How We Incubate and Launch New Products With AI - Ep. 40 with Danny Aziz, Brandon Gell

Over the last few months at Every, we’ve launched two new AI products with tens of thousands of users, and we’ll release a third one before the end of the year. The weird thing is: We’re a media company with less than 10 full-time employees, and we’re mostly bootstrapped. That’s not how things are supposed to work in startups. When we were first starting Every Studio six months ago, we were told a million reasons why it wouldn’t work: divided focus, not enough money, and the biggest one—it would be too hard to find talented people to run the products we build. Yesterday, we proved out one of the biggest risks to this strategy: We launched a brand-new version of our AI product Spiral with Danny Aziz as its general manager. Danny left a $200,000-a-year salary to come chase his dreams with us. So we decided to take this moment to pull back the curtain and ask, Why? Why did he join us? And why is the model we’ve built working so far? What have we learned about what happens when you mix media, software, and AI in a single organization? That’s why I invited Danny and Brandon Gell, Every’s head of Studio, on the show. We get into the details of Every’s business model, how new technology and the right people can make the flywheel turn, the power of learning by doing and building from real needs, and where each of us sees ourselves one year from now. Here is a link to the episode transcript. This is a must-watch for anyone who wants to build a business on their own terms, and have a lot of fun while doing it. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Danny Aziz: @DannyAziz97 Brandon Gell: @bran_don_gell Try Spiral here: https://spiral.computer/ More about Every’s product incubation arm: https://every.to/p/introducing-every-studio

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Spiral allows you to automate 80% of the writing that you have, the repetitive writing. You can give it how you tweet, how you write newsletters, and then it learns your tone, the voice, the structure that you want, and it just gives you the content from the content that you already have.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  The biggest differentiator is like, when you raised $50 million, I kind of felt like I personally and the business was always sprinting to make sure that we didn't topple over ourselves. Like, we didn't fall forward. I was always running to keep my feet under me.

• 0:29Dan Shipper?

  I think there's that thing that we're sort of aspiring to, like a word that we often use internally is like, building a little bit of a creative playground. And you have this principle that you apply to your life from then on, which is?

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Fuck around and find out.

• 0:43Dan Shipper?

  I thought you were gonna say measure twice.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  We talked about this, Danny. It's kind of what we're doing here, a little bit.

• 0:49Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, it's like, measure twice, cut once in the front, and then fuck around and find out in the back.

• 1:08Dan Shipper?

  Danny, welcome to the show.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:10Dan Shipper?

  And Brandon, welcome back to the show.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:13Dan Shipper?

  So, we are doing a little bit of a different episode today. We've got, for people who don't know, Danny Aziz. You are running Spiral, which is a every product. We're launching, or we just launched, an entirely new version of Spiral. And Brandon, you run our studio, which produced or created Spiral. And we wanted to all come together and just like, talk a little bit about what we're doing. Because I think like, we have a little bit of a different model that we're trying to figure out for media, which is like, have a core, underlying media business. And we have a newsletter, we've got this YouTube channel, we do podcasts, all that kind of stuff, and then build software out of the experiences and out of the ideas

• 1:56Dan Shipper?

  that we have running the media business. And so, Danny, you're like, one of the first people to come in and help us do that. So you're a little bit of a guinea pig for us.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, definitely a guinea pig.

• 2:07Dan Shipper?

  And we're trying to like, share a little bit. A bit about like what we're learning and what that's like. So maybe start start by telling us like what's new with Spiral like and and maybe like give us like a little bit of background into what it is and like what we just launched.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  So Spiral allows you to automate eighty percent of the writing that you have, the repetitive writing. You can give it how you tweet, how you write newsletters, and then it learns your tone, the voice, the structure that you want. And then you can give it your rough drafts, or maybe you've done a podcast and you want to turn that into a tweet, and it just gives you the content from the content that you already have that sounds just like you. What we've just launched is a brand new design. It looks completely different, far more organized. And then the biggest piece I think we're the most excited about is two hundred and fifty plus public spirals. So we've gone through, we've handcrafted, plus obviously with the help of AI, all of these spirals that'll turn one form of content into another.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  And we've spent a lot of time just making sure that we're happy with it, so that everyone else will be happy with it. And then people can take it, they can clone them, they can change it so it sounds like them, and they can continue using it.

• 3:14Dan Shipper?

  That was really good. I love I love listening to you talk.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you are very good. I feel like the Spiral, I really struggle to pitch Spiral to people because I'm like, you could turn a thing into another thing. And they're like, what things? But that was actually, that was that was good.

• 3:30Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, I think like you you like nailed all the beats of like when I'm when I'm pitching it, you nailed like all that stuff. But your voice and like your inflection, like everything is just so much better.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  I mean, I was born with this voice, so I can't take credit for it.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  It's kind of reminds me like when we first met Danny, I was like, is he forty five and just like super mature? And is this his voice? Or is he like twenty two? I kind of can't tell.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Somewhere right in the middle.

• 3:55Dan Shipper?

  How old are you actually?

• 3:57Speaker 00

  I'm twenty seven.

• 4:00Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, so so that's what that's what Spiral is. That's that's kind of like what we're launching. Like, why are you doing this with us? Obviously, you're super talented. You've you've got a long history of working at different startups. Like, where did you? How did you end up doing this?

• 4:18Speaker 00

  I think I've been following Evry for a while. I've been following the content that you've been putting out for a very long time. And to be fair, I hadn't actually seen any of the products that Evry had put out. It was always just the content. I have actually just like a bunch of bookmarks of things that you've written down and like other people have written. And when I saw that you guys were looking for EILs, entrepreneurs and residents, I was like, this makes so much sense. I think a lot of what I've been feeling, working at startups, every startup that I've worked at has like raised money. And I've always felt this tension between what felt right for our customers and the business right now versus the grandiose vision that we think we're gonna go do.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  And then when I first met Brandon and Brandon was kind of explaining to me of like, we have this media business and then we have all this consulting and, you know, we're trying to charter on Destiny. It all just resonated really well with how I was feeling.

• 5:17Dan Shipper?

  I love that.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  So I think something, I think something that you just said,

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I kind of want to do a callback to like your introduction of like what we're trying to build here, which, which is a media business as a foundation and a number of things that are layered on top of that. And like one thing kind of helps the other succeed. But there's another thing that you just said, which is a lot harder to put your finger on and a lot harder to figure out if we're actually doing well, which is like charting our own path and doing it in a way that feels really right for all of us as individuals. And like, I feel like when we first had the idea for like, which you've been thinking about for many years, but then we sort of came together and we're like, let's do this thing. We were like, we're pretty sure this is gonna work. We just need to do it.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  And then there's this other piece, which is like, but are we still gonna be happy?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  That like we were like currently figuring out and like, I think that was a part of working with you. I was just like, I think that Danny feels, you know, what we're. What we're trying to do, I think that he's trying to do that, too.

