they do have a board game that requires parental involvement is antithetical to best practice in the board game industry. You won't find a publisher. I was like, Thank you because you just gave me my sales pitch. I'm going to take this to Kickstarter because this is the board game that the board game industry would never publish. And I can only do this with Crowdfunding.

This is the built in Seattle podcast. I'm Adam Schoenfeld On this show. I chat with Seattle's best entrepreneurs, operators and investors about how they think and how they operate. On this episode, I sat down with Dan Shapiro, ends, a four time company founder. He's the CEO of Glow Forage and the creator of Robot Turtles, which is a board game that helps teach kids how to code. Dan has set multiple crowdfunding records, and we talk about that in this episode, you learned about Crowdfunding by spending just $25 having no real goal. This is kind of how he operates, following his curiosity, taking a lot of shots and looking for opportunities for what he calls contrary in segmentation. We got to hear how Dan made the leap from his first startup in carrier technology to spark by which was a comparison shopping company acquired by Google. And now all the way to selling a physical product at Glow Forge. I've learned a lot from Dan. Hope you enjoy the conversation. I'm sitting here with the one the only Dan Shapiro.

Adam, thanks for having me.

We're in glow forges. Amazing. Is this concern Sodo? Yeah.

So this is a more than a century old ice factory were sitting in Wow, fun fact. Yeah, used to be Zulily. And then a century before that, this was from the days when you had to make ice and factories because they didn't have machines. Your home that could make stuff. And I love that because we're about to do that with a whole new range is stuff that you can make with good fortune. But I'm getting ahead of things.

No, I love that. I love that it's dangerously clipped close to crispy cream

as well. Yeah, and Macarena across the street. That's

definitely if you are on a low carb diet. This is challenging spot to be.

I just have a strict no carbs. During the work day policy bring stuff home, though. That's good.

Thank you for being here. I have been a big fan years for a long time. I was just trying to remember when we first met and who connected us. But

and likewise, I remember working together Techstars more than a decade

ago. It's good to be talking to you, especially since you are a crowdfunding celebrity now, and back then you weren't

that's true back then. I didn't know what I'm doing. I still don't but people believe me

less when I say that. Twice. You've said what? It's two records in crowdfunding of some kind. Yeah, we'll talk about that. But I first wanted to just call you a crowdfunding celebrity. Do people call you that? I

think it's a first. I'll put that on my name tag.

From here on a perfect That would be a good like Twitter bio from now on.

Yeah, my linked in short version, he's out running celebrity,

but the question is being a crowdfunding celebrity. You have a brother who's kind

of famous. Yeah, the real celebrity. So the famous Ari Shapiro is the host of all things considered on NPR.

So who has more Internet followers.

You're him. Oh, he's He lapped me

years ago game. Okay, well, I think you have a good Internet presence as well, but okay, he's got you on that 1 May be a good place to start is just a quick overview of glow forage because I want to go behind the scenes. But also, this is a unique thing, especially for those of us who just have been dealing and software. You deal in a thing here, So can you just explain it briefly?

Yeah, and it's poorly suited for radio because we're sitting here next to this thing, which is the size of, let's say, a bag. You check and it's white. It's got a glass surface. It looks really cool. It's designed for your home and 80% of these air in homes. And what happens is you open the lid and you put in a piece of material on it. Could be leather. It could be. Would it could be acrylic. It can be chocolate. It can be stone, it can be metal, and then you close the lid and you grab a file of your desktop.

Pdf for ah J Peg er a bit map. You drop it into our Web app, and then you drag into the place and you click a button and it's only got one button. There's a big button here that glows and lights up when it's ready, and when you push it, it starts making beautiful things. And that can be anything like this pencil holder that I've got in my desk, which is, you know, cut with all these cool little details up on that, if you go to go for it, it's one of the pictures there. But it's really simple, and that's something I designed and like half an hour from a pattern that I found in a book up to that giant acrylic rocket ship on my wall or stools and shelves that we've got outside or picture frames. Or this this Let's see this dice tower that one of our customers created, which I love.

What sound and that sound is cool in real life. It's not a radio trick, because I've got 11 year old twins, a boy and a girl, and every time they rolled dice, they go everywhere. So we started a family Dungeons and Dragons game, and they each have a customized dice roller, and that's what they use for their dice. And that was one where was free design. One of our customers created, download, click and off you go. So it is transformative because it lets literally anybody at any level of creativity at any level of technical skill. Kindergartners, engineer, create amazing rial, beautiful products that you can use and sharing, gift and sell.

I love it. And I'd encourage people who are listening other entrepreneurs to look at how Dan describes his company and how you just talked about it cause you are very good with language and articulating what you dio. I've always loved reading your stuff and kind of hearing how you

describe things. Thank you. It is only possible because I love our products so much. When I grew up, there was an ad that it was all over TV and the pitchman was the head of the company and the company was the hair club for men. And you know, it is right. If you'd see this picture of em bald and like the before and after. And he'd say, I'm saseidx whatever. And I'm not just the president of hair club for men. I'm also a client, and that's me. I can't be involved with something that I do not love. And I've never loved any product more than this. It is. It is something that is the combination of,

like decades of loving, to create things, loving to make things for people living, to experiment for myself and now not just getting to do that, but to give other people the superpower of being able to do that. It it feels like my

wife's work. Very cool. What a great feeling. I'd love to spend some time going back to talk about Crowdfunding, and you've done this twice now, which is pretty unique. And I know you wrote about this in your book a bit, which I encourage people to pick up. But let's go back sort of and talk about robot turtles, which was first crowd for anyone and how how that came about and how you decided it, like jump into this thing of crowdfunding.

