.png&w=3840&q=75)
Dan Shipper is the CEO and cofounder of Every. Every week he explores the frontiers of AI in his column, Chain of Thought, and on his podcast, ‘AI & I.’
How to Make Yourself Into a Learning Machine
Shopify’s director of production engineering explains how reading broadly helps him get to the bottom of things
Oct 25, 2023 · 14 min readUpdated Jun 26, 2026
Sponsored By: LiveFlow
This essay is brought to you by LiveFlow, North America’s #1 Financial Analysis Software.
Planning your 2024 Budget but don’t know where to start? LiveFlow has already made the financial models and templates. Budget vs Actuals by Department, 13-week Cash Flow Forecasting, Consolidation… All you have to do is plug and play. Just connect your QuickBooks Online to their models and it’ll be fully set up in minutes. Say goodbye to manually entering financial data. Say hi to automatic updates of your custom models and fully streamlined financial management. Get 20% off for 3 months with promo code EVERY.
LiveFlow, the ideal choice for automation and efficiency. #1 Easiest to use software for Financial Planning & Analysis by G2.
Editor’s note: We're approaching the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT, a knowledge and information machine unlike any we have ever before created. As we reflected on the role of knowledge, we also wondered what the future of learning would be. How can we learn in the age of AI? What role (if any) do books have? This interview, which we published before the rise of generative AI, might give us a window.
Imagine this: you’re an 18-year-old with just a high school degree. You immigrate to a new country that speaks a different language, and start work with some of the brightest engineers in the world.
Soon after, you’re thrust into management. Now, you’re leading teams of people who are 10 or 20 years older than you, working on one of the fastest-growing internet companies of the last decade.
You have two options: sink or swim.
That’s the position Simon Eskildsen found himself in early in his career. He left his home in Denmark after high school, and moved to Canada alone to take a pre-college gap year working at Shopify.
Create a free account, or log in.
Every members live and work at the edge of AI. Join now.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Sale, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy.
Enjoy unlimited access to all of Every.
See subscription optionsThanks to our Sponsor: LiveFlow
Thanks again to our sponsor, LiveFlow. Why hire more when you can do more? LiveFlow shaves 5 weeks off your year by taking care of the tedium of reporting, so you can focus on the work that matters most.
With ready-to-go models and templates, your only task is to connect your QuickBooks. The magic begins when LiveFlow integrates your QuickBooks financial data into custom models in Google Sheets, fully automating your reporting and FP&A analysis.
Uncover a leaner, more efficient way to do financial reporting with LiveFlow – #1 Easiest to use software for Financial Planning & Analysis by G2.
Get 20% off for 3 months with promo code EVERY.