• 6:23Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, how's that been for both of you? Like, um, uh, like the, there's, I think there's that thing that we're sort of aspiring to, like a word that we often use internally is like building a little bit of a creative playground. Um, and then there's also the sort of reality of like, it's really fucking hard to like, run a business and it's hard to run like three businesses all at once. Um, so like, yeah, how has that been for, for, for you, Danny? And then I'm curious, Brandon.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  I think for me, the thing that I really get, it's a little bit difficult for me to answer that question for everyone because I'm 95% of the time focused on Spiral. And obviously the, it, it came out of Every and, you know, I've spent the last couple of weeks just talking to the people who are using it a lot. And, you know, 80% of the people that I've spoken to were, are using Spiral because of Every. I actually spoke to somebody the other day and she literally said, whatever Every tells me to do, I'm gonna go do.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:21Dan Shipper?

  Don't, don't do everything we say, but it's nice. I like to hear that.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Do as we say, not as we do.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  So I feel like I get to focus a lot. And so I haven't felt that tension. And because the media business is doing well enough that it can support something like this, I don't feel this tension of, oh, I have 18 months until I have to go raise another round. And I think we have a team of people where we can, everything we need to do, we can do. And then we just know people who can help us with the other things. So I haven't felt this pull of, of anything other than I get to focus.

• 7:57Dan Shipper?

  That's cool. Yeah. What do you think?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  I go through phases of, of, you know, feeling that like freedom that I was searching for, for so many years while running Clyde. Like, I go through phases here. A really good example is this morning, um, when we were, you know, we mean, we needed to make all these changes to Sparkle. Yeah. So Sparkle is our AI file organizer. So it helps you organize your computer using AI. It's really amazing little product. We put it out. A number of months ago.

• 8:27Dan Shipper?

  May or June or July, something like that?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, like we, it works really well. It's pretty basic. It gets 50 new customers per day. And we're just sort of like trying to see what happens to it right now without us like needing to invest a ton. But we're also realizing that we need to continue to invest in it. And this morning, we were doing a bunch of like annoying stuff to save ourselves from like a tax situation in the future, basically. And I was just like kind of flustered because I didn't really have like my morning routine and I didn't. Because I just went straight into solving this problem and I turned to my wife Lydia and I was just like, this sucks.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Like I'm not, you know, I hate. And she, she looked at me and she was like, this is the work part of your job. And I was like, you're right. And I rarely feel this way. So this is a good thing.

• 9:20Dan Shipper?

  I love that.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  So that's how it's going.

• 9:24Dan Shipper?

  That's really great. Yeah, I feel similarly like the sort of, the sort of ups and downs, but I like. Having run every for five years, this is like without a doubt like my favorite era of the business. And I'm someone who I feel, I think you really like to like focus on one specific thing. And I'm just like, I want to do like 50 things all at once. I love that. And so. My day is very much like, I'll, I'll often start in the morning and I'm like writing for a couple hours. And like coming, going back and forth in case there are like fires or like we always publish in the mornings. I'm usually involved in that in some way. And then the rest of the day is like. Talking to various people about the different businesses we have going on and you know, looking at spirals with you today or like.

• 10:06Dan Shipper?

  You know, we have a couple of like alpha products that we're working on. So like trying to figure that stuff out and. Or some of the consulting that we do and I love, love, love the variety. And I, and, and I do feel like it's sort of like this playground, which is like very special. Because all the stuff we do is like stuff I'm deeply interested in, which is cool. But it does get, it's a lot.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  I think this is like an interesting transition to like, how do we do this well? Because like, I really like doing a lot of things to, uh, every does a lot of things. But, but you, and you do one thing at every, but you do a lot of things within that one thing. And like, so far, you've kind of only done one thing, which is like, get us to this V2.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  And I'm curious how you feel about like, we're starting a new journey where you're going to be transitioning to like, doing other things besides what you've done for the past many years. Meaning like, marketing and growth and all of these things.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think the, the thing, I think, I think that's the thing that I'm most excited about is throwing myself kind of in the deep end. And it's also why I love the idea personally for me to, to continue answering your question then of like, why am I working on Spiral? Is, I've, I think I've spent most of my career having ideas of how I think all these other things should work. And I've never been able, I've never been in the environment to actually go test those ideas. Because it didn't make sense, you know, if you've raised around and you have 18 months, you're not going to let the engineer go do X, Y, and Z. You're going to go hire someone who actually knows how to do X, Y, and Z.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  So nervously excited is how I'm feeling. But I think it's going to be like, we had this product that people love. And really it's just about figuring out what's missing for them. And then who else is just like them and how do we go get them? Not to make it sound too easy, I think it's going to be pretty difficult, but yeah.

• 12:00Dan Shipper?

  Did that answer your question?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah, yeah.

• 12:02Dan Shipper?

  How do you feel about it?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I feel, I mean, I, I think I'm, my genuine question is like, does it work?

• 12:08Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Like, does the model work? There's, for many, many years, there's been this whole thing of like, go raise a bunch of money, go hire all the people that you need to do all the different jobs. And our model is the complete opposite of that. It's, don't raise any money and don't hire anybody. Do it all yourself and we're going to support you with ideas and, and resources. And I think that's my biggest question, it's like, just doesn't work. I think it'll work, but.

• 12:32Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, and it's definitely, um, it's, it's also really hard, I think. I think one of the, one of the other parts of your question we haven't touched on is like, it's really hard to run multiple businesses.

• 12:44Dan Shipper?

  And like, for example, putting out a daily newsletter that's really high quality and a podcast and doing courses and doing trainings. All of that is a lot. And then adding, layering on other software businesses is like, it's, it's a lot, a lot. And usually I think people have a hard time,

• 13:03Dan Shipper?

  have a hard time balancing those things. And part of, I think part of the reason it's, it's worked so far is it took us a long time to get there. Like, we're, I guess, this is, it's almost exactly five years since, since I started every, it was like Thanksgiving of 2019.

• 13:21Dan Shipper?

  Which is crazy. I actually hadn't even thought about that.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Congratulations.

• 13:24Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. And there's been a lot of, a lot of different eras and we've tried a lot of different things, but I think like,

• 13:33Dan Shipper?

  I, I think this, this latest like spurt in, in growth and things that we're doing, it all basically started when you joined. And I think one reason for that is like, obviously you're just like super talented and super hardworking and you've like, brought so much to what we do. And another reason is like, there was a foundation there that like, we could bring you in and there, like, there was a lot of potential energy to unlock.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah.

• 13:55Dan Shipper?

  And I think, I think that's, it's really hard to do that if you've, like, like you've been talking about, like you've raised a big round and you have like, 18 months, like it, we, we raised a little bit of money in 2020, but we never spent it. We have basically the same amount of money that we raised. And I think that afforded us the time to like, let this thing bake a little bit so that, when we hit the right moment, we could like, let it rip a little bit more.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Fuck yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Let it rip. We are letting it rip right now. It's like, the time will tell, I feel like. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it will. It's working. Like, it's working. It's just, it's, something is working. We just don't exactly know what it is and how big it will go.

• 14:39Dan Shipper?

  I think one question on my mind is,

• 14:44Dan Shipper?