So for context, I'd spent half my time working at big companies. I worked at Microsoft and Google half my time starting companies and started a company that's now called Photo bucket and started a company that was called Sparked by Got acquired by Google. And my twins were four, and they were really excited about learning to play board games. And I would have rather stand myself in the eye with a spoon that had to play candy land with him. So I was thinking about like Okay, well, what would be like a fun thing to do with my kids, to teach them about the jury board games? And at the same time I was thinking about Wow, It's weird how programming languages are written for experts in the language, but they're not really created in a way that makes them easy to learn and on board. And then I was thinking, What if he had a programming language that wasn't designed around asking text and somehow literally taking a shower, washing my hair, and this thought popped into my head?

I was like, I'm gonna make a board game That teaches preschoolers who can't read yet the principles of programming by writing code with cards that don't have words on them and then on the computer. Who's going to run the program? The parent is the computer's gonna run the program because what I'm gonna teach him isn't writing software or debugging like all that will come in. But the key thing I want my kids to learn is that computers are there for them, and they should have the feeling of technology being there for them, not technology being a thing that they had to learn. When you start learning to write and my kid's going to is a few years ago, it's just work. It feels like something forced on you by the world that you have to do and then some point leading your life. You're like writings, a tool that I can use. Some people never get there. Same thing with computers programming, learning software can be like a chore that you have to learn in order because somebody told you to or to do your job or coming like this, this tool that you can deploy against anything you want to do.

And I didn't want to teach my kids coding so they could be programmers. I want to teach my kids coding so they could be restauranteur Zo or doctors or ballet dancers. To me, the important thing was the idea of coding as being the one in charge, not coding, as being that the bystander. And so the whole idea was what's more fun for a four year old than bossing around your parents and what's program except bossing around a computer? So I had this crazy idea. I built this game out of, like, inkjet printer and and moving a little piece of paper around. Actually, one of the first play tests was Uncle Ari playing this with the kids, and I've got a picture of them like playing around with him, and it was really fun and they really got it. So I went to a friend who is in the board game industry and ask her what she thought about it.

She said, Yeah, nobody would ever publish this. Now that was weird. And she said, The problem is, the key thing parents want from a board game is to be left alone. I was like, what? And she's like, Yeah, core use case is awesome. Kids, I'm gonna go do something else. You entertain yourself so they have a board game that requires parental involvement is antithetical to best practice in the board game industry. You won't find a publisher.

I was like, Thank you because you just gave me my sales pitch. I'm going to take this to Kickstarter because this is the board game that the board game industry would never publish. And I can only do this with crowdfunding. And so in 2013 when I start cooking this up 2014. When I launched it, um, it was a little weird to be making coding projects for preschoolers quoting products or priskos. Now there's there's a fair number of them and they're great. But at the time, it was kind of weird. And people's first reaction was like, Why are you talking Teoh preschoolers about coating? That's not right, and I looked at it like I don't want screen time, But this is actually important skills,

like trying things to see if they work. And if they don't work just playing with it until it works. Debugging things like learning by doing something and watching the results this notion of like I'm gonna give orders and then they're gonna unfold. And on the one hand and the power of issuing orders, on the other hand, I feel the helplessness of watching them unfold the wrong way and not have to go back and do it again like there's a really fundamental things that are exciting and novel for a preschooler, but have, like some people, never learn throughout their lives. And so that was a crowdfunding campaign helped me bring this thing into the world. I want to exist if you want to exist. And if 1000 people want this to exist, then it's going to exist. And if we don't, then it won't right. If there's just me, then I'll just run around with my inject printouts

and and my kids have fun. How long from the epiphany in the shower until you did your first inject put out kind of play test?

Probably a month. Okay? No, not even that. Maybe a week or two. Seven it was. It was literally a PowerPoint file, and all the original pieces were in power points in PowerPoint and they weren't turtles. They were robots. Okay, robot rabbit dot com was taken and robot turtle was taken, which is why became multiplayer became robot turtles, and the whole thing was an homage to logo, which features a programmable turtle which I learned in second grade, third grade on an apple. 10. So turtles was definitely where that needed to end up. It just took me a while to

get there. I love it. Okay, so you went on crowdfunding. You said if 1000 people support this, that will make the game. At that point, did you have any idea of how many people would or expectations? And did you have any sort of commercial goals with this to turn it into a business? Or was it just like, Hey, I need this for my kids. Other people might want this for their families, and we'll see what happens.

