Ryan Heneise

Building @MemberDrive_org
Hobbit @RagtimeRanch
Building AI concierge service

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

Now you have the glossary I wish I'd had a couple of months ago...

https://t.co/pEoX0FQKYy

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@leahmcelrath What do you mean "work in AI"? Fo you mean work with AI, or work for a company that is building AI?

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@dexhorthy "Why do you keep Claudesplaining me?"
- Dot, probably

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@dexhorthy Dot is highly offended

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@RealPlantBrah @PTI_Turf You can hook Grokbot up to a snail mail service like https://t.co/VwnelMZxKe (or others)

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

I tasted this once and ever since then I've been longing to recreate it.

[John Doherty 👍 @dohertyjf]

I'll just say it.

The ultimate business is $400k per year.
- No employees.
- Minimal overhead. (sub 10% of revenue)
- 20 hours a week.
- 40 weeks a year.

I will not be taking questions at this time.

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@dohertyjf This is the dream.

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@dhh I've got 8, and oldest just gave me my first grandbaby. Priceless.

[LootCastPuff @LootCastPuff]

@komal_uk01 Farming is the ultimate form of software - you plug seeds into the terminal, check for bugs, and harvest bounties.

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

Not too long ago I was embarrassed to admit that I had "vibe coded" something. How quickly things have changed.

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

I'm old enough to remember when vibe coding was a perjorative.

[DHH @dhh]

It takes a while to build the confidence, but there's no future where you're manually reviewing every line of agent code. Not much acceleration in that. You need adversarial agent reviews, you need automated testing, and maybe you spot check. That's it. From prompt to production!

[Dan Loewenherz @dwlz]

I honestly don’t care at all that I spend 30 years of my life learning syntax and now that knowledge is essentially useless.

Frankly, I’m relieved that I don’t need to care about it anymore. That stuff never really mattered anyways. Code was always just a means to an end.

All I care about is building products that users love. Now I can do that faster. That means I can have bigger impact.

If anything, software engineers should all be celebrating. I don’t understand why you’d “mourn” not needing to write code. The code was never the point.

[SMB Attorney @SMB_Attorney]

“We’re going to buy businesses and implement AI.”

Guys, with the exception of maybe a handful of people or firms, I’m not sure many people have a better front-row seat to the small and lower-middle-market acquisition ecosystem than we do.

We take 200+ calls every month from prospective buyers, searchers, independent sponsors, family offices and private equity funds.

And that doesn’t include the orders of magnitude more conversations we see through communities, group chats, conferences and the hundreds of transactions that move through our firm.

Based on our own deal volume and what we see in the market, we believe we’re among the most active law firms serving the lower-middle-market M&A ecosystem in the country.

And I can tell you:

“We’re going to buy businesses and implement AI” is EVERYONE’S thesis right now.

Greg’s piece is thought-provoking, and I think his broader point is right: everyone buying or operating a business should be thinking seriously about how AI can be layered into the company to improve productivity, reduce costs and expand margins.

That is absolutely where things are going.

And damn it, it’s a GOOD thesis.

I say “good,” not “great,” because there is a huge assumption buried inside it:

That you actually get to the part where you can focus on growth and AI implementation.

The acquisition lifecycle usually looks something like:

1. Acquire
2. Stabilize
3. Grow
4. Exit

AI implementation is largely part of Step 3... Growth.

But before you get to Step 3, you have to survive Step 2.

And Step 2 is where things get real.

> You inherit employees you didn’t hire.
> Customers you didn’t acquire.
> Vendors you didn’t negotiate with.
> Processes you didn’t design.
> Technology you didn’t choose.
> Financial statements you didn’t prepare.
> A culture you didn’t create.

And often years of institutional knowledge sitting inside the head of a seller who just got wired a life-changing amount of money and is mentally halfway to the beach.

Meanwhile, the debt payment is due every month.

A lot of acquirers get stuck somewhere between Stabilize and Grow for years.

> They fix people problems.
> They replace customers.
> They rebuild accounting.
> They improve working capital.
> They learn the industry.

They deal with equipment breaking, key employees quitting, sellers behaving strangely, unexpected capex and a thousand other things that never appeared in the CIM.

They put out near CONSTANT fires.

They service the debt.

They hold on for dear life.

They may still create seven figures of wealth...

But they never really reach the clean, optimized growth phase they imagined when they built the model.

That’s why I think assuming you can simply acquire a business and quickly increase EBITDA margins by the magnitude Greg is describing will be wishful thinking in most cases.

Not because he’s wrong about the opportunity.

He isn’t.

AI can absolutely improve margins.

It can reduce administrative labor, improve sales processes, accelerate quoting, enhance customer service, automate workflows and create enormous operating leverage.

Everyone should be thinking about how to use it.

But growth requires stability, management bandwidth, good systems, clean data and capital.

AI is a tool.

It is not a substitute for competent operations.

You still have to buy the right company.

At the right price.

With the right capital structure.

You still have to retain the right people.

Protect the customer base.

Understand working capital.

Manage cash.

Navigate the transition.

And actually operate the thing.

So if you’re considering acquiring a lower-middle-market business, do your homework, hire good advisors and go in with your eyes wide open.

Greg is right that AI creates a massive opportunity for business owners and acquirers.

But the hard part is still getting the business into a position where you can actually capture it.

This is hard as FUCK.

And AI didn’t make that part any easier.

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

Any day I get to ride the tractor is a good day.

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

A benchmark score can’t be separated from the model, harness, tooling stack, budget, and scoring rules that produced it. Evaluate the full end-to-end workflow and document exactly where it breaks—including partial failures and any human intervention needed to push it across the finish line.

https://t.co/oAZrI4yTH6

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@brentkearney @OmarchyMac @dhh @OmarchyLinux Cool! If you're sending from not-a-mac and you have Tailscale you can also use my Taildrop plugin.

https://t.co/a1FtgZlNuO

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

I built an @OmarchyLinux plugin that brings @Tailscale Taildrop right to your fingertips.

https://t.co/4x8FguPcrO

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

Building stuff is so fun now!

https://t.co/4x8FguOECg

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

I built an @OmarchyLinux plugin that brings @Tailscale Taildrop right to your fingertips.

https://t.co/4x8FguPcrO

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@thekitze You must have good eyes.

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

You can see a clear progression in my commit history from hand coding to accepting Cursor's autocomplete to full agentic coding.

[Steve Derico @stevederico]

I loved my 20+ years writing code by hand

July 2025 switched to coding only by agent, it was clear it was time

I would never go back

Now I live in the fantasy world:

- I bring my ideas to reality 10x faster
- I ship without sitting in front of my machine
- I build things I never had the skills to write by hand

it’s still building software. just applying the principles differently

I love building today more than any day before

[Ryan Heneise @ryenski_dev]

@peteonrails Any day you get to ride the tractor is a good day.