  This this this model feels like it should not work. Like if you asked someone a year ago, or two years ago, or three years ago, like, I want to do this with this newsletter, like, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna like, have the newsletter, then we're gonna like make products, and we're gonna like, bring people on to like, help us like, run the products and build more of them. And they would, they would say like, it's not gonna work for like, five different reasons. Um, and and I can list those out, but it is kind of working. Um, and uh, and one of the questions in my mind is like, why is it working now? And I think it is working uniquely now in a way that it may not have been able to like, four or five years ago. And uh, and that, a big reason is AI stuff, like, it is just so much cheaper and faster to make products.

• 15:27Dan Shipper?

  And I'm curious, uh, like, how that has been for you, or like, how that, how using AI tools has like, changed your workflow, your productivity level, or what you're able to do?

• 15:37Speaker 00

  Before I answer the question, I think AI has also made it super easy to do the media part of stuff. I was shocked to see that like, the the images that we have, is like, a custom chat G P T that we have, that like, spits out images, and then we do a little bit of tweaking.

• 15:51Dan Shipper?

  And by the way, this whole podcast, AI-generated.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're not really.

• 15:55Dan Shipper?

  I'm not supposed to tell anybody that.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  But, to answer your question, I think, you know, the obvious answer is, it just allows me to move so much quicker. But it allows me to do also like, the mundane things a little more quicker. Like, I'm able to build tools for myself, in a way that I was never able to do. Um, and like, I think, you know, if we think like, ten, fifteen years ago, if you wanted to kind of do that, you'd have to probably like, get resources and a budget, and like, okay, I want to get three engineers, because we're gonna build this internal tool. And now I could just ask Claude, or Cursor, or Winserve, like, hey, build this internal tool, and it'll like, eighty percent get there, and then I could finish it off.

• 16:30Dan Shipper?

  Didn't you just do that?

• 16:31Speaker 00

  I did just do that. So, some of the spirals that we have, we've built out the data set of examples really well, and it turns something into something. So for example, it turns transcripts into tweets. But we can also use that exact same data set for turning an article into a tweet. And we don't need to build a whole new spiral. So I just built a really quick tool that allows me to take a bunch of spirals that like could easily be twisted into something else. And I could just like, hey, this can also twist into that. And the way that I would have done that otherwise would have been to start from scratch and make them from scratch. We've taken forever. Do it inside the database viewer, which would have taken forever. Or.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Okay, so this is, this is exactly why, like you're saying it shouldn't work. And there's all these reasons why, yes, AI. And then the other thing, which is the hardest part of this business is just choosing the right people to work with. And we were talking a little bit yesterday about like, we weren't really talking about this explicitly, but like it essentially is this. Why you're the right person for this. And maybe we can talk about that a little bit, like what, what? I feel like there's a certain amount of curiosity that you have that is not normal. Or it sort of feels, it sort of feels normal for like a lot of every people, honestly, but it's, it's, it's what I think makes every in the playground special. And.

• 17:46Dan Shipper?

  What was your perception of him and why, why did you want?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  I just had this sense like very, very quickly that he was going to be really into doing all of the things that aren't just engineering. And I.

• 17:58Dan Shipper?

  While also being technical.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  While also being technical, which is so important for us. Like I just got the sense that you were really technical. You had great taste. And I actually, the second we met, I was like, this guy's got great clothing. His hair, his hair looks great. He has a bunch of plants behind him.

• 18:12Dan Shipper?

  So suave.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  He's very suave. I was like, this is not normal for, you know, a incredible engineer. Uh, and, and at least in my experience, and I was like, this is a good start.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  But I think it's like having high IQ, being technical, but then most importantly, having high EQ. Is like a very good test for, for us.

• 18:34Dan Shipper?

  That's what I was gonna say is like, I remember, um, like the first time we talked, Brandon was like, okay, you're gonna talk to this guy. He really wants to build like therapy software. And I was like, yes, we're gonna have a great conversation.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, most of the time when I speak to somebody. And they're like, I want to be an E I R. I know they'll be a good fit if the conversation just goes from like them talking about their background and their work experience to just riffing on an idea. And that's immediately what we started doing.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember the first, literally, we jumped on the Zoom. It was like in the morning and you're like, that's a lot of greenery. And I remember that vividly. I like to call out all the greenery is because of my wife. It's not because of me. Um, you've got to put that in there. That will kill me.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Good taste. You have good taste.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's all me. It's got nothing to do with her. Yeah, I think I, I can't not get in. I feel like I want to put, even though I really love doing one thing and focusing, I love getting my fingers in everything. And yeah, I, I love just like riffing on ideas and taking them a little bit further. The therapy one was really interesting to me for a while until it wasn't.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  And ironically, now it's like, you know, we have a bunch of therapists that are using Spiral and they love it. And it's far better than any of the therapy specific tools that they're using because, and I think that actually is just like, it, it's worth noting that I think one of the reasons that Spiral is going to be so successful is it's so simple. It's so simple and there's something really beautiful about that. And that's something that we should keep in mind as we build it. It's just like, how do we not, how do we always have that feeling even while we pack it with, you know, a lot of interesting functionality?

• 20:10Dan Shipper?

  And I, I think the, the reason it's simple, at least to start, is it came out of something that I was just doing myself. So it's like, it was like this process of like, I was prompting it to like, you know, make tweets, prompting Claude to just make tweets for me. And because it had to be useful, it like, it had to be simple. And so I think we had like, one of the special things about what we have is, everybody is using the stuff we build every day. We're not building for people who are different than, than ourselves, at least not yet. And I think that that feedback loop helped keep, helps keep things simple because we have a better idea of like what's necessary and what's not, and a better idea of like, is it like, is it being overbuilt or, you know, like, is it too complicated now, you know? Yeah, I really like that.

• 20:56Dan Shipper?

  I'm kind of curious, Brandon, like your last business, so like your last business like you raised 50 million bucks for. And just going back to the like, like, why is this working when it kind of like shouldn't? I guess in your view, like, what's different now about this era and about like what we're doing at Everi than than the constraints? Or what was possible when you were running your last business? What have you noticed?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Well, they're very different businesses. I think it's like the first thing I like. You know, decided to build, I cannot imagine more complicated business.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  For my last company, it was.

• 21:33Dan Shipper?

  What was it again for people that don't remember?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  So it was an insuretech business that helped, it helped any brand launch their own version of Apple Care. So I was 22, I'd never built an insurance company before, and I was essentially building an insurance company that also had like this whole tech side of it. And it was just an insanely complicated. Technical feat, financial feat, then we had to like fix people shit, which like I didn't realize when we launched it initially. And it was just really complicated. So I think, I think that the. If I had to boil it all down to one thing, it's just like the simplicity of the second we tried to go build Clyde at Everi, it would consume all of our time.

• 22:13Dan Shipper?

