small business owner/operator, former corp america, veteran, MBA, engineer I'm building the best home services company and the best place to work.
USA
Joined September 2022
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John Beck retweeted
JUST IN: Florida asks court to bar OpenAI from developing new AI models without outside oversight.
John Beck retweeted
Our thoughts on the importance of AI sovereignty.
1. Your AI sovereignty dictates your institution’s future. Sovereignty is the precondition for choice. Relinquishing sovereignty transfers the future choices of your institution to others, who are likely to exploit it for their gain and your loss.
2. Data retention is your treasure. Transfer it at your own peril. Your ability to win is dictated by your ability to recognize and use your unique edges, and you keep winning by compounding the underlying data to generate new insights. Transferring that data hands over access to your pre-existing winning plays and yields the means of production for new ones.
3. Tokenmaxxing hijacks your value orientation and decreases your institutional fortitude and intelligence. The pursuit of high token usage incentivizes disposable scripts over robust software — with the addictive feeling of false progress. There is a reason why those selling tokens refuse to charge based on value.
4. Controlling your weights is controlling your fate. Weights are the distilled form of hard-won, accumulated institutional knowledge. If you let others control your weights, you are allowing them to migrate the alpha of your business to theirs.
5. There is no contradiction between sovereignty and alpha. The architecture that maximally preserves sovereignty is one that enables institutions to own their tribal knowledge, and to compound it as alpha.
6. Politicizing the technical issues involving sovereignty is what your adversary wants. Techno-politicization is the wellspring of false sovereignty. Techno-politicization drives decisions that seem to reduce dependency, but ultimately limit agency — especially on the battlefield in the West.
7. Real expertise is existential. Allowing politics or favoritism to determine your technical decisions rewards whoever is best at politics, not whoever is right. Listen to those closest to the problems, not those speaking most compellingly about them.
8. Learn from institutions that are winning or that have consistently delivered. Institutions facing existential threats do not have the luxury of making technical decisions based on political preferences.
9. Only listen to institutions, countries, and people who have a proven record of being right. A track record of correctness is the best and only signal for future correctness. Judging something as right or wrong based on who you like is exceedingly misguided.
John Beck retweeted
In a healthy society our leaders would be like "hey this is pretty cool our country just had the largest IPO in history" instead of whatever this is
John Beck retweeted
“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition.”
-Rudyard Kipling
John Beck retweeted
I left Wall Street and acquired a plastic bag manufacturing business in late 2022. I wasn't on X. Nobody else I knew was doing this. My hedge fund friends laughed and thought it was weird. I had "clearly lost the plot."
In 2023, I found X and started listening to Acquiring Mind podcasts and was a guest at one point. It's an invaluable resource for anyone considering ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition). The team recently reached out to me to let me know they have built a database of all the interviews the last 5 years that is searchable.
See below:
📷Great ETA tool! @acquiringminds built a database of every interview from the last 5 yrs into a structured, searchable format.
📷Filter by industry, acquisition model, geography, guest background.
450+ real acquisition stories.
acquiringminds.co/eta-databa…
John Beck retweeted
SBA Default Rates Are Rising—And the Implications Run Deeper Than Headlines Suggest
I returned this week from the SBA lending conference in Salt Lake City, where new data presented on loan performance was both sobering and instructive.
Simply put: defaults on SBA 7(a) loans are rising at a pace not seen in over a decade.
And the risk is most acute in loans originated over the past 18–24 months.
✔️ The velocity of defaults is accelerating.
Loans originated in 2023–2024 have reached a 4.7% annualized default rate—within the first 12–18 months of performance. Historically, that level of deterioration took 3–5 years to materialize.
✔️ The post-COVID default lull was temporary.
From 2020 through 2022, pandemic stimulus and borrower relief programs masked underlying credit risk. That buffer has now dissipated, and the market is recalibrating accordingly.
✔️ The pain is concentrated in “established” businesses, not startups.
Loans under $350K to existing businesses—not new ventures—experienced the highest default rates in 2024. That runs counter to conventional assumptions and should reframe how we evaluate perceived risk.
✔️ Rising rates are exposing structural weaknesses.
While the Prime Rate is a contributing factor, it’s not the root cause. Defaults are being driven by inadequate working capital, tight post-close liquidity, and overly optimistic operating projections.
Here’s where I stand:
Even as an SBA loan broker, my north star is client success—not just loan approvals.
A closed deal is not a win if the capital stack can’t sustain 18–24 months of real-world volatility.
I’ve been deliberately pressing clients to scrutinize their capitalization strategies—hard.
Not just on total leverage, but on structure, liquidity, and flexibility.
Working capital isn’t a line item—it’s the difference between solvency and distress.
If you’re in the process of acquiring a business, this is the time to raise your standard of underwriting. Relying on legacy assumptions from the 2021–2022 environment could prove costly.
The next chapter of SBA lending will reward buyers who lead with resilience—not just ambition.
Let’s keep this dialogue open. There’s nuance here that deserves more airtime than it’s currently getting.
John Beck retweeted
In CO, we’ve now added 21 new gun control laws in 5 years and have an A- Giffords score!
Yet, Coloradans have experienced the second fastest increase in violent crime rates in the nation, up 26.2% since 2017.
They smile and clap as they destroy safety while taking $millions from anti-gun lobbyists.
John Beck retweeted
BREAKING: Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs SB25-003 into law, banning the manufacture of and severely restricting the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms with detachable magazines. #coleg #copolitics @DenverChannel
John Beck retweeted
WHAT IS THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT THESE NEW TARIFFS?
And effect on economy + stock mkt.
The facts:
Trump put on:
RECIPROCAL TARIFFS: tariffs on countries with high tariffs against us.
BLANKET TARIFFS: a 10% tariff against almost all imports.
WHAT WILL BE THE RESULT? ...
John Beck retweeted
All the people screaming "tariffs cause inflation" are the same people who shut down the global economy in 2020.
Oil at multi-year lows right now. This is what I've been saying.
Tariffs DO NOT CAUSE inflation and they never have in history.
Deflation is the real worry.