I remember a friend saying, Hey, Dan, do you have an angle on this? I was like, You know, me really well, because for the first time, no, generally, if I was working on something playing with something, I'd be like, Oh, maybe I can make something of this. Maybe it's a project. Maybe it's gonna help me. My job,

maybe it like, if I was going to do something like this, it was gonna be because I had greater aspirations for this was like a new pope. This just seems amazing. I was interested in crowdfunding cause in 2014. It was kind of a novel, different thing and, like people will give you money before you do the thing and not expect equity that that seems odd. Like maybe that's worth a try. I had, ah, a couple friends who done stuff with it. I met a guy named Max who launched what at the time was one of the biggest kick starters ever. He raised $12,000 because it's time that was huge for game called Cards against humanity. Yeah, yeah,

and you know, took that to the Stars. I was working with a dear friend of mine to help with the robot turtles who ah, love backing things on Kickstarter. But it never done ones who he gave me a ton of help. His name's Alon Lee, and when Robot Turtles launched, I had the most backboard gaming Kickstarter history. He came and did a game on Kickstarter, and when it launched, it was the most backed anything on Kickstarter history. His game was called

Exploding were big, exploding kittens House. Yeah, my six

year old loves it. My one claim to fame on that was he was telling me how cool it was that the game was was PG or G rated. And I was like But Matt, it is our mutual friend who's that cartoonist illustrates it like, But that's famous for being R rated. You need to have, ah, not safe for Work Edition, and you need to not give people the option of receiving it. It has to be just a like 20 bucks for 25 bucks for the base thing and then add $15 more for the not safe for work addition and the not safe for work bundle out sold the one and so that, you know, that was a lot of millions of dollars, as my one little clean name was. Oh, you should you should do the dirty cards to that project was amazing. And But in any case, no,

my goal for it was to break even. And if I'd sold 1000 units, then it would have cost me about about five or $10,000 it would have been my sort of summer break degree and Kickstarter ology really cool. I just taking a leave of absence from Google after they bought my previous company and hadn't really done anything like that and want to do something fun and low key that involved my kids. And so my goal is to break even, which would have been 5000 units. Shoot him in about $50,000 I think. And so I said to go a 10 K and 50 k was my target, and I wound up being 400. Some odd dollars wasn't most money raised for a Kickstarter, and I was looking midway through the campaign and I was like, This feels different from every other game on Kickstarter But there's thes games that costs $150. They're full of miniatures that raised a 1,000,000 or $2 million so it's not and Kickstarter ranked everything by dollars. I was like, So that's not true as kind of staring at it, staring at it was like,

I think a lot of backers I want to have more backers than they dio and they didn't view by backers at the time. And so I went through and manually looked at all the top grossing board games. So many bankers they had, and then I called up. At this point, I'd met Luke who runs the game seem they're still does. Amazing guy curates that whole boardrooms category. It's one of the great sources of gaming innovation in the world, and he really built it into what it is. And I called up looking like Luke. Am I crazy or is this the most back to board game and Kickstarter history? And Luke is like, First, I think you're right. And second, I think it's really powerful to talk about backers instead of dollars.

It seems a lot more true to who we are is Kickstarter. I really like that way of talking about it. And now you can go and see by backer, not just by dollars. And and so that gave me my my rallying cry. Most backboard gaming Kickstarter history for the the end of the campaign, which got some news and got some press around that which really sort of fed the flames that had already taken hold.

Very cool. That's incredible to think sort of how that came about. And I'm curious, though you didn't have an angle. How you approach that, like your mental framework and how you came into that must have been a lot different than these other businesses you'd started cause you've been entrepreneur. Do you think there was something magical about how you approached it that ultimately led to what it waas or like? How should somebody think about that? Because it's almost impossible not to, you know, to start a company without an ambition, right to go out and take that risk. But yet here you did it without an angle, and it became this successful

thing. It cost me $25. I'll tell you what I did. I never anything like this before. My first company was software for wireless carriers. Second company was Price Compared was comparison shopping for consumer electron ICS. And I'm like I want to. My goal was to learn about Crowdfunding, not necessarily to succeed in it, although that's a great way of keeping score. And so I spent $25 when he did was I went and back 25 different projects for $1 each and then I just became a student of Kickstarter ology and I started watching each one and watching what they did well and what they did poorly. And this is before I even this is you know, go back six months to when I was just interested in crowdfunding and thinking. I at least want understand it because I'm talking to start ups all the time and, you know, we're both doing things like helping out with Techstars and I interviewed Founders Institute, but did some work with them and unlike people asking me about this and I don't know So it's interesting,

I learn, and by tracking, putting a dollar behind us and then following their mail in this and looking at what happened being invested actually did more that I backed a bunch of them for real amounts toe by whatever was they were doing. But I did for at least 20 of them, just put in a dollar just to be on their list. And then I looked at what they did, and I became a student of the art, and I watched as they were late as they were delayed as they were fraudulent, as they were delighted as they got picked up by manufacturers as they got picked up by distributors and saw sort of the whole range of outcomes and sort of watch my own reaction. When I was reading it and, you know, watch somebody like go dark for, like, five months and then show me like, Sorry, all the money is gone and get ripped to shreds and watch people get super defensive and start arguing with their backers.

And that sounds obvious. But I was like making mental notes. I'm like, uh, you know, it's free to apologize like somebody's upset That process of trying to get in the head of the customer, if you will, of crowdfunding just informed entirely the way did updates in the way I wrote the campaign and the way that I talked to customers who people who talk to backers who backed it and talk to people all the way through that experience, it made me way more conservative about that robot turtle shipped early by a couple of weeks. I think it was, you know, hit the holiday date that we said We're going Teoh. Even then, there were a couple of special rewards that went out like two or three weeks late, and you can bet that I was on top of that, told people ahead of time,

apologized profusely, threw in something extra in and really did everything I could Teoh to make that go through and and it helped that the whole thing was just filled with such a profound sense of gratitude. Because I got to do something amazing that I did not plan to do that. Did not had no right to do that. That, like, not a board game designer.

I mean, it makes sense coming from carrier software in comparison. Shy, of course.

