Dan Shapiro

CEO of Glowforge, creator of Robot Turtles, proud dad

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Startups

A Review of 3 Hacker News Jobs Listings

Hacker News is an interesting lab for job postings. It’s a target rich environment, so you know the right people are reading. Unlike many sites, you can’t pay to rank higher or show your headline in blue.  There’s no category search.  The rules are simple: if Y Combinator  ...

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Livesheeting Techstars Demo Day

Much as I did before, I’m running a live, world-writable spreadsheet of my notes on the pitches from Techstars demo day 2012. Things are just getting started as I write this now and the lineup of companies looks strong. You can follow along in realtime (questions & comments very  ...

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What you probably don’t know about NDAs

This blog post was originally published in Xconomy, after which I promptly forgot about it and left it to languish in my drafts folder until today. There is no love like a first time entrepreneur’s love with nondisclosure agreements.  They are a romantic dream: secret pacts bonding two  ...

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A cap is not a valuation

(apologies in advance: the content of this blog post is for startup financing geeks) I was having drinks with a dozen founders who should know better. “So YC company valuations are up around $10mm.  And some are $20mm+.” “What!?” I exclaim.  “That’s crazy!  ...

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How to be half as effective

When I founded Ontela with my friends Charles and Brian, we were all sick of big companies.  There were a lot of things we wanted to do differently, but one of the big ones was to build a company that wasn’t a faceless bureaucracy.  (Hindsight: good goal) A company where everyone was  ...

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Pyramid Pitching

Everyone knows of the mythical elevator pitch. You find yourself in an elevator, rocketing towards the penthouse suite of a downtown office edifice, when you realize that the person standing next to you is a powerful and influential investor. She asks what you do, and you calmly deliver your  ...

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