Dan Shapiro

CEO of Glowforge, creator of Robot Turtles, proud dad

My new company, Sparkbuy, is public

Check it out at www.sparkbuy.com and see what I’ve been working on for the past 6 months or so. You can also read about it: The New York Times The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D Seattle’s own Geekwire Drop me a line and let me know what you think. (You might want to  ...

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How much are startup options worth?

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?

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What it really means to be a startup CTO

I just wrote a guest post on what it really means to be a startup company CTO over on my friend Scott Porad’s blog. Read it here. Also… I started a new company, Sparkbuy, which I think I forgot to mention.  We’re in stealth mode but launching in just over a week.  Follow us  ...

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How to read a patent in 60 seconds

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, and see if someone else is infringing it.  And you have no recollection whatsoever, because it takes an  ...

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How to use Twitter

I've had a peaceful, quiet little twitter account since 2006. Then one day, on a lark, I threw up @danshapiro up during a talk that I was giving about RC airplanes. The talk got boingboinged, and my inbox flooded with random folks following me. (Hi!) Ever since, I've had a couple of new  ...

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On leadership: the boor and the chairman

It was 2006. Ontela had existed for the better part of a year, and I’d been fundraising and networking my little heart out. People kept saying I should be sure to meet this guy Tom Huseby, but it never seemed to happen. My cofounder, Brian Schultz, and I had wrangled our way in to the  ...

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