Yeah, I mean, is a little bit of attention, but I think a lot about privilege. White guy parents are professors, grew up upper middle class household. Got an engineering degree, learned how to make things. God, you know, my first job at Microsoft paid well. And so there are all these things that people struggle their whole lives to do that I got to say, Oh, I'd like to write a book. Great hot seat started CEO Guidebook. That's hot seat book dot com Hot seat. It's a video published this on.

I got to do that. People struggle their whole lives to get a book published and and for me it was, you know, air quotes easy and that's like privilege on top of privilege. On top of privilege and one of the things that to me was powerful Going through the robot turtles experience was, there's no reason that hundreds of thousands of people shouldn't be able to do this. But not everybody is able to do this. And then when I started really getting into, I've always loved to make things with my hands and did woodworking for many years and the like and thinking, Making things is our birthright for all of human existence, making things is our birthright and is only in the last couple 100 years that were like, Hey, you know what makes a lot more sense is people halfway around the world make it and then you put it on boats and sail it over here and then put in Amazon warehouses and somebody shows up in a little van and drops it off in your front door in 12 hours like that's That's the weird exception that technology is forced us into. But now we have a place for technology. Convert is back, and we're technology whether be crowdfunding, which helps you go fund and find your audience for thing. Whether it be a product like low forage actually helps you pouring that idea to physical life and physical reality technologies make it possible for us to make things for ourselves again. I mean,

it's edible swing of the pendulum right there. Yeah,

right. I mean, like, imagine if nobody had kitchens and all we had was frozen. Take out. And it was a weird hobby when you cooked. That's what things were like with the stuff around us every day. Like so in your own clothes. Making your own furniture is a weird hobby that certain people invests, like in North years to go do and refined. No, that's something we should all be able to dio. What

are some of the lessons that you think other entrepreneurs can take from the learnings with robot turtles? And the success that it had, you know, getting funded and getting attention, and amidst all these board games, right is pretty profound what you said about why people objected to it. And you're like, Oh, well, that's the reason that it's going to succeed. That struck me as a lesson, right? A lot of times when you do the opposite, you can have a greater outcome. Were there other things that you think there can apply broadly in terms of how you approached it or what you learned in that process.

You know, the general former would you just said, I I call contrarian segmentation and and the idea is that if there's two things that you can dio, most people will do the one that's most attractive. Sometimes it makes sense to do the one that's less attractive because you don't need everybody in the world. You just need enough people to care to pay attention. So absolutely most, well, I'll take it for take my friend of their word that most parents want board games that they don't have toe don't have to be present for. But there are absolutely parents were looking for quality, non screen time with their kids. That's fun and educational, and I don't need most parents. I don't even need a 1,000,000 parents. I needed ah 1000 parents, and they're absolutely 1000 turn out there is more than that, but it was way better being the I don't think anybody wants to do coding for preschoolers.

Well, maybe there's a few okay, so I'm the only one and everybody's coming to me. I don't know if everybody wants to have a game that they have to play with their Children, well, I'm it. Come and get it is way better having having something that's a little less desirable but that you have all to yourself, then being one of everybody scrapping for whatever the first place choices,

right? So being something great for a smaller number rather than a little bit for everybody,

Yeah, and then, you know, it's funny how the world works. Sometimes that little something, something great for a small number of people turns into something big, right? Right. Like I know the white commentators, sort of. One of their mantras is like you start small with some group of passionate people. Even if the area seems silly, like the classic example of you know, renting an air bed total is like there's only a few people want to do it, but people want to do it. You're the only game in town that you're really excited about it, and then you figure out how that could become bigger and bigger,

and I ultimately didn't want to run a board game company if I had. There were opportunities to go and leverage that and you know, there's some notion of like there was interest in TV and doing TV shows around about turtles in this and that and fundamentally like iconic caught, you know, once in a lifetime idea with this. And it wasn't the thing where I wanted to dedicate my life to going in the same way that I do feel about go forth. I didn't feel about this like I didn't feel like it was my joy in the world to bring more and more board games into the world. Although it's pretty cool now. That wasn't that wasn't my calling. But if that had been the case, in fact, if going back to Max from cards again, humanity, I remember he said, Dan, why are you gonna licenses to think fun?

You could start a board game company, and I was like, That sounds awesome for you to dio, that's not what I wanted. I look at a board game company in it, and I'm like, That's Dunder Mifflin. You're shuffling paper like there's a little bit of like what you put on the paper, but a lot of a board game. Companies moving cardboard in boxes and ha ha Joke's on you, Max, cause he now spun off a shipping and logistics supply chain company called Black Funny. So if you want to actually, like ship your stuff, you go to Max for shipping and logistics, and so that that wasn't the thing that got me passion about scaling up with it.