  Because of like the regulations and like the complexity of just like insurance or?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  I think just the size, it was a huge product that we built and it kind of had to be. Because it was, it was B to B to C. So we had to build a business for end consumers. We had to build a business for the businesses that we were selling to. And then we had to build, excuse me, build a product for the insurance companies that we partnered with. So we kind of had to build three products and they all needed to work really well together. And then also e-commerce just sucks to build for. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  And e-commerce merchants are really hard. So I think the, I think the simplicity side of the business of the products that we're making is why we'll be successful. And because I think we're focusing almost inadvertently on like pro sumer type products where we can just convince you as an individual that this is a good thing for you. And if we do our job, you're likely to share it with your coworkers.

• 23:16Dan Shipper?

  That makes sense. What about like abstracting out from your specific Clyde experience? And just like, I think we have a bit of a different ethos for how we're building stuff. Like we're, it's attached to a media business. We're not really like raising that much money, like all that kind of stuff. Versus like, uh, like the more standard venture back startup path of the last 10 or 15 years. Like, what have you noticed is different, either good or bad?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  I mean, I personally, I think it's just all been good. I guess the only bad thing is like, I feel like we maybe have a bit of a ceiling. Where like, we're not going to go from like zero to like 30 million. I mean, we could, but it would just, again, it would consume us. And that wouldn't be a bad thing, Danny, if you wanna, if you wanna do that, we won't be mad.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  So maybe the ceiling is like kind of a bad thing.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  But not really, for all the good things I'm about to say. I think the, the, the biggest differentiator is like, when you raise $50 million, I kind of felt like I personally and the business was always sprinting to make sure that we didn't like topple over ourselves, like we didn't fall forward. Like I was always running to keep my feet under me. And I felt like that personally, and I felt like the business felt like that. And I think here, because we keep things simple, because the types of things that we're choosing to invest in, and because we're not raising money, so we like, don't owe it to anybody except ourselves.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  By the time people listen to this, we will have just sort of put ourselves in a position where we were leaning a little bit far ahead of ourselves, like we were, we were taking a risk. But then we'll take a couple of weeks to like get our feet under us again. And I think just when you raise money, it's hard to do that.

• 25:11Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, I think that that's actually like, you've just put your finger on like something that's been really important for me is like. It's not for me, the reason we didn't raise a lot of money in the last like four or five years is like, it's not because like I don't wanna work hard or be stressed. It's like, there's a very big difference between stress that you put on yourself and you like choose to when it's right, versus like stress about like other people and other people's expectations. And I think for me as a person, I'm just like already so sensitive to like other people that like,

• 25:44Dan Shipper?

  a business that felt like it was, uh,

• 25:48Dan Shipper?

  I could, we could choose when to be stressed, felt like what I, what I wanted, you know? Um, whereas I think some, for other people that are like less sensitive to that, it, it, it doesn't like necessarily change the character of the business quite as much, or they're ma- maybe not as afraid of it as I was. Um, and I just really like that, that freedom to choose to be stressed or not.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:14Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Have you felt this much as a founding engineer?

• 26:17Speaker 00

  The stress? More comes from, like, we need to, not agreeing with the milestones that we're trying to reach, because they feel very short sighted. The thing that's been very apparent to me in just like three, four weeks is,

• 26:35Speaker 00

  not the lack of money, but the lack of just like, we can burn this, cuz we're gonna go raise some more, has forced me to be a little bit more creative, which I really enjoyed. I think like before, I was like, oh, cool, I'm gonna buy five seats for this thing, cool, whatever. Now I'm like, okay, looking at the price. And I'm like, well, do I really need this? Is there, can we be a bit more creative about this? Is there a way that we can get this cheaper? Um, which I think in some places, you know, definitely money is meant to be spent on the right things, but I definitely found that before having venture backed money is like, well, we have money, we should spend it. I was just not being as creative as I could have been. Um, and so that's actually been really useful. In the, um,

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Sort of expectations place, I think right now, what I've been feeling, a lot of my own expectations, which have been very like, I don't know, the fuel from that feels a lot more longer lasting than other people's expectations. That feels like, just thinking about my own like emotional journey, that spiral will happen, no pun intended, happens a lot quicker, whereas right now, this arc feels like it's gonna go a lot further.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Wait, sorry, I want, I want help, I want to make sure I fully understand this. So you're saying, when other people are putting expectations on you, that cycle of feeling stressed about those expectations is like a quicker cycle?

• 27:57Speaker 00

  And then the fuel runs out a lot quicker. Like, I feel like that gives me like, it's like, I'm in a pressure cooker, and that can, and I get a lot of stuff done in a pressure cooker, and it just, that's it, it kind of fizzles out for a couple of weeks. And then it takes a lot of like getting back into it, whereas right now, it's my own expectations, and I kind of, it feels, at least right now, I'll spend a couple of weeks, but it feels like it's gonna take me very far.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Well, one, and I don't know how much like equity you owned in previous companies that you were a part of, but one thing that I found during Clyde was, I could beat the shit out of myself, but kind of only because I felt like, like I owned it. And you, you now own a very significant part of Spiral. And I, I wonder if that plays a part of it at all, is like, you're literally an owner?

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Cause that, that's what's tough about being an equity owner in a business, like being an employee that has equity, is it's really not that much. So like, the second you feel that pain, sort of like, eh, it's not a rocket ship already, so it's really not gonna be worth that much. Which is what's tough about equity as an employee.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  That's not really the case for you, and I wonder if that comes into it at all.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's not been consciously. The counter example of like, my options at other companies has definitely been conscious for me before, in that like, I've always, I've never really exercised my options before, because I've just, it's never made any sense to, and it's never been motivating enough. But I, I couldn't speak to, is that a reason why I'm super motivated right now? It definitely is playing a part into it, for sure.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  You, you did say like- Right answer.

• 29:33Dan Shipper?

  We knew we picked right.

• 29:37Dan Shipper?

  You did say like the way of your own expectations is like sort of what's pushing you forward and it made me think like, what are your expectations for yourself?

• 29:44Speaker 00

  I think, I think I've been telling myself this narrative for a very long time of, I find all these other things interesting and my opinion might mean something in these other places. And a big part of this, for me, I'm seeing this as an experiment, is a big part of this experiment of running Spiral is, are those opinions worth anything? Probably not. And then it's like, okay, well, when I, when reality tells me they're not, how do I react to that? How do I shift and figure out what actually does make sense? Will I figure out what actually makes sense?

• 30:15Speaker 00

  So it's, in the, I'm being a guinea, like, I'm being a guinea pig for every in the studio. Every in the studio is also being a bit of a guinea pig for me. And so it's Spiral. So it's kind of this like symbiotic relationship.

• 30:28Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that there's, I think that that's such a common founder thing is like, this subtle sense of like, I think I could do this a lot better than like, you know, no matter what it is. And, and then, but also kind of like wanting to find out, you know, rather than just sort of like, a lot, I think there's, there's another personality type that's a little bit more like, I think I could do this a lot better, but like, I don't, I'm not gonna try.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Or I'm not, or I think I could do this a lot better, but I'm not going to because I don't get value from it. You know, you sort of need to be like somebody who's like, of course I'm gonna do an amazing job no matter what. Like, I just love it for the love of the game. And this is what makes me feel good.

