

In the digital world, your domain name often doubles as your company name, and if not, it should. If chosen wisely, a good domain name can significantly enhance your visibility on search engines. I’ve been practicing search engine optimization (SEO) to promote my companies since 2001. From 2005 to 2008, one of my websites garnered over 30 million monthly visitors just from Google searches alone, and two other companies I helped launch have also received millions of monthly visitors from SEO.

How to Manage Remote Engineering Teams Effectively

We live in the era of digital transformation where remote engineering teams are no longer an exception but a standard. A mere glance at recent history reveals the prevalence of remote work. The roots of remote work stretch back to 1973 when physicist Jack Nilles worked remotely on a NASA telecommunications system, setting the stage for the increasingly remote workforce we see today.

How to Set Up A/B Testing for Your Online Business: A Comprehensive Guide

Imagine spending over a decade embedded in a world where every pixel, every sentence, and every call to action can mean the difference between a conversion and a lost opportunity. That’s been my reality for a large part of my career, working at companies that invested hundreds of millions in advertisements, all hinging on the powerful yet delicate process of A/B testing. This journey has provided me with an intuitive feel for what works and what doesn’t, insight that can only be achieved by witnessing the process firsthand.

How to Save Your SSH Key Passphrase to Your Apple Keychain On MacOS

Did you just upgrade macOS only to find that when you’re pushing or pulling changes from GitHub, it’s requesting you to “Enter passphrase for key ‘/Users/username/.ssh/id_ed25519’:” where username is your username and id_ed25519 is your private key.

Should I Hire Remote Software Engineers?

This is a comprehensive guide on the benefits and challenges of hiring remote software engineers. As the CEO and founder of the long-term global staffing company Hyperion360 and a three-time CTO that’s built and managed distributed and remote teams of hundreds of people, I must admit I have a bias towards hiring remotely. That said, it’s important to understand that it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. In-person interaction is crucial for some, and remote hiring may not fit their company culture. But if you’re considering this path, this guide will walk you through the advantages and potential setbacks. Remember, though, that every employment scenario comes with its own unique legal considerations, so it’s always wise to consult with an employment attorney.

How to Improve Conversion Rates for Your Website: Why Isn't My Landing Page Converting?

With over a decade spent optimizing landing pages for various businesses, I’ve seen it all. I’ve been on the front lines of conversion rate optimization (CRO) at companies that spent hundreds of millions of dollars on A/B testing (also known as multivariate or split testing). Through these experiences, I’ve developed an intuitive feel for what will work and what won’t. However, before you dive into A/B testing, it’s crucial to establish a solid baseline. This means diagnosing and fixing the most common conversion rate issues, as outlined below. Once these are addressed, you can use A/B testing to gauge the impact of your optimization efforts, which will most likely yield significant improvements.

How to Build a World-Class Engineering Team

Ready to assemble the corporate equivalent of the Avengers? Then remember diversity is more than just a corporate buzzword; it’s a business imperative.

How to Build a Unicorn Startup 🦄

In my many years spent working at startups, high growth businesses have always been my passion. Yet, it was not until my entrepreneurial journey led me to become the founding CTO of FabFitFun— a $1B+ valuation unicorn — that I truly appreciated the profound impact that a people-centric culture and member-centric approach could have on a company’s growth trajectory.