How Dan Shipper’s AI-first company built 4 apps

How Dan Shipper Builds AI Tools by Living in the Future
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Every’s style guide + prompt
https://l.thenextnewthing.ai/r/rjyLzl

What if building great AI products wasn’t about market research—but about solving your own problems first? In this episode, Andrew Warner talks to Dan Shipper (founder of Every) about how he and his team built a portfolio of breakout AI tools—Monologue, Spiral, Cora, and Sparkle—by living just a few steps ahead of what the market even knows it needs.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Intro Montage
00:52 – Every’s portfolio: Monologue, Spiral, Cora, and Sparkle
01:48 – How many people use their tools today?
02:15 – Mostly bootstrapped, with a small raise from Reid Hoffman
04:00 – Building based on internal needs and workflows
06:45 – Monologue’s origin story: weekend build, instant love
09:00 – Why Monologue works for “hybrid language” thinkers
10:30 – Writing → Building → Sharing: the creative flywheel
12:00 – Dan’s AI rituals: Journaling, reading, and thinking
15:00 – Using GPT for self-reflection and lightweight therapy
17:30 – Getting through dense philosophy (e.g., Kierkegaard) with AI
19:00 – Spiral’s evolution from summarizer to ghostwriter
21:00 – Cora: an AI assistant that preps your inbox
23:00 – Sparkle: automatic file organization, context-aware
25:00 – How Dan uses AI to create team handbooks and meetings
27:00 – The “interviewer agent” and writing in your voice
30:00 – Why Spiral isn’t just a wrapper—it’s a writing copilot
33:00 – “Software is the new content”: product = publishing
35:00 – AI is the new Excel, and apps are the new templates
37:00 – How Every maintains creativity while growing beyond 10 people
40:00 – “Smuggled Intelligence” and why AI benchmarks need humans
43:00 – Launching without distribution: the value of momentum
46:00 – Dan’s personal life as product inspiration (love, thoughts, therapy)

💡 What You’ll Learn

How to build AI tools that are genuinely useful—without chasing trends

Why Dan believes in living in the future to spot what’s next

How Every uses their own tools to improve meetings, writing, and systems

Why content, products, and workflows are all converging

Tactical breakdowns of Spiral, Monologue, Cora, and Sparkle


Dan Shipper Every, Spiral AI, Monologue app, Cora email assistant, Sparkle file organizer, AI startup tools, bootstrapped SaaS, AI writing tools, AI for journaling, AI productivity apps, GPT for thinking, AI therapy use, AI benchmarks, smuggled intelligence, building with LLMs, Andrew Warner podcast, product-led AI

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