Dan Shapiro's Blog

There are two very special types of startups that you should know about: the Twitter Startup and the Hoverboard Startup.  If you’re one of these and don’t know it, you’re going to…

Hi Mike, I’m one of your customers. We don’t really know each other. We’ve chatted at a few events, you’ve covered some of my antics, but I’m mostly just a guy who…

(Note: there are great conversations about this article happening at Geekwire and Hacker News) The question of equity brings out the most fundamental differences, perceptions, and values in an aspiring startup.  In fact…

Startups ply you with ownership in the company, typically in the form of stock options. They will argue that there’s tremendous value in those shares, more than you’ll get from a big company, but they tend to get all nervous-looking when you ask them how *much* value. So what are they worth?

Someone’s claiming you’re infringing their patent!  You need to figure out how bad the situation is. Or… your boss has asked you to take a look at an old patent you wrote,…

Modern venture capital is one shining moment of derring-do taking followed by 10 years of risk mitigation. It’s sort of like breaking a mirror.