Dan Shapiro, 5x founder, on how Glowforge and Robot Turtles set crowdfunding records, contrarian segmentation, and following curiousity

Dan Shapiro is the CEO and cofounder of Glowforge, the iconic 3D laser printer. Starting with the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign on record, designers 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 launched the best selling board game in Kickstarter history, Robot Turtles, a game that teaches programming fundamentals to preschoolers. Before his detour as a board game 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).Dan's been featured on NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and on the front page of the New York Times. His game, Robot Turtles, as been sold everywhere from Target to MoMA. He has been awarded a dozen US patents, and received his B.S. in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College.