• 31:08Dan Shipper?

  And often you just kind of get smacked in the face, like, when you try, but then you just sort of keep doing it. And then you learn how to do it.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, like, the way that I described my time running Clyde was, it was just being able to, every day was being able to get punched in the face with a smile on my face and being able to wake up the next day and do it again. And that's what, that's what it was. Not for all seven years, but like maybe five.

• 31:30Dan Shipper?

  Sounds pleasant.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But it's, I think that's true of a lot of people that raise money.

• 31:36Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Especially when it's not going like incredible.

• 31:40Dan Shipper?

  There are, I mean, there are definitely times where this business has felt like that for me, but not recently, which is great. Let's keep the street going.

• 31:50Dan Shipper?

  You know, there's like boards where it's like days since like I was punched in the face.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Days since nuclear disaster, yeah.

• 31:58Dan Shipper?

  I love that sweater.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Is that Greek?

• 32:02Speaker 00

  I didn't get this in Greece.

• 32:10Dan Shipper?

  What else should we talk about?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  I want to talk about, um.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  How I can code with my ring now.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, how you code with so many rings on.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  It really doesn't get in the way.

• 32:18Dan Shipper?

  Wait, you gotta hold the rings up to the camera.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  I have four rings.

• 32:21Dan Shipper?

  There's a lot.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, to be fair, I, um, I bumped on the, this was a couple of weeks ago and I bumped into this guy that I met once at a party. And we kind of like saw each other and we recognized each other. And then he was like, that's a lot of rings. Like we didn't, it wasn't even like, where did we, it was like, oh, we met each other at that guy's party. It was just like, that's a lot of rings. I was like, yeah. You're not running out of fingers anytime soon. And I'm like, okay. And then that was it. Yeah. And then I met him again. He was a great guy, but I tell that story. Yeah.

• 32:47Dan Shipper?

  At what point did you realize that you wanted to start working on your ring game?

• 32:50Speaker 00

  So I bought the aura ring first. Because I was really into like tracking my sleep or whatever.

• 32:55Dan Shipper?

  The gateway drug.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  The gateway drug. And then I was like, oh shit, this looks really good.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And then you said, oh shit, it looks really good?

• 33:05Speaker 00

  I was like, oh, I actually really like how it looks on my hand.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  No, you, you can really pull them off.

• 33:08Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, you can rock it.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  And then I got this one. And then I got this one. And then I got this one.

• 33:12Dan Shipper?

  Are there, is there any special significance?

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Not at all.

• 33:15Dan Shipper?

  Okay.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Do you have any tattoos?

• 33:17Speaker 00

  I don't have any tattoos.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:18Dan Shipper?

  Do you?

• 33:19Speaker 01

  I have one tattoo.

• 33:20Dan Shipper?

  Really?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:20Dan Shipper?

  Where?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Right here.

• 33:21Dan Shipper?

  Oh, wow.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  What is it?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  It's a house. It's like a, it's like the, it's like five lines of a house. I got it when I was studying architecture, Copenhagen. You know, call back to architecture and then also my grandma passed away and sort of all connected to that. I was 18.

• 33:37Dan Shipper?

  I love that.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Abroad. You know, you do these things when you're abroad and you're 18. I don't even see it now though. That's what's like kind of, you know, fascinating. Thing like I literally don't see it on my body.

• 33:47Dan Shipper?

  Did it ever bother you that you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery now?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Um, no.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 33:55Dan Shipper?

  That's good.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is that, I don't think that that's, did, do they do that? I don't want to be buried anyway.

• 34:01Dan Shipper?

  It depends on how serious that they are. Oh, you're gonna do the Brian Johnson, like, don't, don't die thing or?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Oh, no, definitely not. I definitely, I definitely want to die. Please kill me. No, I definitely want to die one day. Uh, the, I, I, uh, I think I just want to be like, honestly, I want to, well, I guess I want, I do want to be buried, but I want to be buried without a casket. I want to just be like, I want to decompose as quickly as possible.

• 34:24Dan Shipper?

  Like ashes scattered to the wind?

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Well, I'm a little bit worried about the ashes thing, cause like, does that sort of negate your ability to like, absorb back into, I don't know.

• 34:35Dan Shipper?

  So you want to, you want to just be like open air?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  No, not open, not open air, just like, I want to be buried with a ton of worms.

• 34:42Dan Shipper?

  I see.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  In like, uh, in the woods or something, like a kind of a moist woods, you know? Fertile, fertile, fertile grounds, damp, yeah.

• 34:50Dan Shipper?

  Uh, okay, interesting. Um, well, I mean, my family business is cemeteries and funeral homes, so I can hook that up for you.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  That's actually, I mean, did you know that?

• 34:57Speaker 00

  I didn't know that, yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, that's like such a fascinating thing, and also your name is W.

• 35:02Dan Shipper?

  It is W. What does that have to do with anything?

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Just two fascinating things.

• 35:06Dan Shipper?

  Those are my two fun.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Those are the two fun facts, yeah.

• 35:08Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, there's, that, that is actually my, my, my number one fun fact is my name is W. My other one, I just got a new fun fact, which is that, uh, I, I drank a wine that was over a hundred years old this weekend.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Wow. Was it good?

• 35:22Dan Shipper?

  I've been storing that one up for the next icebreaker, and this is, this is the next icebreaker. Uh, no, it tasted, it tasted like, um, have you ever had like a really, like, uh, uh, like a very dense balsamic vinegar reduction?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:35Dan Shipper?

  It was like that.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 35:36Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, it was a sherry, um, which, it's, it was cool, yeah. Nineteen, nineteen eighteen or something like that, yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  I feel like you have a lot of interesting things that we don't really know that much about you.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  I don't have, like, I was literally just now trying to think of like fun facts about myself. If we were like talking about things, it would come up, but I, I really struggle to get them from the depths of my head.

• 35:55Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, it's hard when you're on the spot.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  But I just feel like you're an interesting guy generally, like you, like we learned yesterday that you used to fix your mom's car. Are you like, oh, you have, you ride a motorcycle?

• 36:04Dan Shipper?

  And you didn't go to college, right?

• 36:05Speaker 00

  I didn't go to college, no.

• 36:06Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, you got a lot of interesting stuff. Yeah, which one, which one of those do you want to dig into?

• 36:11Speaker 00

  We could pick the why I didn't go to college one, uh, cause I, I think that's a story that I've said a million times, um. When I was like fifteen or so, um, I grew up in London. I grew up kinda near Wimbledon. Wimbledon was like a stone's throw away. Um, my high school was one of the schools that they like select ball boys from. I was never a ball boy. Um, and when I was fifteen, this kid who went to like the next school, um, he built like this summarizer app. You could like give it an article and it would summarize it in four hundred words or two hundred words. And he was a couple of years older than me and he sold it to Yahoo for like some particular amount of money. The app was called Sumly and his name was-

• 36:51Speaker 01

  I remember that. I remember Sumly.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and and Nick something. I don't remember.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. Yeah, I remember seeing interviews with him and stuff and being like, that guy's cool.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  And he was just some kid, a couple of years older than me, who went to a school that was ten minutes away. And that, I saw that and that was like this big, like, what the fuck? What?

