Dan Shapiro's Blog

I’m delighted to announce that I’m advising Highway One, a new SF-based incubator for hardware startups. Why does the world need another incubator? Because hardware’s hard, and hardware’s different. And Highway One is magical. It’s not an accelerator for hardware startups, it’s a hardware accelerator. They are all about getting your designs rolling off assembly…

Originally published on Sulia We went camping with the family this weekend. We’d never done it before. That’s OK, first time for everything. We spent a lot of time figuring out our location, because that would be hard to change later. We didn’t worry much about our precise campsite until we got there and wandered…

This article first ran as a guest post in Geekwire. For a long time I’ve felt like I must be either the first or last entrepreneur to discover the ABC series Shark Tank.  For the uninitiated, it’s pure startup voyeurism: a company stands in front of a panel of 5 plutocrats, pitches, and either gets an…

Dream of striking Kickstarter gold, but lack inspiration?  I’m here to help.  Don’t forget to hook me up with a few freebies when you get your assembly lines rolling. Optimal Notebook Lightweight, distinctive looking, with a built in holder for a standard pen.  Bonus points for features like: Water resistant paper A cover that can…

I had an inspiring coffee meeting with an early stage startup today.  They have a clever and differentiated product, revenue traction, and great headway on their seed round. It’s a B2B business and the CEO’s an experienced salesperson.  He knows exactly which businesses need his product and the title of the person who makes the…

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 invested in you, you get your dozen…

Chris Zacharias, founder of imgix.com (and Y Combinator grad), recently wrote an interesting blog post that postulated a different funding strategy.  Instead of pricing his round at market, he priced it significantly below.  He claims this gave him access to a group of high-quality “value-conscious” angel investors who would not invest in Y Combinator companies at…

There’s a startup in Seattle I’ve been tracking for a while. They’re a part of Techstars (where I serve as a mentor) so that’s not particularly unusual. But I’ve been keeping a particularly close eye because they’re working in a product area that overlaps with my responsibilities at my day job. Because of the potential competitive conflict,…

I want to buy some clothes.  From From Holden (not a typo).  And I can’t.  Because they’re full of Kickstoppers. More and more, I’m seeing exciting, fun projects on Kickstarter that make me think they’re being run by the cast of Community.  Clever, well meaning, adorable, and more clueless than a general with a gmail…

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 welcome!) at: https://docs.google.com/a/danshapiro.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjzJCzHMUai-dHBaU0VaMFBJc3lpYXJISFVBWEZnLVE&pli=1#gid=0 Get new posts…