And that all goes back to like when you have the right tools, whether those be connections with those. Be that great idea where that be, the laser on your desk that lets you print amazing things. When you have great tools, you can take something that would take somebody a lifetime of work to build a career round and build something small and wonderful with your own two hands to go do that your own two hands in one laser, whatever the case may be, But with the right tools, you can bring that into the world. In the case of Robot, Turtle is one of the key tools was really just the fearlessness of being able to pick up the phone and call a bunch of vendors and be like, How would you make this? How much would it cost? And so on so that by the time the board game funded, I knew exactly like Okay, so the artwork here, by the way, all the artwork came from ah, contractor who I hired Send the artwork here and ship it off. And off you

go. Very cool in it. And it turned out that it led to the idea for glow Ford, right? Like the stories air actually tied together, which I find fascinating, but it's it's interesting. How you talk about is this one time mission that you accomplished, right? And now. But it led you to what's maybe a much longer term mission for you, that thing that you really do want to sink your teeth in for a long, long time. I don't know if you see those lifelong,

but yeah, I think it could be. We'll see if the world agrees with me. And it was, in fact, prototype. What? What actually happened was a friend said, Hey, my son wants to take the turtle in, jam it in his pocket. You should make like a deluxe three D addition as like actual turtles you can shove in your pocket. And I said, Hey, you work in fabrication of Boeing like let's talk about how we out that that could happen. And he walked me through all the different ways that you can make things and that rule them all out for a bunch of different reasons. And then at the end,

he was like, Oh, and of course, there's the laser cutter and I was like, Laser cutter and he's like, Oh, yeah, I know that. I mean, like, it sits in the back and it's this, like, 19 seventies technology, but it's amazing, cause it's really fast in season was like the turtles have lasers on their backs. I could make a special laser edition, and also I actually helped put myself through college by building laser shows and selling them on the early Internet

lasers. Air your things.

So when I was a end by first job in high school was running the lasers and holograms Labatt, the Organ Museum of Science and Industry. So I had this. I was like lasers. You say Let us talk and and then I went to a maker space, and I was like, Hey, so I need to make turtles and I want to try three D printing. I was gonna use all the tools and he's like, You don't want a three d print and I was like, What do you mean? He's like every comes here thinking they want to three D print things. You don't three d print things like What do I want to do? Then he's like, You want a laser? Cut him. I was like,

OK, this is a surprising answer, but like, I'm gonna just keep talking on the set. I was like, but it's it's like how come? And he's like, Well, the three d printer Super slow fails all the time. You can only make things that, like you, download from the Internet because unless you know how to use fancy cad stuff, you can't design stuff from scratch on. And when you're done, it's all stringy and gross and everybody who doesn't want to refund. So if you're not like if you're not a three D printer who's into three D printing and just coming here to use it,

then you should go use the laser instead. And I said, but it's three bucks a minute is like Yeah, but it's only going to take you three minutes the three D printers of 50 cents an hour. It's going to take you half an hour and like, we'll get it right the first time for you on the laser. So let's cut a total free on the laser. I was like, All right, so we played around with that, and, ah, then I was leaving. Google are actually taking a leave of absence, and I had to fly down to the Bay Area and, you know,

say goodbyes and hand my cardinal that. And on the second last day, I discovered they had a maker space with a laser cutter and the one that the maker space I'd gone to like, you didn't get to touch it. They had operated for and I was like, Oh, this is it. So I found the guy who operated it. And there's this course that he ran once a month, like a safety training course. And I was like, Hey, so about that safety training course answers like, uh OK, l I'll send you the slide deck and all right, go ahead.

Here's a combination. And so I finished up. That day's work. The next day was the was the hint in your key card on leave, and I went in there at 6 p.m. And I left at 9 a.m. the next morning, not having slept with a bagful eternal parts. And I was like, This is awesome Bleary eyed dropped off my keycard, got on the flight home and two months later had an $11,000 industrial carbon oxide cutting laser imported from a factor in China installed in my garage because reasons I was so excited about this thing and it was a catastrophe didn't work at all. It took me days to 11,000. It took me days to get the hardware working. It took me weeks to get the software working, and then I was. It's a magical place where I could take a design which has spent hours and hours trying to get working and, you know, go through tool channels notes.

But I could take the finished design once I've done that and push a button and something beautiful would come out. And I started having entrepreneur ears and friends come by and be like Let's make something. We go out in the garage and make stuff and they're like What are you doing with this? I'm like, I don't know, but it's magic. And one thing led to another. And I thought everybody should have this magical glowing button that you push that makes your dreams come to life. Not just me.

Can you just picture that scene now having in people's homes when they have a glow, forage where they're like people like, What are you doing this thing? And it's like magic.

I don't have to because they stream it live on the Internet. Now when I watch

you, just look at the instagram hashtag and you'll see all the people on what they're creating.

It's incredible if you're gonna instagram, just search for hashtag Glow Forge. You're not going to see this stuff from us, but you're going to see this stuff from real people out in the world who are creating everything from whole businesses around jewelry. Teoh, one of my favorite, was somebody tweeted this upon a robin who was stuck in a window well, and they used their glow Ford's to print a ladder, which they started to a little baby Robinson and and they put the ladder in there and the little Baby Robins air hopping up the ladder, and then the mama Robin comes down and, like air drops a worm and then they hopped the rest of the way up like I couldn't make this up in my wildest dreams. I would never think something like this would happen from the product we created. But that's what happens when you get out of the way and you let people's imagination about how they want the world to be, come to life

right and giving them the tools that to do that right? And I think you talked about privilege and having a lot of the tools and control. Computer isn't like that skill you want to give to your kids, but you're letting others do that in a way that probably close their minds. They've never been able to do that before.

