Hey y'all, I’m building something new.
I just told you about how AI saved me $425K and why you should be building a monolithic agent instead of a team of them.
Well, today I’m announcing Hockey Stick.
It’s mission is to help founders build leverage through AI.
To be clear this doesn’t mean this newsletter, JOLT!, Megaphone, or Lore are going anywhere. Hockey Stick is a new company within Rye Valley.
This week I’m sharing why I’m launching it, what we do, and why you should do a free leverage audit.
I’m also running a free workshop on Oct 29th at 1pm EST where I’ll walk through step-by-step how to build your own company brain so you can see a bit more of what we do.
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Launching Hockey Stick
What’s Going On
Gaining leverage is the whole game for a founder.
For years this meant building software that would enabled you and your users to do things better and faster than competitors.
But that’s gone.
In a world where everyone can spend the same $1 on the same tokens and use the same models to do basically anything, your competitor can have feature parity with you by tomorrow afternoon.
What’s left are the things nobody can copy with a prompt:
What your company knows → the unstructured data locked away in call transcripts and Slack messages, the team’s decision log and what happened as a result, and the distribution and network available to you
Who’s steering the ship → and how well they understand what “good” looks like and can keep the system pointing towards it
Your time → gaining as many hours as possible back to do more, with less
That’s where leverage lives now.
How I Measure Leverage
The question becomes how we measure it so that, at a minimum, we can see how we’re doing over time.
A few of the metrics I’ve been using at Rye Valley for this are:
Metric | Definition | Rye Valley’s Numbers Last 4 weeks |
|---|---|---|
Revenue per human dollar | How much we generate against how much we spend on human labor | $4.54 |
Revenue per token dollar | How much we generate against how much we spend on tokens | $8.21 |
Token share of spend | The % of our expenses that are tokens | 23.2% |
Hours returned | How many hours humans would’ve taken to do the work agents did | 734/week |
Net dollars saved | What those returned hours would’ve cost if humans did them, minus what we spent on tokens | $55.7K/week |
Leverage capacity | What our AI’s work would’ve cost to pay humans for, per dollar we spend on tokens | 11.4x |
Shipping velocity | Merged pull requests per engineer | 308/week |
What these metrics really tell you is how effective your founder judgement is. Read together, they tell you a lot about how your startup is doing.
For example:
Leverage capacity going up while revenue per token dollar holds steady means you're investing. The AI is doing more real work, and it isn't costing you cash efficiency yet. If capacity keeps climbing and revenue per token dollar never moves, the work isn't turning into revenue, and it's time to question the bet.
Token share of spend going up without hours returned going up with it means busywork. You're paying for more AI and getting the same amount of work back.
Revenue per human dollar going up while revenue per token dollar falls means you're swapping people work for AI work. That's fine if net dollars saved goes up too. If it doesn't, you just moved the cost from one line to another.
Shipping velocity going up while revenue stays flat means you're building faster, but maybe building the wrong things.
At Rye Valley, our token share of spend has stayed relatively flat over the last four weeks (between 22% and 24% on a rolling four-week basis) while our hours returned went from 306 a week to 734.
See your own numbers by running our free leverage audit.
What Hockey Stick Is
Ok so how does all this translate into starting a company?
Well, my mission has always been to help founders build leverage.
I first did this through community, education, and access at my old VC-backed startup.
But it’s clear that the advantage gained from AI-based leverage is increasing and that many founders could go even farther than they are in running responsibly lean, AI-native startups.
My first instinct was to just write up a few newsletter issues about it.
But, honestly, due to the leverage we’ve been able to build within Rye Valley over the last couple months, we have capacity to build something new.
So, Hockey Stick builds your company a brain everything feeds into with an agent that builds a unique harness for you to build more leverage at your startup.
Working With Us
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a founder. So the place to start is your own brain.
Everything you know, and have ever known, fed in every day, with a self-improving agent running on top of it that builds its own harness around how you work.
But the real leverage kicks in when your whole team and company runs through it too.
Imagine a full network graph of everyone anyone on your team knows, available to anyone else. The entire company’s historical decision log and its impact. And a custom portal for everyone to access it from on demand (with access controls built in).
But the right setup looks different for each company, so it starts the same way for everyone: a free strategy call with me.
We'll look at how you work today, where your leverage is hiding, and what to build first.
Not ready for a call yet? Here are a few other ways to start:
Set it up yourself → The Company Brain Starter Kit is our playbook to set up your own brain in about 90 minutes: feeds, brain, agent, harness and a leverage scoreboard. It's $97 for the next 48 hours, then $297 forever.
Run the Leverage Audit to see your numbers for the metrics above.
Join my free workshop on October 29th at 1pm EST, where I'll walk through how to set up a brain live.
I’ve thrown a lot at you in this issue.
That’s because things have changed in a meaningful and permanent way.
I’m pumped to help you navigate those changes with Hockey Stick.
How We Can Help
Become a member to get full access to our case study library, private founder community, and more.
We can also help your startup in a few other ways:
AI Leverage
Gain flexibility, time, and capital by building leverage.
TikTok + IG
Build your founder personal brand with shortform video and be impossible to forget.
LinkedIn + X
Share your unique POV with the startup world and make investors + candidates chase you.
SEO + GEO
Teach answer engines the truth about your startup.
Advertise in my newsletter to get in front of 60,000+ founders.
Our Partners
Founders: treat yourself for once.
A few of our partners are offering $$$ here for taking a quick call with them (that’s it).
It’s companies like Rho, Deel, Brex, and Thera, so it’s quality services that could genuinely help your startup.
Honestly, block off a couple hours, knock them all out, and walk away with some cash to get off the ramen diet for the weekend.
