Dan Shapiro

Hey all, I started the company formerly known as From Holden (we're renaming), and wrote all the copy for the Kickstarter campaign. I posted a reply on Dan's blog, would love to answer any other questions or hear any other thoughts there or here! http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2012/11/this-is-why-im-not-backing-you-…

(OP here) I tried to explain this in my post here: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/ although rfrey's explanation is excellent and succinct.

One way in which liquidation preference could be constrained is if potential employees of start-ups began actually inspecting the expected value of their job offers, or at least some heuristics that approximate such a thing. For example, I've always found [0] to be a very useful way to get a rough sense of what an offer is really worth, and from there you still have flexibility to shade to a more or less risk averse assessment depending on who you are personally. Crucially, doing this must include pieces of information such as what liquidation preference has been given to investors. And if a company won't share this with you, run, don't walk, away immediately. So often people say that you should not attempt an expected value computation or even any attempt whatsoever to estimate the distribution of possible outcomes when appraising the value of a start-up offer. The usual excuse is that you should value equity at $0 and just hope to be pleasantly surprised if it's worth anything -- in which case the sole reason you accept the below-market wages, long hours, poor benefits, etc., of the start-up job is because you (supposedly) personally get satisfaction from working on something "cool" that is "new" and "unproven" and "entrepreneurial" -- and I guess it is just personal taste as to whether you feel that applies to any given company. (Personally, I have encountered maybe 1 or 2 total start-ups that were doing any kind of work that was different from standard big-box…

Okay, i'm no expert, i don't know how the play. But wanted to learn it a while ago. As i think i could be a user, this is what you "could" keep in mind: What i did was (i didn't have a piano and that's expensive), i bought a piano keyboard. (it's like a piano but with notes instead of buttons and it runs on batteries :-P). All that i learned, was the start of the fûr elise while watching youtube videos. I know about the 30 first notes or so and that's where my expertise ends. My brother has a piano, what i did then was put a tablet on top of it (not much space on it) and imitate a "virtual piano" app. I could imitate some some because of this. Some things you should know: The idea of this project is great, but a lot of people who don't own a piano. So your audiance is already "limited". Suggest alternatives like a cheap piano keyboard for the ones who don't have one. Just to get them started. Second thing, not much people have place to put a monitor on top of their piano. A tablet is about the max you can get on top of ours. You could start looking into Raspberry Pi and small screens to adjust this. Third thing, you are showing notes and in the start, people don't know where the notes are, you could show piano buttons /places instead. Fourth thing, you're video isn't inspiring. If you look at the top kickstarter campaigns... You'll see a lot of different things then you're video. Watch these for…

The Five Levels: From spicy autocomplete to the dark factory https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2026/01/the-five-levels-from-spicy-aut… January 23, 2026 72 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46739117 There are several other similar posts/videos. Steve Yegge also talks about it.

Agreed; here's the link for anyone looking for it: https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2026/01/the-five-levels-from-spicy-aut…

This was posted earlier today: https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2025/12/i-made-the-xkcd-impossible-app… The xkcd comic is from 11 years ago (September 2014).

Remember the advice of "How to read a patent in 60 seconds" [0]. In this case there are two very short independent claims (1 and 3), all the way at the last page. They both seem to just be talking of some specifics on cache coherency. [0] https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-sec…

Culture is a difficult component to define, much less manage. Everybody thinks they're consciously pursuing major initiatives to build culture but the vast majority are just consuming the culture that emerges and then reinforcing it with the status quo. Dan Shapiro has a decent take on it: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/06/your-company-culture-is-a-meani…

A slightly more humorous take on the same thing: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-seco…

I'd propose a more constructive reply next time. For example a reply that links to http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-seco… There's no need to be rude (and being right typically doesn't excuse it)

How to read patents: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-seco…

Dan Shapiro has written a good post on this: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-seco… To summarize, he says: 1. Skip the title 2. Skip the drawings 3. Skip the abstract 4. Skip the specification 5. Find the independent claims, and read them 6. Back to skipping – toss the dependent claims (any claim that starts with “The _____ of claim _____” is essentially a refinement or detail of the parent claim).

Good question that most people face and are afraid to ask :) Here are some resources to check out that have covered this well: * Rand wrote a great post (http://moz.com/rand/understanding-stock-options-at-startups-and-at-moz… * Solid overview: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/11/how-much-are-startup-options-wo… * This is a good book that doesn't get enough love (http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Silicon-Valley-Startups-ebook/dp/B004Q… * Good high-level notes about equity in startups (part of an incredible series, read it all if you can - http://blakemasters.com/post/21742864570/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl… * Venture Hacks on the "Option Pool Shuffle": http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle

Dan Shapiro also explained this seemly irrational behavior that VCs have: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/

In VC mathematics, you always divide by the entire lifetime of the fund to calculate your rate of return, because there's no recycling allowed. You also got to factor in compound interest and management fees, so in Socialcam's case, this works out to about 3-4% return. Dan Shapiro explained it well here: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/ edit: calculating Socialcam's ROI

Here's a bit more about perverse incentives that make VCs' decisions less rational: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/ The differences between Pinterest and GitHub are that: GitHub is more unique (it's not strictly social media and there's more homework to do); it's bootstrapped and negociates from a stronger position; VCs want to give start-ups more money than they need because that's how they get paid.

Thiel isn't beholden to time cycles that the funds are. So I wouldn't read into it that Founder's wasn't interested. This might help: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/

> Again, once you have doubled your money and gotten it back, you can invest it anywhere you like, including the same companies you may have before. But now you have twice as much money. Again, that's exactly wrong. As far as the fund is concerned, that money's gone. Let me help you understand with this link: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/ Pay special attention to the section entitled, "They don’t appear to be particularly interested in making large amounts of money."

That's not always an option. Check out this Article (also on the HN front page) http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/

She gave her thoughts in a comment: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2012/02/startup-dudes-cut-sexist-crap/#…

Hi there...thanks for the clarifying! Language is incredibly loaded and we're all guilty. I absolutely intended that the presenter was not attuned to the impact of his speech. Here's more on that thread. http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2012/02/startup-dudes-cut-sexist-crap/#…

I've seen this posed as Twitter vs. Hoverboard, without denigrating the Twitter side. http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2011/07/a-twitter-a-hoverboard-or-somet…

That's kind of my point. The title means nothing. The abstract means almost nothing. The figures mean almost nothing. Have a look here for a brief guide to reading a patent, written for nonlawyers. http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-seco…

Thanks for all the answers ... I also found this which cleared up a few things. http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/

You might benefit from rereading this article. http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-seco…