I mean, that's why this feels like my life's work is because it's not just getting to bring my ideas toe life, but it's getting to do it in a way that lets anybody bring their ideas

to life. So I mean, obviously, carrier technology and online comparison shopping and games and laser direct through lies help me understand the common threat. Was it that carrier attack and online comparison shopping was just That wasn't you. And you wanted to just be an entrepreneur. And this is the real thing. Or how do we connect the dots

and all that? No, I have no right to do any of the things I've done. I'm thoroughly unqualified for every job I've ever

held. Did you always think that at the onset means true? Okay, but it's true for all of us, right? Like we're all kind of

one of my favorite parts about writing the book was I got to talk to a doctor, Pauline Rose Clans who's a psychologist. You'll is in Atlanta, and I called her up and I said, Hey, I'm writing a book for O Reilly and she's like Bill O'Reilly. I'm gonna hang up on your like No, no, no O Reilly Media Rather publishing different, different O'Reilly and And I wanted to write about this thing that you just you discovered you named Imposter Syndrome and she says, I didn't call it Imposter syndrome. I said, What you mean? She says, Imposter phenomenon. I said, 00 I'm sorry.

And she said, a syndrome is a collection of bad things that happens to you, and that's not what happens. What happens is people feel like they're faking it. They feel like they're unqualified. They feel like they're not able to do their job, and for some of them, it devastates them and shuts them down and cause them to self sabotage and for others that make some CEOs. And it makes him rise to new heights, and it makes them great. So it's a phenomenon. It's not a syndrome and that there's a chapter in the book about this. But I've met entrepreneurs who suffer from imposter phenomenon, and I met braggarts and liars, and I don't think I met anybody else that there's probably happy, well adjusted entrepreneurs out there somewhere. But I'm

I will let you know

really right. I'm squarely in the I have no right to be doing what I'm doing, so I better work really hard to make it work anyway. Camp

yeah, and has that been important to kind of how you operate and how you show

up day today? I mean, it's it's the only way that I could make it work if I'm coming in and saying, you know, please trust that I have something useful to say and leading a company to go build a $2500 piece of hardware that's never existed before for a market that doesn't exist. Like who's gonna buy it? No clue. But trust me, what's it? What's gonna look like? We're gonna figure that out. Trust me. You know what's the feature set? It'll be great. Trust me. And at some point, you you have to put together enough.

Enough credibility, enough enough thoughtfulness and enough answers. Those aren't great ones now where people like All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna trust you on this. Let's let's try it and see what happens. And there were a lot of big leaps of faith. Nobody so joined. Fabric has these in, I think, a dozen stores and isn't rolling them out many more. They're investor in the company now, And if somebody had said, hey, you know, Joanne is gonna be carrying this $2500. Plus,

we have three miles, 2,504,000, 6000 me carrying this thing, and it's going to selling materials and all that, and it's gonna be doing that like, you know, for everybody. I would have thought, Wow, that's That's sort of the far reaches of what I would have thought would have happened. And there's no data that could have predicted that there's no existing market. There's no demand if you want surveyed customers or like, would you like a laser cutter? They'd be like, No,

it would be like, What's

that? What do I need to cut with a laser? And if I was gonna cut something, why wouldn't I use scissors Or it saw? And then conversely, you show somebody a video of this and what it can make and how it can cut in grave things with a beam of light and the like. That is amazing and would change my life. And so, trying to bridge that gap, sometimes ignorance is an asset. If I'd come to this from the machine tools business, I'm not sure it could have made it work.

Yeah, ignorance. And obviously you're curious person. The way you studied Kickstarter and crowdfunding. Was it that same kind of practice of analyzing all the details of the customer experience and what's broken with the current processor? How did you get to be at least knowledgeable enough to be like, Hey, I'm gonna build a product here.

You know, we just being a super dork about it. It was like I was printing things at home all the time on my giant industrial behemoth. I was having people over all the time and watching them suffer with it. But then watching them be joyful when the results were done, here's me saying over and over again. So what would you do with this? Nothing was terrible what you're talking about. Well, OK, but what about this? What about that? What about the something? Okay, those things. I'm kind of cool going to make her spaces and and noticing that all the people going up to the three D printers were engineers who are excited about three D printing and all the people going up to the lasers where designers and entrepreneurs and creators who are excited about the thing that they were making not about the process of making it and, you know,

watching and listening to sort of the visionaries talk about three D printing in 2011 and 2012 as being like you're going to be able to push a button and make anything. Look at the reality which is gonna be able to push a button and make plastic spaghetti on a good day and and then going, Yeah, but But they're right in the world should be like that. And how could this technology enable that? And then just spending a huge number of very late nights kicking out with my co founder, who has deep hardware expertise, sold last company for $112 million also Enterprise Carrier Software Company. But before that had a had a ah hardware company and who just built in an enormous combination laser cutter, CNC milling machine and plasma torch in his garage and sitting there going like, What if we did this? What if we did that? What if we took this approach? What if we took? What if we what? We had the entire component list of an iPhone at our disposal?

Because all those parts or cheap now since their mass production, how could those make a laser better? What could we do with the camera? What could we do with accelerometers? What could we do with microphones and and going through that process over and over again and iterating and trying to squeeze every last guys drop of value to make something that had almost nothing in common with the industrial technology that it was descended from but was a beautiful device that you could use in your home.

Have you always broken down problems like that? And do you Do you have a framework of how you break down these problems, which is just natural for you? Like this is what happens when I get obsessed. Her interested in something? I go that deep. I become the user. I listen, I observe. Or did you kind of have you, over time, develop some framework or some mental model that?

