Danilo Vicioso ×
SmartSweets

Application — Growth Marketing · danilojvicioso@gmail.com · danilovicioso.com · 23 Sep 2026

Rather than send a résumé, I did a weekend of the job

• A new concept site — the funnel and product pages, rebuilt
• A bench of ad concepts, each priced against a real SmartSweets product and price from the catalog
• The growth plan — one number to protect and the named ways it breaks
• The first week — two experiments that can’t be confounded, with the decision written in advance
• This creator engine — exactly who’d post, what they’d post, and what it costs

Who I am

Danilo

Previously COO of Tabs, one of the most viral brands in the country. Built its creator program to 100M views a month, and the paid engine alongside it.

My background

• Previously COO of Tabs — a top-10 most viral brand on the internet
• Built its creator program to 100M monthly social impressions — and the paid ad engine alongside it
• Founded Mainstreet, a consumer home-services platform: a team of 70, $25M raised (Greylock, Khosla, YC, Tim Ferriss) — and it failed
• Led D2C launches for a founder with a $XXXM exit and a founder who exited to Snapchat
• Before that: Quintessential Ventures, an early seat at a high-growth startup, and entrepreneur-in-residence at Prehype
• I’m looking to move into growth specifically — the creative and ToF is the work I want to be doing every day

Why SmartSweets

• SmartSweets already has real proof it works: distributed in more than 55,000 stores across the US and Canada, and a sugar claim people can feel — up to 92% less sugar per 50g versus the leading traditional candy equivalent.
• So the job isn’t convincing anyone low-sugar candy matters. It’s getting the right bag, with the right ‘Kick Sugar, Keep Candy’ story, in front of the right sweet tooth at the right moment.
• That’s the part I’m best at and the part I actually enjoy: creative volume, paid, and a roster of people who post because they actually eat it.
• The growth plan I wrote already leans on creators for the bulk of weekly creative volume — this is that line item, priced and named.

What I’d do here

• KPI: hold contribution margin per first order while scaling spend. Everything else follows from that.
• Week to week: launching a bunch of different experiments — see month one.
• Build whatever capability is blocking the KPI, in the order it blocks us. Losers killed early, on the schedule written into the growth plan.
• Scope and brief the work for creators, then keep a hook library of what won — the same library the ads on /ads came from.
• Reporting so you never have to ask. Weekly what we learned, monthly cohort payback, one number on the wall.
• I can run acquisition across channels, but I’d start where the existing Ad Library shows better-for-you snack brands are already spending — Meta — and only open the next channel when CAC earns it.
• Claims stay inside what’s already on the label and the site. Nothing above that, ever — creators work from the same sheet the ads did.

Month one

Roster is the core variable — creator video volume follows from it at 7 videos per creator per week.

How I’d start

• Part-time, starting now.
• The creator program is part of the start, not an add-on: first two creators in week 2, ten by week 6.
• Lifecycle and retention I can run too, once top of funnel is working.
• I also have a network of cheap, high-output freelancers and a growth recruiter I can plug in whenever you need them.