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Right, you can do this?

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, like people could do this. And it was a time in my life where like a lot of the conversations at school and like with people in general is like, what am I gonna do with my life? And I did not have an answer.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Is that a conversation in in England? Like, does that like, are they asking, do you, when do you need to decide that? Do they have like liberal arts colleges in the UK?

• 37:27Speaker 00

  No, I don't really know what a liberal arts college is, to be honest.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  We can, we can talk about that later.

• 37:33Dan Shipper?

  Denied.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Never mind. They're they're stupid.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Um, I wouldn't say that it's it's this like, at least for me, at least, was this like subtle conversation that was happening. Because we were in this like moment where you were gonna pick subjects that you were gonna do for the next couple of years. And those subjects that you do then kinda dictate what you're gonna do at university. You, you know, if you're picking maths and the sciences, you're gonna go do something kinda related to that.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  And that dictates your career too. Like, it's, you pick pretty early and then you're like set, basically.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  You're like set, pretty, pretty early on.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  So you just didn't pick? That was strategic?

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Well, so this was a couple of, that's that's a little too early. At that moment in time, I knew that, you know, I was really into uh, computers. I like, when I was a teenager, I was like fucking around with After Effects and I was really into like, um, CGI and like recording little videos and like pretending I had a lightsaber and like making it look like I had a lightsaber. And I think from that, and all of that was me like downloading torrented versions of like Adobe After Effects. And so I was kind of, I had my toe in this like interesting world and was just slowly going deeper and deeper into it. Like, what can you do with technology?

• 38:37Speaker 01

  That's so interesting, cause I was huge on After Effects too, probably around the same time, or I was, I'm a little older than you, but like at the same age. And I wonder if that's kind of a gateway drug to.

• 38:47Dan Shipper?

  It's possible.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Legos and After Effects.

• 38:49Dan Shipper?

  Did you like lightsabers? Cause I was also really into lightsabers.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I actually was not into Star Wars at all, but I think that was like my parents just that didn't. I would have loved, I love it now, so.

• 38:57Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, yeah. I was so into lightsabers that I, you know those like plasma balls? Or it's like a, it's like a like glass ball and it like.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  You could touch it.

• 39:05Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, yeah, you could touch it. So I had one of those in my room. And I really, really wanted to make a lightsaber. Like I spent so much time on like the internet, like trying to figure out if there are any way to make a lightsaber. And somehow I've known, I just spent a lot of time in my room as a kid. I figured out that if you took fart putty, um, which is. You didn't think it was going there, right? If you take fart putty.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  I don't even know what that is.

• 39:28Dan Shipper?

  It's sort of like, it's like, uh.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Is that when you make an air bubble and then you?

• 39:32Dan Shipper?

  It's like play, it's like sort of like Play-Doh material, but it's, um, but it's a little bit more plasticky.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:37Dan Shipper?

  Um, and you, and you can like, it comes in a little can and you can like push it down and then it makes a fart noise. So if you took, if I took fart putty and put it on the plasma ball. And then, um, I got, uh, like, you know, the, uh, the graphite, that pencil lead for, for mechanical pencils. And then if I put a like piece of gra, if I hold up a piece of graphite and put it next to the, the fart putty. I would get this like shooting spark and I was like, it's a lightsaber.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  That's, you count it, yeah.

• 40:05Dan Shipper?

  So then I would like, I would hold it and then I would like put sheets of paper through and like cut it. And I'd be like, I'm, I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi, like I'm.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  I just am loving this image of you doing this. That's awesome.

• 40:17Dan Shipper?

  I almost burned down my house, uh, multiple times, but yeah, it was, it was cool.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I hope I have a kid like you.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Really?

• 40:25Dan Shipper?

  Wow, that's, that's very nice.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope I have a kid that's just like as, cause I wasn't, I was like doing, I wasn't doing, I was doing like digital, like After Effects. I did a ridiculous amount of film when I was younger. And, um, and editing of footage, but I never really did anything. I like pretended to take like calculators apart. And then with the intention of like putting them back together. And then I'd be like, I don't fucking know how to put this. Now it's just a bunch of parts. But you were actually putting them back together.

• 40:53Dan Shipper?

  I, I. You might be giving me a little too much credit. I don't know if I was putting the calculators exactly back together, but I was definitely, I loved.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Danny was putting them back together.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  I, I definitely wasn't putting them, at least at that age.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I thought that, well, what about that time that you like broke your mom's car and then?

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, so I broke my mom, so my mom was gonna get her car serviced and I was like, I wanna go do it.

• 41:12Dan Shipper?

  You were like, I can do it better.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  I could do it better.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I'm 12.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  I think I was like 16 at the time, or maybe 50 or something like that. And I'd just gone down this like rabbit hole of YouTube videos. I was like, I, I could do this. And there's this one company that makes manuals for every single car. It's the Haze Manual. And they, they, their entire business is building like this manual to how to take apart the car and repair it. I, I really love that business. It's really interesting. Um, so I bought the Haze Manual for the car that we had.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Devoured it and then convinced my mom somehow that like she should let her teenage son do her car and she agreed.

• 41:50Dan Shipper?

  That was, that's a little bit on her, to be honest.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, all credit's to my mom. She really did like let me.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  If you had a voice like this at 16, I'd let you do whatever you wanted to do.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  I don't think I had a voice just like this at 16. Imagine this, but a lot more high pitched. Um, and yeah, I most of the way got through totally fine and then cracked a spark plug in half inside the engine block. Um, and then spent weeks figuring out how to get it out. And like, long story short, was like using some like penetrating oil that I could only get from America. And like slowly drilling it out and then forcing it out to go around the threads the other way around. Um, and then I realized that, okay, all the other three spark plugs are gonna be really stuck in there. So I just like soaked the shit out of them in WD-40. Um, and then they came out. And then since then, I've like kind of worked on my own cars. Um, when I moved here,

• 42:44Speaker 00

  there was like this motorcycle repair class that was happening in Bushwick that I took. That was a lot of fun. Um, yeah.

• 42:50Dan Shipper?

  And you have this, this principle that you apply to your life, uh, from, from then on, which is?

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Fuck around and find out.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna say measure twice.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  We, we talked about this, Danny.

• 43:03Dan Shipper?

  I was setting you up, man.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  I actually didn't know.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  I like fuck around and find out better than.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  It's kind of what we're doing here, a little bit.

• 43:12Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, it's like, measure twice, cut once in the front and then fuck around and find out in the back.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely figured out the like, yeah, otherwise you get stuck in situations. You know, it's funny, I think I've, I don't think I've learned that. Life constantly teaches me that lesson over and over and over again. And I hopefully one day I learned that lesson properly.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Or not. I like, I think that maybe the reason why you, like, maybe the three of us have done, you know, built businesses, which is arguably like the stupidest thing that you can do if your goal is to make money. Or like be happy.