No, it's the 1st 1 It is like sparked by comparison. Shopping website was born of me going to buy a Windows laptop saying, How do I find a laptop that's less than £5? Has Bluetooth at least four gigs of Ram, blah blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Oh, this doesn't work like there's literally nothing on the Internet. All the data is there was not organized and then paying a a person I found on rent a coder dot com who lived in Islamabad to go through a Google sheet every night for a week and take every item in in Amazon's database and literally read through the specs, go to the Web page and type into the spreadsheet all the details about thes and at the end of that week I paid him $50 I think that's right. $1500 anyway, the end of that week I went into the spreadsheet and I went filter, filter, filter,

sort. And even though I had spent a week trying to side with laptop to buy the one that came to the top was not. One of the ones I looked at was exactly what I wanted was way better. And I was like, Who and so and so I was playing and I was playing with that much of other ideas. Mind you, 98% of the ideas I play with art terrible and die on the vine

like somebody one terrible and that you played with for a significant amount. Oh yeah, more than just one long night.

At the same time I was playing with that, I was playing with this idea of an all or nothing. Opt in, broadcast your life, live on the Internet, okay? And that you throw a switch and all your text messages all your phone calls, all your cameras, everything are all live stream to a central site where they could be remixed by the world at large. And I thought, That's amazing. And that's going to change the way the world thinks about existing in this space. And I desperately wanted to not exist. And so, no, I'm not gonna go do that. But it took me a while to reach

that took you? How long did he's been on? This

is this is my Auntie startup thistles. My auntie Life's work not only should not work to have it happen, I something worse, worse. And even if it doesn't make the world worse, it would make my life worse. Like I wouldn't be up. I don't want to be on the sending side. I don't want to be on the consuming side. I want nothing to do with that business whatsoever. Even though I found it very intellectually interesting.

Is it important then to take a lot of shots? Is that how you how you make shots in the party.

I mean, that's it for me, the scatterbrain who has no right to be doing what he's doing and everything else. Then there's other folks who are just damn good at what they do and have been doing it all their lives. I remember talking Teoh Ah, friend of mine in a maverick on Jason. And I was talking about Zulily who used to be in this building. And I said at the time you invested in them there was like, Ah, 100 group on knockoffs. How did you manage to pick the one that was going to be more successful than group on? And he's like, Oh, that's just what the founders have been doing all their lives. Like of course, they're going to get it right. They spent the last 25 30 years perfecting the set of skills that they need to win at this space.

So that's a no brainer. Like it's a good business. There's no better person to pursue it. I'm so jealous like those maybe those the entrepreneurs who are neither imposture syndrome nor arrogant, you know, on top of it, they're just the people know what they're doing has never been made.

They've been kind of mastering one craft or one motion, one skill set for 34 decades of cross. The many companies. I wonder what that's like. So how many you're saying you have add dozens, hundreds of ideas that you've spent time on

before I would go another digit like thousands?

Yes, that you have more than one night on. Oh yeah, maybe hundreds for more than one Mike. That's still that's a lot, lot of shots. Yeah, I've heard like Seth Goat. And then there's talk about like, Well, I write Aton. But then I published a very small percentage would write like it's about It's about doing and trying. So you're definitely in that, Can

I? I remember in elementary school a somewhat famous photographer who shot for National Geographic, saying, I'm not much better at taking pictures than you are in better throwing away pictures than you are. Yeah, lots shots. That's that's about it. And eventually something comes through. And also because I always get frustrated when entrepreneurs are like, Well, it's because I tried so hard and because I took the right risk. No, it's because I've had privilege on my life and because I was given every opportunity I get to take shots and I'm not gonna be bankrupt if the first thing goes sideways. And I had parents who encouraged me to do that. And when people talk about pattern matching and veces like, Why pattern matching into, I invest in Hey,

I'm a tall white guy and I pattern match against the, you know, CEO type That's wholly unfair. And there are a lot of other people who are no doubt better than I am, and we do better than I am who don't get a chance because they don't pander match against that. It's one of the reasons that I used to just, you know, any opportunity to go be a little involved, a lot of startups. I would do it and you know, advice in this on that now I really focus a lot of my attention on start ups where I think the founders wouldn't get as much attention. Otherwise folks from underrepresented backgrounds, because I think that that's where the most opportunity is. That's that contrarian segmentation, those people who don't get the attention, who would benefit most from the help that they could be given.

Well, well, thank you for doing that for the community. That's awesome. And I can attest to that. You are. Do give that. When I met you. Like 10 years ago, I was starting a company that subsequently failed. And I had no business doing that, of course, But you took a meeting with me and offered some helpful wisdom, so always nice. Well, look, I wanna wanna be mindful of your time. You probably need to make some more things around here on some of his tables. Full enough with stuff you

made on here. Yeah, we get to avoid just spinner or the puzzle or the wall hanging or any of the other stuff.

All right. I want to wrap up with the supersonic six, and then the mic drop the too corny things. If this podcast

All right,

I'm ready. All right. You can give long answers if you want, but there, I'll this proceed to the next question without much follow up. 1st 1 is what's the one thing that Seattle needs to improve as a startup

hub? I have always had to do most of my fundraising from the valley on Leah's sort of an established entrepreneur was able to fund raise here. And we just don't have a great ecosystem for investing in early stage entrepreneurs. And that goes double for folks there. Traditionally underrepresented, we have a real shortage of financial support for first time. Entrepreneurs of Angels were willing to take risks in them of early stage start up programmes, and that needs to get better.

