Max Sapo’s Playbook: PE, Stanford, Google & Raising from Legends

​Does an MBA actually help you raise? Is "ex-Google" a golden ticket or just a label?

Max Sapo has navigated the entire prestige ladder: from Investment Director in Private Equity to Stanford GSB, to leading Google’s Cloud TPU business, and finally, to Founder.

​Most recently, he founded Happyverse and raised a ~$2M pre-seed round from industry titans like Village Global (chaired by Reid Hoffman), Jeff Dean (Google), Henry Shi (Anthropic), and other top operators.

​Join us for a live conversation where Max breaks down what actually matters for fundability vs. what is expensive signaling.

​We will cover:

• ​The Investor Mindset: What 6 years in Private Equity taught him about reading businesses.

• ​The Stanford Effect: How GSB and the Accelerator actually helped close a ~$2M round (and where the brand power ends).

• ​The Google Scale: How scaling Google’s AI infrastructure to $B+ ARR prepared him for the hard tech of building real-time agents.

• ​Noise vs. Signal: Looking back, which career moves were mission-critical for success, and what was just "hype" that founders shouldn't chase.

​Format: Direct conversation with Max + live Q&A on your career and fundraising questions.