• 43:48Dan Shipper?

  Or start a newsletter.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Or start a, definitely start a newsletter. Is because it's sort of like, measure, measure once, cut twice.

• 43:57Dan Shipper?

  Ready, fire, aim.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just sort of like, I'm curious about this and I'm gonna go for it now. Ms. Fernandez, my third grade teacher, always, I remember this very well, said in my report card that I was, what's that word? When you do things without thinking.

• 44:17Dan Shipper?

  Impulsive?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Impulsive, yes. She wrote that in my, in my, in my report card. And I remember thinking, that's not such a bad, like, it was like a bad thing, but I was thinking, that's not, that doesn't sound so bad to me.

• 44:31Dan Shipper?

  I had the same thing. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Pfeiffer, said I was a nutty professor.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Oh my god, that's perfect. I, I, that's like when I called you the drunk uncle that you.

• 44:47Dan Shipper?

  Nutty professor, drunk uncle, it's just, you know, it's just, she was like, you're, you're always thinking about stuff, but you're like, kind of not always there. You're like, you're not always like, you know, grounded or whatever. Yeah. And I thought that was great. And my mom was like, that's terrible. You cannot, you cannot be like that.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  That's, that's perfect.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  I don't have any quotes that I can remember, but my entire time spent at school was thinking, I'm too clever for this and this is fucking boring. And there's more interesting things for me to be doing.

• 45:13Dan Shipper?

  So what did you do after, you know, is it eighteen when you go to college in UK?

• 45:16Speaker 00

  I was like seventeen when I left school, um, and it's.

• 45:19Dan Shipper?

  You graduated high school?

• 45:20Speaker 00

  I graduated high school and then before we got to university in, in the UK, there's like these two years that you do, we have to go get your A levels. And I decided that I wasn't gonna go to university. I was either gonna do computer science or economics. And I didn't have the grades to do economics. And then I went around to all the different universities, like talking to the, the kids who were doing computer science. And I kinda just, it's not that I felt that I already knew what they were talking about. It's that they weren't talking about anything interesting. The, the things they were working on, they weren't building anything cool and it, I don't know, it, it seemed kinda stuffy and not what I wanted to do. Um, at the same time, me and a friend of mine were like getting really hooked into like this idea of startups. We were reading and watching YouTube videos of all this stuff that was happening in San Francisco.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Um, and all of that was really exciting. That was far more exciting in the school. It was far more exciting than go to university for computer science. And then we realized that there was people in London doing the exact same thing. And we just like decided to turn up to like an, an event that someone was hosting. I don't remember what it was, who it was. But it was the first time in my life, and I was like sixteen or seventeen at the time, where adults treated me like an adult. It might be because I had a beard at the time, probably was, but it was like the first time that I really felt like I was being listened to and heard. And people actually cared to hear my opinion. And it was about this kind of stuff. And it was like from that moment on that I was hooked.

• 46:42Dan Shipper?

  I do think that's a very different thing about the tech industry, which is, it's almost nine, it's like ninety-five percent amazing. There's five percent of it's a little bit weird, but like, it's the only industry where, um, one, you're taken seriously based on like what you can do rather than like your credentials. Um, and as a result, it's, it's the only industry where like young people are taken really seriously from the very beginning. And I always felt that too. Like there are so many times in my career where I can. Just remember as like an eighteen year old or like a twenty year old or twenty two year old like saying stuff and like talking to like people who are in their thirties or forties or fifties and they like actually listened.

• 47:24Dan Shipper?

  And I know now like talking to twenty year olds, I'm like, wow, you're you know, nothing.

• 47:31Dan Shipper?

  And I try to pay that forward because like they they were really nice to me.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I feel like in the tech industry, there's there the the. Impact or the the.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Having potential is just as important as having experience and. I think that's also like kind of where VC kind of goes like a bad direction. A good example is giving me a twenty two year old fifty million dollars. Like it's just it's there needs to be sort of we're having a correction like literally right now we're experiencing that but.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  It is a special place where potential is is just as important as experience.

• 48:12Dan Shipper?

  I think that was like the the five percent bad is sort of like.

• 48:16Dan Shipper?

  Sometimes when you give a twenty two year old like fifty million dollars like it it turns out really well and then I I just have a lot a lot of friends for whom it's like. It was a very scarring experience that they didn't really like know what they were getting into and all the adults around them were kind of like. You should go do this like this is this is your time or whatever and I think that's like that's the that's the sort of difficulty of it, you know?

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that's because running a business like yesterday, we were going through. A lot of like P and Ls and figuring out how we like manage taxes for all of these different LLCs and it's like.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  That's not fun and you really need to pay attention and do it right. And when you're twenty two, you're sort of like none of this matters. I can like do whatever I want. But like that can come to bite. Not that that was my situation, but. It very well could have been.

• 49:05Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. But also, and then it's also like you just like there's a, there's a lot of weight that is on you that you don't even realize how it's gonna feel until you're in that position. Like you're thinking of yourself like, cool, like I'll be the CEO of this company. It'll be amazing and like I'll have all these people working for me and I'll have all this money. And it seems awesome and then it is awesome until things start going wrong. And then it's like, um, it just, it can just be really hard to handle it like last years. Yeah, for people.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's definitely, I think about the things that one has to do in running a business. And they're like, if I was 22 and I had to like hire people, fire people, like I don't know if I would have done that well.

• 49:43Dan Shipper?

  It's a school of hard knocks for sure.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  But such a, I mean, I, I feel like we're,

• 49:51Speaker 01

  I don't know if we're shitting on it, but like it, it is also an incredible thing where you just learn so much and you mature. I feel like it enables you to like mature really quickly, both professionally and personally. But you're still kind of like controlling your own destiny a little bit. So you get to mature in a sense that in, in a way that also feels like I can own my life versus like I'm going to just dedicate the next 50 years working for, just doing a job. Like I, I definitely, you know, I feel like that's probably the case for all of us. We're all like around 30 and it's odd to be around 30 and sort of feel like I'm going to live my life exactly the way that I want it and I can.

• 50:32Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, I, I, I do, I do really, really love that. And yeah, I don't, I definitely don't mean to say like 22 year olds shouldn't run businesses or raise money. It's just like, it's, it's pretty situational and I think sometimes they get pushed into things that they wouldn't ordinarily do. And by people who, who are older and know better than them. And I think that's kind of, that kind of sucks.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  So Ezra Galston, who is one of my investors and I think is like one of the best investors I've ever worked with. He runs a VC called Starting Line. He explained it to me as multiple different types of founders. You can have a freshman founder, which is like you're super naive. And you don't know how hard something is going to be. And you can have a sophomore and a junior founder, which I forget how we define those, but imagine it somewhere between freshman and senior, which is I've done this before. I know how hard it is. I'm gonna take on only the amount of money that I need. And he basically was like, you only really want to invest in senior founders and freshman founders. Cause the ones in the middle are kind of like, maybe a little stuck up. They didn't learn their lesson hard enough.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  You know, one way or the other. And I don't know what you are yet.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  I feel like, I don't know. I don't, yeah, maybe you like also exist outside of this. Cause we're not, we're not investing any money.

