Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️)

Bootstrapped a Solar Company in Texas to $50m in revenue in under 3 years.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

Operations is a series of mini-game problems strung together.

You’ll find reoccuring themes in the type of mini-games you are playing.

I’m going to be writing about 1 Mini-Game per week so follow along by bookmarking this thread because I will be updating it each time I post a new one.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

$35m rev Construction Firm was spending $150k per week in subcontractor labor. We built an ILP Solver Algorithm that scheduled projects cost efficiently given considerations for travel/locations of customers, stages of projects, qualifications of subcontractors, etc.

We reduced their labor spend per project by 17% and increased their weekly productivity.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@boardyai Going for the deep niches that most horizontal AI firms won't go to the depth to uncover and also where the most value lives.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@BosCardHunter That’s a really rare PSA Misprint. Should add 20% to the value of a 10

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@stevehunsaker1 Coperniq is by far the best Home Service CRM.

Way more customizable workflows that reduce the translation inefficiency of process to software and has built in AI Agents so you don’t need to piece together your own setup.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@paulcarldigital @UnkleTio @BamaBallCards 👀

How can I get more details about the ad space idea

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@paulcarldigital @UnkleTio @BamaBallCards Finding your posts may have converted me to a box guy.

We are ramping order volume so the saved time per order sounds attractive.

Also thinking down the line we can print our logo on boxes and bulk order 1-2000 custom boxes

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@paulcarldigital @UnkleTio @BamaBallCards Let me rephrase. I’m not holding an ego about bubble mailers. How do you physically carry them all in 😂

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@paulcarldigital @UnkleTio @BamaBallCards What happens when you walk into the post office with 30-40 boxes 😂

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@paulcarldigital @WeedVet @JayBobSons How many cards can fit in either of those?

Do you have a guide on # of cards being shipped = this method of shipping?

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@DallasAptGP @jarrett_woods Is Starbase, TX an OZ zone?

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@izqui9 Do I keep sitting there checking out and returning the item and checking out again until I win the spin the wheel?

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@curtismakes @BoringBiz_ Purely on the SWE topic of AI Replacement theory, my thesis is that we are going to need even more of them because the in-housing cost of building custom software just got dramatically cheaper and the market growth will outpace the shrinkage of large platform SaaS companies.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@Minty_Gem_Cards Another alternative would be to have a cash price above Market.

If they are willing to pay above market to have it today then that would be worth it for you

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@Minty_Gem_Cards For someone looking to buy from the trade wall, you can set up a locator/broker service where you take their information down and attempt to find that card for them.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

Just found this listing on https://t.co/8E6qQDNKb9

Can anybody guide me if it qualifies for an SBA Loan?

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

Quick thing I’ve observed about selling AI/Custom Tool Implementations.

Never tell the buyer how fast you can implement. They won’t believe you and it’ll add a rebuttal to your sale.

“If you can do it that fast then it must be poor quality”

I had a sales appointment with a client where we were going back and forth getting excited about his specific build out and I misread that excitement for urgency.

I told him I could have this turned around in 3 days.

I could immediately tell from his voice that he didn’t like that answer. To him, he was making an investment into something he felt was valuable.

I stripped that value framing away when I replaced it with speed.

It’s better to qualify their timelines and meet them where they are at. Then, you can upsell the speed.

Me: “I think we have a great plan here, do we have a timeline on how soon you want this ready by?”

Buyer: “I think a month should be a good time to get all of this done”

Me: “A month sounds good, would you want to add this to our priority projects queue and get it done in 1-2 weeks?”

Happy Selling Everyone!

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@SecretCFO This is how my first company failed. Thank you for teaching others

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

@mcuban if you read this,

I’d like to propose the “Winners Fund” solution.

Take 8-10% of the league revenue share program and put it into a Winners Fund.

Each win = 1 share of the fund.

Extend this down to the players as well to be bonused behind team wins.

First Order effects: Teams are going to be willing to be more competitive now vs later where the difference between 20 wins and 30 wins is millions of dollars.

Second Order effects: Teams aren’t going to sell their stars for draft picks. This breaks up talent consolidation and super teams increasing parity.

Every game matters in this solution, it isn’t just a championship or bust league that is constantly forming fragile cap/draft stock super teams that blow up after a year or two to rebuild.

[Ryan Lock (🤠/☀️) @theSLRguy]

The probabilities and incentives say otherwise.

Flattening the pick odds now drastically skew EV towards keeping your own picks across all trades

First, the “all in for a costar” trade where a contending team pushes 3+ picks and salary match to bring over a co star and chase a championship. (60-70% of trades involving a first round pick, grok)

These trades now carry significantly more regression risk to the pick seller if their future picks have a chance of slipping from playoff/title contender into the 3 ball range.

These trades will be repriced and require fewer picks to make deals happen.

The good news from this is it will change up the current pick stacking and star swapping META.

This will open up the free float of picks that can be traded because they don’t need to be hoarded for an all-in.

Now we have to ask “What is the second order effect of more free float picks”

Mark Cuban believes there will be a lot more trades.

I believe that although there are more picks in free float, they won’t be able to move because the draft odds ev is too high for any real trade they could be a participant in.

If I’m a mid tier team, I know I’m not 1 trade away from the finals. Outside of an unrealistic 2k Force Trade, I don’t have a large enough incentive to give up my 3 balls in the upcoming draft lottery.

We can reasonably assume this removes all teams near the 3 ball range from being sellers of their picks.

The only people with picks they want to trade are the current playoff teams. Which means we are back to our first order that those teams won’t give up endless future firsts anymore and their current picks are at their normal value discount.

In summary, the 3-2-1 change will freeze the trade market because the value of rolling your luck on 3 balls for the #1 pick is too high and teams will be less likely to trade their current lottery picks or potential future lottery picks.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

When you flatten the odds, the number of trades will explode. It was impossible to know who would win the tankathon in the off season, and the leading tankers aren’t trading their picks at the deadline

BUT you can have a good idea who isn’t a top 8 team in your conference. And teams will do everything they can to trade for their firsts.

Get 2 non playoff firsts in a draft, and you have a good shot of having better odds than the bottom 3 this year.

And even 2 picks at 5.4 pct each, makes you the equal of a tankathon 4 or 5 team.

The question is what puts you in a position to trade for 1sts?

Cap room at the deadline.
Teams that were headed to the 2nd apron and needed saving. Give me that future first.

Willingness to trade good players.
Want my best player. We aren’t going anywhere this season. Give me that future first.

I think the games to stay out of the bottom 3 will be fun. I think the protection limits are smart. Don’t want teams in the playin making decisions on draft vs win.

But teams still have to figure out how to win and now, grabbing as many picks as possible, is the highest value approach

Once you know you have the little c next to your team … can’t make the bottom 3, if it’s before the deadline, you can get aggressive

If you don’t have a team you like, you make any trade that gets you a first.

Just imagine if you have a good young team. But just not good enough to win a ring. And you believe the best player ever is coming this draft , you literally could trade your future firsts , plus your really good young , valued players and when combined with your own pick, or picks you already had, get 5 firsts that give you, with some luck , a 40.5 pct chance of winning the lottery.

Still an almost 60 pct chance you won’t.
But it sure would be interesting as it plays out.

The good news for the nba, the bottom 3-2-1 is smart. The better news for Shams , the trade rumors are going to be off the charts as teams try to “aggregate up” to get the best odds they can