Chance Riley

Building growth engines for product-led consumer brands @ Margin Department.

[Steven Borrelli @stevenborrelli]

We went through 3 CFOs.

Every single one told us the same thing:

"Cut marketing."

They were all wrong.

The question should have never been:

"How do we spend less?"

The question should have been:

"How do we spend as much as humanly possible"

So we cut everything else:

$500k/month in OPEX
improved product margins
tech spend
vendors that weren't delivering

And spent 3x more on marketing.

The result?

Growth exploded.

Profitability nearly doubled.

The customer acquisition flywheel came back to life.

One of the most dangerous things a founder can do is hire smart people and assume they're right...especially CFO's who are bouncing from brand to brand...

People from great companies often know their business.

Not yours.

[Driveline Softball @DrivelineSB]

OGX has partnered with @DrivelineBB to co-found Driveline Softball and this is a massive deal for the sport.

Ashley and I are leading it. Our full staff is coming with us. And now we have the backing of the most data-driven development organization in the world, fully invested in softball.

Better tech. A training app. Improved tracking. Direct access to sport scientists and R&D built to push the game forward faster than ever.

In-person training coming to Tampa, Phoenix, and Washington. More details soon.

The game will never be the same. We are just getting started.

Krista and Ashley
Driveline Softball

#betonme

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

The fact that this needs to be said tells you everything about how far removed the people funding commerce infrastructure are from the actual humans they’re supposed to be building it for

[Apoorva Govind @Appyg99]

As someone that was a true believer of agentic commerce last year & ultra skeptic this year — The problem is this belief that humans want agents shopping for them.

Other than a few efficiency obsessed nerds, most customers don't just hand off their wallet to some bot to buy stuff without being able to be a part of the decision irrespective of what the stated preferences are. Shopping is a conscious and important decision for 90% of households. A pleasurable hobby for many.

Unless somehow you manage to change this human behavior (highly unlikely), agentic commerce needs to be restructured around discovery and less around payments and actual conversion.

[Ecomm Cowboy @ecommcowboy]

FULL INTERVIEW | @willroman

How @ChisosBoots competes with brands 100x larger (doing fewer things, better).

2:20 - Product > Everything
7:10 - Moving to Mexico for a Better Boot
12:00 - Competing With 100x Bigger Brands
23:20 - The Future of Chisos in 2026

[Alden González @Alden_Gonzalez]

I spent two days in Arizona last week with 22-year-old White Sox catcher Edgar Quero as he went through Driveline’s hitting program for the first time.

What it entailed, and what it says about the state of the game …
https://t.co/9jVwRKcCZD

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@dennishegstad Should’ve gone with @ChisosBoots!

[FSU Baseball @FSUBaseball]

New FSU Pitching Lab Ready for Launch 🚀

FSU Baseball 🤝 @DrivelineBB

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@rishabhmjain AI search 🙏

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

Very interesting study on genAI creative effectiveness.
AI created ads > human created ads > AI modified ads

Theory is that giving AI full creative freedom was the driver of better performance vs. limiting it to just modifications, which underperformed. 🤔

[Anindya Ghose @aghose]

1/ Creative advertising is getting disrupted in an AI-first world. As targeting tightens and attention fragments, brands are turning to visual genAI to scale. A key question: should AI create ads end-to-end—or just assist humans? Our new working paper ( with Hyesoo Lee, @vtodri and @padamopoulos ) looks into this.

[Travis Sawchik @Travis_Sawchik]

Thrilled to be joining @DrivelineBB in a part-time capacity to help place a spotlight on research/athletes/training/other cool stuff happening here and around the game. First story? We had Inside Edge grade 19 Greg Maddux starts. What did we learn?
https://t.co/aITeCh6ba8

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@seanfrank ai will just abstract away all of the work that isn't core to the actual value delivered to a customer - product, hospitality, storytelling.

Much easier for a new brand to do this with a clean slate than for an old brand to endure the pain of clearing the decks.

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

Charlie Munger’s elementary worldly wisdom for media buyers (or anyone else who could benefit from being a stronger generalist)

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@sarah_carusona Congrats Sarah! Love this new paradigm, can't wait to see how it evolves over time.

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@aviarora_12 @JaiDolwani @HireTheStarters Definitely could be a fit! @JaiDolwani

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@TheBillRom @andrewjfaris 100%. It also requires the brand/product to actually have substance behind it in order to pull it off. That’s probably where most fall short, you can’t “fake” your way to organic growth.

You guys are a great example of this (in the good way obviously)

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@TheBillRom @andrewjfaris When all you got is a hammer, everything's a nail.

I didn’t fully know that until I worked on a brand that grows mostly through organic. Turns out there are so many more levers beyond just paid...

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@gaby_goldberg Accountability.

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@ZachCPG Would this also be true for Meta/YouTube/etc? Or is TikTok unique?

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

Question for DTC twitter. Do you think it’s possible to be a great advertiser on a platform, without personally being a user of that platform?

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@jforjacob What drew you to N8N instead of zapier/make?

[Chance Riley @chanceriley_]

@herrmanndigital Yessir! ✋