Podcast: What are you going to do with your laser?

September 15th, 2022 / Published in: Podcasts

Learn how to invent a new product category, scale it to over $100M in sales, and upend the world economy – all while making wonderful things.

Dan Shapiro is the CEO and cofounder of Glowforge, the iconic 3D laser printer. Starting with the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign on record, creators have now used their Glowforge printers to create millions of products like wallets, lamps, and furniture. Dan is also the author of Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook, published by O’Reilly.

Before founding Glowforge, Dan set the record for the bestselling boardgame in Kickstarter history, Robot Turtles, a game that teaches programming fundamentals to preschoolers. Before his detour as a boardgame designer, Dan served as CEO of Google Comparison, Inc, a Google subsidiary. Shapiro landed at Google when they bought his previous company, comparison shopping website Sparkbuy. Before Sparkbuy, Shapiro was founder and CEO of Photobucket Inc. (formerly Ontela).