Phoenix, Arizona · 20 years shipping

I build hard thingsand ship them.

Engineer for 20 years, CTO or founder for the last ten. I’ve taken products from zero to acquisition and grown engineering teams from one to ten.

20Years shipping
7Companies
2Exits
100k+Users reached
Salvatore Aiello

01

The engineer

I build the hard parts myself — netcode, renderers, serializers, even a working computer made of cellular automata.

02

The founder

Seven companies, two exits, one acquisition. Shipped a v1 in four days and scaled another past 100,000 members.

03

The CTO

Grown engineering from one to ten, twice. I set the architecture, carry the pager, and still ship code every week.

github.com/dested

Ten years of commits. Twenty years of engineering.

Every square is a day of commits. Ten years of startup work and side projects, all of it public.

13,646 contributions2,583 days with a push

Real contribution data from github.com/dested, fetched on the server and cached daily. Last synced 2026-08-06.

Companies

Seven companies. Two exits.

  • 2023–now

    Clever Benefits CTO & cofounder

    The Clever model built for employers: healthcare benefits that cost less and are easier to understand. More than 100,000 members on the platform today.

    Current100,000+ members
    Clever Benefits website
  • 2023

    DimeADozen.AI Founder

    An LLM that stress-tests a business idea and returns a structured validation report. MVP in four days, revenue in the first week.

    Exited40,000+ reportsMVP in 4 days
    DimeADozen.AI website
  • 2021–now

    Game Creators Club Founder

    A browser-based 3D multiplayer game engine that teaches kids to build games: WebGL and WebGPU rendering, Monaco for students writing code and Blockly for those starting visually. Y Combinator W20.

    Y Combinator W20
    Game Creators Club website
  • 2019–20

    DoubleDates Founder

    A matchmaker for couples: you and your partner matched with another couple. React Native on a serverless backend, built and launched single-handedly.

    Shut down
    DoubleDates website
  • 2018–23

    Clever Rx / Clever Health CTO & cofounder

    Prescription savings applied at the pharmacy counter. I built the platform, the apps, and the engineering team from nothing, and stayed through the exit.

    Exited
    Clever Rx / Clever Health website
  • 2016–19

    STYR Labs CTO

    Personalized nutrition across software and hardware: an app, a connected scale, and custom BLE hardware designed in-house. I grew engineering from one person to ten and shipped firmware and cloud services on the same schedule.

    Hardware + platform shippedEng 1 → 10
    STYR Labs website
  • 2015–16

    HealthiestYou VP, Architecture

    Telemedicine before it was an established category. I owned the architecture and built the WebRTC video layer that connected patients to doctors.

    Acquired by Teladoc · $180M
    HealthiestYou website

Projects

Engines, games, and infrastructure.

Chirptime screenshot

Chirptimechirptime.dested.com

Record your whole workday — every screen, your camera, your voice — and replay any moment months later.

  • screen recording
  • open source
  • FFmpeg
Untangle screenshot

2026

Untangleuntangle.gg

Drag the dots until no two lines cross — faster than everyone else, while they wreck your board.

  • puzzle
  • daily
  • multiplayer
Subpixel screenshot

2026

Subpixelsubpixel.dested.com

A level-generation and agent competition on a deterministic, subpixel-accurate platformer engine.

  • platformer
  • agents
Factorio Tools screenshot

2026

Factorio Toolsfactorio.dested.com

Lua mods and scenarios, plus seven rendered mapshots of finished factories — 292 hours across five worlds, read straight from each save.

  • Lua
  • modding
  • map rendering
Emote.Bingo screenshot

2020

Emote.Bingoemote.bingo

A Twitch extension that turns chat emotes into a bingo card the whole stream plays at once.

  • Twitch extension
  • realtime
Social War Games screenshot

2018

Social War Gamessocialwargames.com

A faction war fought by everyone at once on a single shared hex map, resolved on a schedule with nothing running between turns.

  • serverless
  • hex grid
  • turn resolution
Wireworld Automata screenshot

2016

Wireworld Automatawireworld.dested.com

A computer built from cellular automata, running in the browser. Four states and one rule, assembled into gates, registers, and a clock. JavaScript first, then WebASM, then WebGPU for higher cell counts.

  • cellular automata
  • WebASM
  • WebGPU
Oursonic screenshot

2012

Oursonicoursonic.org

A Genesis-faithful Sonic engine and level editor in the browser. I reverse-engineered the original ROM’s tile, chunk, and collision formats and rebuilt the physics to match the source material.

  • reverse engineering
  • 2D physics
  • tile pipeline

Let’s talk.

I’m looking for my next role — Principal or Staff IC, Director, or CTO. If you’re building something technically demanding, I’d like to hear about it.

sal@dested.com
Download resume Phoenix, AZ · remote friendly