So more risk, particular and first time entrepreneurs.

Yes, yeah, if you're coming in as an executive from a big company or a second time entrepreneur than Seattle's, happy to find you.

Okay. And number two, If you could go back to the beginning, would you still found your company in Seattle?

I'm managed to make it work. And if you can get through that hurdle of getting your first round of funding than Seattle's fantastic, you can raise venture capital from the Valley from other reasons. So absolutely, but it is so hard I spent with every advantage that I had. I spent nine months getting my first check, like nine months for the first check clears the bank, and that was full time fundraising CEO for my first company. So I was brutal so, yeah, I do it again, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone else because that could have easily gone the other way.

Number three. Who's a Seattle company or founder that you're following? You're studying right now

And why, Ah, year and change ago I sat down at for dinner with Glenn Kelman of Redfin, and I said, Here's this problem that I've got which was sales not doing what I needed to And he said, Here's this solution that I used. I'm not recommending it. I was tell you, it's what worked for me, which was I took a product person and I said, Hey, your product is selling the company. Go treat marketing and sales like a product problem is like And that was what turned Redfin around. And I was like, I usually never listen to just so advice like that, but I know exactly the person and she's amazing, and I bet she can do exactly the same thing for us,

and I followed that to the T, and that's how we've gotten the rocket ship growth that we've had over the past 7/4 we've been growing double digit percentages. Every single quarter for 7/4 consecutively. And so, yeah, Glenn Glenn is a guy with two

a lot. Fantastic love. Glenn. He's amazing. Learned a lot from him. Number four. What's a truth that you know or believe, but other people think is false or crazy? Lasers air cool. Some people have figured

that out. Yeah, something a little more strategic. Oh, values and culture have a cost. It's cost worth paying, but they have a cost. When people talk about their values or their culture, they talk about the upside of it, and they talk about how, for example, the I'll take an example of under their hardware start up that I was talking to, that I won't name because this is unflattering. And they talked about how there people were willing to work night and day, that when the when the company was about to die and go bankrupt, nobody left. People all agreed to waive their paycheck and stuck with it through thick and thin.

I was like, That's amazing. And then I talked more and he talked about his war culture, and he talked about how everything was war metaphors. Company was mostly dudes, mostly white and they were bonded by this like we're all going to war together. And I was like, Oh, okay, Yep, that's That's the rule, which is any Any wonderful piece of the culture has a shadow, and sometimes it's a great shadow. Like, you know, Google has lavish free food and benefits,

and the shadow of that is a sense of entitlement where people will be like I can't believe Eminem's ran out. I can't believe that the bacon wasn't crispy, right? And OK, that's tolerable. And you can make those changes. But culture isn't just a like Well, of course, you're going to have a culture that makes everybody feel welcome. Okay, well, it can actually be a lot of work to make everybody feel welcome and making everybody feel welcome sometimes makes people feeling comfortable, like when you say, Hey, that thing you said that was that was actually pretty exclusionary when you talked about the engineering team is a bunch of guys and everything else and like, did you see the look on somebody's face?

And that fell when you said that? And she probably don't feel very welcome. And by the way, maybe you don't feel that Welcome now that I'm talking to you about this and like, that's really hard, and it can be easier to not do that. But it's something you do, even though it's hard, not something you do because it's easy and because it's Frink,

but something they think about as you're establishing those things that there is this other side of it, which may be it doesn't always get thought of it A to the onset. Number five is What do you know today that you wish you'd known when you started Glow

Forge. There's a cliche around hardware being hard. Then I knew about it, and academically I knew about it. I will just tell you one story to fully grasp the magnitude of this, which is in May, I had to write a seven digit check, the size of which defined how many units we get to sell in December. And so I have to predict, like sales seven months out, and any extra money was going to sit in a warehouse and not be in our bank account, and any shortfall was gonna be lost. Revenue and holy smokes. It's not software. You can't just copy another version hardware. It's really hard.

Last question is what asked, Do you have for this audience or what? In this community to help you?

There are. There's a team here glow forage, which are composed entirely of miracle workers. It's the growth team that I mentioned and Marlowe are ahead of. The growth team has figured out in the past 7/4 so almost two years how to connect with people at this passionate, wonderful human level, how to get them excited. I cannot do that in a way that's thoughtful, that scientific that that has room for creativity and has room for data, signs and learning. And if that's something that's exciting shoes to note, If you email your resonated jobs like LaForge dot com, it will be in my inbox. Get all emails to that, and it'll get right to the right person. And be sure to tell him where you heard about this, because we're home for all roles,

engineering and people operations and manufacturing supply chain. But if you say one role, I will say our growth team is magical, and somebody who wants to learn from and teach masters of different crafts would find nothing. No better place to

work. Awesome. So just jobs a glow for jobs ago forge dot com I love that. I've learned a lot from you today. This has been amazing. Thank you. Where should people follow you? Or follow the company? Twitter linked in What's your first

go to place? Those are all good. I'm Dan Shapiro on Twitter Dance Brown Lengthen were glow forge dot com You should go to go forge dot com and watch the video at the top. That will give you the nickel on what we do and and then the big one is You should go to instagram type in hashtag go forage and follow the hashtag and you'll just get this moment of creative delight in your day every day. That will make you happier. Person. It's incredible.

I gonna test that because I did it last night. You wanna

drop the mic? It is that time. Here we go.

Thanks, Adam.