• 51:48Dan Shipper?

  Off the charts.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're off the charts. Yeah. Yeah. You never went to college.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think if I was to define myself in those, in, in that constraint, I would say I'm much more on the earlier side.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  But yeah, I feel like that constraint doesn't necessarily fit. Yeah.

• 52:07Dan Shipper?

  One thing on my mind, cause we're, we're sort of, we're getting close to the end and just to sort of like bring it back to Spiral stuff. Cause like, I love the idea, and we've done this a bit in other parts of the every journey. But like, I love the idea of having these conversations as like little time capsules. And so this is sort of a time capsule of the very start of your Spiral journey, your every journey. And I'm kind of curious for you, like, if we, and there's no right answer to this, but like, like when we come back in a year and we're like on, on the pod and we're, we're doing the like one year review.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  V3.

• 52:45Dan Shipper?

  Hopefully V6.

• 52:48Dan Shipper?

  And you know, GPT-7 is out and like whatever, like, you know, where do you hope to be? What, what is it? What does success look like for you?

• 52:57Speaker 00

  I think where I want Spiral to go to in the next year, beyond like being in a, you know, being used by a bunch of businesses and stuff. I think the product, I want it to stay simple. But simple doesn't mean stupid. I think it's, it has this opportunity to be really clever and.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  Automate things for people in a way that they didn't really realize that it could be automated. I think the thing that I think about a lot about AI in general is that I think most people have tried AI. They've asked ChatGPT for a joke or whatever, but there is that that and that's it. And they've never tried it again. I think there's this world of businesses and individuals who are not really utilizing the tools that we have right now. I think Spiral is simple enough that it's simple and powerful enough that it can be really easy to use and be impactful enough to their day to day lives. I think getting it in the hands of more people with a lot of the advancements that we want to work on, making it easy to share, making it a little bit more powerful, so it's doing even more for you.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  I think would be exactly where I want Spiral to be in a year.

• 54:00Dan Shipper?

  I love that. I mean, and I hope you also learn kind of like the things that you seem like you're you you want to learn, which is like, do I know better? Can I can I do all the other stuff in addition to the engineering stuff? And yeah, I I also like, I think, you know, I love I love those things you mentioned, like I love Spiral as this kind of like. For me, it operates as this like inspiration machine where like I can just like if I'm doing a task like, you know, I have to write a tweet or like I have to, you know, do a do a like YouTube description or whatever. I can just like throw some input into Spiral and it just gives me so many different options. And I would love like, you know, we were just going through a bunch of a bunch of the every created spirals today and

• 54:46Dan Shipper?

  you surfaced for me so many spirals that are there that I didn't even know. And I would love for it to like 10 10x its ability to act as that sort of like machine where it's like I can just see tons and tons of different possibilities and get through them as quickly as possible to find the thing that has that like little spark. I think there's so much opportunity to do that and I feel like I feel like we're going in that direction and yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be really cool in a year.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's gonna be really cool. I mean, what we're shipping now is really cool and I think it's just gonna get better from there.

• 55:17Dan Shipper?

  What about you? What are you?

• 55:20Dan Shipper?

  What are you hoping for? What are you? Where would you like to be? You know, if we go one level up from Spiral to like Studio in a year?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  So we have we have three products that are all in a sort of similar place. We've got.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Sparkle, Spiral, and Cora, which is the product that we haven't announced yet.

• 55:46Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  And I would love a year from now for all of those to have, for all of those to like feel stable, not like technically stable because they're they're all technically stable, but more more like they have a plan. We have some understanding of the levers that like make them work. And we're able to pull on those levers however we want. So I would like that for all of for those three products. And I think my hope for the rest of the studio is that,

• 56:25Speaker 01

  one, we're able to like offer resources to like Danny, Karen, like all the other EIRs that allow them to do their best work in things that they're maybe not great at or like don't have the skill sets for. We can supplement them with like the best people. Like a really good example is like performance marketing, kind of really hard to do like well. And you should know all of our EIRs and anybody who's running a business at every, I think should know how to do it. But maybe you don't need to because we have somebody who's actually 10x better than you.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  So I'd like to be able to like supply a lot of those resources. And I hope we can increase the experimentation level.

• 57:08Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  I think that like we're moving ridiculously fast compared to other studios and other people. Like I think we build a lot, but I think we can also do more.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Like it's been playful, but I think it can be even more playful.

• 57:22Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  And I think that what will enable that is like having these three businesses functioning in a way that we are like, okay, we know how to do it, so let's just have fun.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  And then if any of these land, we know how to do it.

• 57:34Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, I think like figuring out the model because like we now we've got three of them. And like, I think we can step back and like, look at like what's worked and what hasn't. And like, kind of zoom in more on what's worked. I think for me, I would love like,

• 57:50Dan Shipper?

  I think this studio and then Spiral and all these other products are big bets. And I would love to be in a place in a year where we've like really figured out how to like make the media side and the product side like really work together well and feel like the media stuff is adding to the products and the products are adding to the media. And that's what I think there's this like really special core thing that's happening right now where I go into Discord every day and there's like smart creative people like all talking to each other and it's like there's founders, there's writers, there's designers, there's like all these people and I think that that's so different. Usually people are like in their own little silos and stuff and I want to like keep that going because I think it'll grow into something like really beautiful and special.

• 58:33Dan Shipper?

  And so that's that's sort of that's where I'd love to be in a year.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the hardest thing for us honestly is going to be looking at the data and being like this feels like the right data. Like I feel like we're constantly going to look at the data and be like this isn't. It's just going to be hard to figure out exactly what you're saying, which is like, are they playing nicely together? Like, we're going to be able to figure out a little bit, but it's also just going to be like, it's this sort of, it's this amorphous, it's just hard. It's going to be hard to do that.

• 59:02Dan Shipper?

  I don't think that, I don't think that I'm necessarily saying, I think that there will be a really clear number where I'm like X is.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Vibes.

• 59:10Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, it's just gonna, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a vibes thing and that's like, and I think we have the vibes now and I want the vibes to continue and get better. And that's the most important thing to me. Yeah.

• 59:22Dan Shipper?

  I feel like there's a lot of, there are a lot of like metaphors of business building that are sort of like about like going to war. And I feel like every, for me is like, it's more, it's like more like growing like a garden or something, you know? And you gotta like, like make the conditions right for things to like flourish. And that's a very vibes type of thing. So may the vibes continue.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  May the vibes continue.

• 59:50Dan Shipper?

  This is great. Thanks, uh, thanks Danny for joining.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 59:53Dan Shipper?

  Brandon, thanks for joining.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Thanks, Dan.

• 59:55Dan Shipper?

  This is great.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, folks. You absolutely, positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard. But instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about ChatGPT. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat, craving for more. It's not just a show. It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor. Hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely, hopelessly in love with you.