How We Incubate and Launch New Products With AI

TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. I go in depth with Danny Aziz, the general manager of Spiral, and Brandon Gell, our head of Studio and consulting. We get into how the right technology and the right people can make magic, the power of learning by doing, and the direction of Every one year from now. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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. 

Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

If you want a quick summary, here’s a taste for paying subscribers:

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What makes Every’s flywheel turn

The traditional startup playbook is to raise venture capital and hire a team to execute your vision. Brandon says that Every’s model is the “complete opposite…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 resources.” I think this model is working in a way that it may not have four to five years ago, and one of the questions I’ve been thinking about deeply is: Why is it working now? We discussed this question on the show, and this is what emerged:

Emerging technology  

A big reason why Every’s model is working today is AI. The technology has made it cheaper and faster to make delightful products, a philosophy that has seeped into all parts of Every’s business.

• AI that makes you agile. Danny moves faster because of AI—for example, he used it to build an internal tool that helps him make new Spirals faster than he ever could manually. “Ten [or] 15 years ago, if you wanted to do that, you'd have to probably get resources, and a budget…and now I could just ask Claude or Cursor, or Windsurf, ‘Hey, build this internal tool,’ and it 80 percent get[s] there, and then I can finish it off.”
• Tell stories with images. The art that accompanies each of our articles is generated by a custom GPT created by our in-house creative lead Lucas Crespo, who then tweaks the images to his liking. Danny was “shocked to see” the quality of results generated by the custom GPT, noting that “AI has also made it super easy to do the media part of stuff.”

High-quality people

According to Brandon, “choosing the right people to work with” is another reason why Every’s model is successful. This is what makes someone “right” for Every: 

• Driven by curiosity. A shared quality that stands out among the people on the team is a deep curiosity about the world. “[M]ost of the time when I speak to somebody and they're like, ‘I want to be an EIR,’ I know there'll be a good fit if the conversation goes from them talking about their background and their work experience to just riffing on an idea,” Brandon says. 
• Teamwork rooted in emotional intelligence. Beyond being competent, people on Every’s team are deeply sensitive to the interpersonal dynamics of working with each other every day. “[H]aving a high IQ, being technical, but then most importantly, having a high EQ is a very good test for us.”

Why Every chooses to stay small and move fast

There’s a big difference between the stress you choose to put on yourself and the stress of other people’s expectations—and one of the reasons why Every hasn’t raised a lot of money is to avoid the latter. As someone who is very sensitive to other people, I knew our business would be stronger if we had the freedom to choose when we wanted to push ourselves. This is how Brandon and Danny think we are differentiated from a traditional VC-backed startup:

• Prioritize a sustainable pace. Drawing from his venture-backed startup days, Brandon remembers the exhausting hamster wheel of always reaching for more—a contrast to Every’s calmer approach to shipping. “I, personally, and the business was always sprinting to make sure that we didn't…fall forward, I was always running to keep my feet under me…and I think here…we don’t owe it to anyone but ourselves.”
• Build with intention. Danny is learning a new, more thoughtful way of building things at Every, where instead of defaulting to spending VC money, he’s challenging himself to think about questions like: “Do I really need this? Can we be a bit more creative about this? Is there a way we can get this cheaper?” 

What does the future of Every look like

I like thinking about conversations like this as time capsules of sorts—this one, for instance, marking the beginning of Danny’s journey at Every as the general manager of Spiral. With that in mind, I invited Brandon and Danny to reflect on how they see the Studio, our product incubation arm, and Spiral evolving over the next year:

• Brandon: “We've got Sparkle, Spiral, and Cora—which is the product that we haven't announced yet—and I would love a year from now…[to] have some understanding of the levers that make them work and we're able to pull on those levers however we want…My hope for the rest of the Studio is that we're able to like offer resources to…all the other EIRs that allow them to do their best work…and I hope we can increase the experimentation level.” 
• Danny: “I think most people have tried AI—they've asked ChatGPT for a joke or whatever—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—and I think Spiral is simple enough and powerful enough that it can be really easy to use and be impactful 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…I think would be exactly where I want Spiral to be in a year.”

As for me, I would love to be in a place in a year where we’ve figured out how to make the media side and the product side work well together seamlessly. When I go into Discord every day, there’s smart, creative people—founders, writers, designers—all in one place, talking to each other, and I want to keep that going because I think it’ll grow into something beautiful and special. 

You can check out the episode on X, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Links and timestamps are below:

• Watch on X
• Watch on YouTube
• Listen on Spotify (make sure to follow to help us rank!)
• Listen on Apple Podcasts

Timestamps:

1. Introduction: 00:01:08
2. All about Spiral, the tool we recently launched: 00:02:15
3. Why Danny left a $200,000 salary to work at a bootstrapped media company: 00:04:06
4. How we do a lot of things well at Every: 00:10:33
5. What makes Every’s flywheel turn: 00:14:44
6. The kind of people who fit right in at Every: 00:17:11
7. How Every is differentiated from a standard VC-backed startup: 00:23:25
8. How Danny found his way into the world of startups: 00:36:11
9. The tech industry’s affinity for potential over experience: 00:46:43 
10. Where each of us sees ourselves in the next one year: 00:52:38

What do you use AI for? Have you found any interesting or surprising use cases? We want to hear from you—and we might even interview you. Reply here to talk to me!

Miss an episode? Catch up on my recent conversations with star podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, a16z Podcast host Steph Smith, economist Tyler Cowen, writer and entrepreneur David Perell, founder and newsletter operator Ben Tossell, and others, and learn how they use AI to think, create, and relate.

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Dan Shipper is the cofounder and CEO of Every, where he writes the Chain of Thought column and hosts the podcast AI & I. You can follow him on X at @danshipper and on LinkedIn, and Every on X at @every and on LinkedIn.

We also build AI tools for readers like you. Automate repeat writing with Spiral. Organize files automatically with Sparkle. Write something great with Lex.