August 18, 2023 - 3D Printer Builder Dan Shapiro and Everyone Wants to Work There Maura Nevel Thomas

Dan Shapiro – CEO of Glowforge

We are totally different from traditional 3D printing. Which builds plastic layer
by layer. With Glowforge, you put in material and we cut or engrave the material
to produce the final result. Subtractive instead of additive.

Dan Shapiro is the CEO and cofounder of Glowforge, the iconic 3D laser printer. Starting with the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign on record, hundreds of thousands of 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 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). 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. Dan is no stranger to innovation; he’s worked for a variety of startups, sold a company to Google, previously was the head of Photobucket, and also launched the bestselling board game in Kickstarter history when he crowdfunded Robot Turtles. Starting with the biggest 30-day crowdfunding campaign on record, Dan Shapiro’s Glowforge now powers creations from hundreds of thousands of designers worldwide. He’s been featured on NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and on the front page of the New York Times – now he’d love to share his insights with your audience.





Maura Nevel Thomas – Speaker at Vistage Worldwide and the Author of the Book Everyone Wants to Work Here: Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market (Empowered Productivity)

Be intentional. The most underrated challenge facing business professionals
and organizations is the challenge of distraction. We have decided that this is
just the way the world is and we have to figure out how to get by with this
constant distraction. I reject that.

Maura Nevel Thomas is a Speaker at Vistage Worldwide and the Author of the Book Everyone Wants to Work Here: Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market (Empowered Productivity). Maura Nevel Thomas is an award-winning international speaker, trainer, and author on individual and corporate productivity and work-life balance, and the most widely-cited authority on attention management. She helps driven, motivated knowledge workers control their attention and regain control over the details of their life and work. Maura has trained tens of thousands of individuals at thousands of organizations on her proprietary Empowered Productivity™ System, a process for achieving significant results and living a life of choice. Maura’s clients include the likes of Google, Old Navy, L’Oréal, and NASA, although businesses in the $50mm-$200mm range are a specialty. She is a TEDx speaker, successful entrepreneur, and author of six books on the topics of attention management and personal and organizational productivity. She is a media favorite, featured in hundreds of national business outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, US News and World Report, and the Huffington Post. She also is a regular columnist for both Forbes and the Harvard Business Review. Maura earned an MBA from the University of Massachusetts and has studied the field of productivity all over the world for more than two decades. Maura believes that every person has unique gifts to offer the world, and her purpose is to support them in offering those gifts in a way that is joyful and inspiring. She strives to have an impact that is relevant and unique, presenting new ideas and ways of thinking that are applicable to changing times. Maura believes that her work should have a social impact on the world, so she is very active in her local community of Austin, Texas, where she has held volunteer leadership positions in a variety of different community organizations and charities. This belief also leads Maura to offer quarterly pro-bono presentations to nonprofits, to donate a percentage of all her revenues to charity, and to have volunteered as a Climate Project speaker (personally trained on the subject by former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his team of leading climate scientists).