Dan Shapiro's Blog

I just got a very nice email from Danielle Fong, the 25 year old middle school-dropout, cofounder and chief scientist of Lightsail Energy. That’s not the amazing part. Lightsail makes regenerative brakes…

I crashed my first demo day today at 500 Startups.  As with all good things, it came about via a stupid coincidence.  I’m an investor in 500 Startups, but hadn’t yet managed…

I just got the following email. Subject: Small taxi company looking to expand Hello, I run a small taxi company outside of Boston Massachusetts. My community has been targeted for casino development…

I was just creating an account on Sprouter today and started poking around a bit. It’s a nice site, in the vein of Quora or OnStartups Answers. But something about it seemed…

Raising money is hard, and there’s no way to screw it up faster than going around asking, “Hey, could you introduce me to some investors?”  It’s sort of like when, on the…

I’m continuing to enjoy Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson’s outstanding book, “Venture Deals”. On page 106 (of the Kindle edition, at least) they address an issue that’s very minor unless you’re dealing…

I’m digging in to Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson’s outstanding new book, “Venture Deals”. It’s full of both thoughtful analysis and commonsense wisdom about how to make a financing successful. In one…