Alexander Heckmann

I partnered with @drewfallon12 because after meeting hundreds of founders, I consistently saw that there was a massive gap in financial literacy/ infrastructure inside consumer businesses. We are super excited to help democratize world class infrastructure and forecasting for all!

@jacob_posel Wow this is the best take of 2026 so far. Thank you!!

Most founding teams are just employees of their investors cosplaying as founders so the VC’s can invest in real companies The contract is essentially: VC gives you X amount of cash in the bank. Founder pays themselves slowly with an appropriate salary less than their professional market value. Founder gets to pretend to be founder (high status), VC gets to look like real investor. But in reality, founder has functionally 0% chance of building meaningful company of venture scale. Virtually all risk is removed as long as being a Founder is prestigious. VC gets to “writes some checks” and feel good about themselves, and signal value to real, serious founders. Venture backed startups are not a serious way of making money for most people. This is the most generous take for VC’s, because I can’t actually believe they’re this bad at picking companies.

it seems increasingly obvious that in a world where the foundation models are getting better all the time, the value has to accrue to proprietary data sets. In other words, how can you make the model better in a way no one else can? what’s the counter argument to this?

We just launched Iris MCP 🚀 Everyone is building AI agents, but they break as soon as they touch finance tasks Why? Finance & operational data is ESPESICALLY messy & siloed - and messy data means more hallucinations and less reliable agents For example, If you're connecting Claude to Quickbooks & Amazon, those two systems will show different numbers for revenue, meaning your agent can't answer a question as simple as 'what were our sales last month" - let alone build any analysis or modeling. Iris MCP gives agents secure, governed access to clean, normalized, agent friendly structured data from 1000s of sources: - ERPs, Accounting ledgers, & AP systems - Amazon/Shopify - Ad accounts, SMS, & email - Retailers - Bank Accts / Credit Cars - Subscription platforms and more. One central & USABLE AI optimized data store for all your data is how you build agents that will actually drive value in your business. My favorite things customers have built so far that are not iris-native yet: - Cash level monitoring agent - Inventory level monitoring agent - Revenue reconciliation agent Good data is your advantage. Shoot me a DM if you want to connect to iris MCP

I'm excited to launch something new: Weekly documentaries on the top stories in finance Here's the story of Trammell Crow (the founder of modern real estate private equity) "The Man Behind a $13 Billion Real Estate Empire" (02:17) THE WOUND (1914–1946) >born 1914, Dallas, 5th of 8 kids, 9 people in 3 rooms >dad is a bookkeeper, owns nothing >boss dies in 1928, dad loses everything overnight >14 years old, decides: employees are vulnerable, owners survive >grinds through the Depression, becomes youngest CPA in Texas at 24 (04:44) THE FIRST DEAL (1946–1948) >gets out of the Navy at 32, joins wife's dying grain warehouse >tenant says "we need more space, we're leaving" >Crow: "what if I build it for you?" - he's never built anything, he's an accountant >builds 11,250 sq ft when tenant only needs 6,750, fills the rest >50 warehouses in 3 years, just invented speculative building (07:47) THE 3 RULES (1948–1956) >Rule 1: never sell, hold everything >Rule 2: share equity with everyone, turn employees into owners >Rule 3: sign personally for everything, unlimited liability >"you can get rich selling real estate, you can only get wealthy owning it" >these 3 rules built the empire and nearly destroyed it, twice (09:48) THE FURNITURE MART (1956–1960) >visits Joe Kennedy's Merchandise Mart in Chicago, becomes obsessed >decides to build a furniture mart in Dallas, nobody wants it >one company: "we hope you don't build it" >his partner says let's quit, Crow goes silent, then: "I'm going to build the finest furniture mart in America" - rolls over and goes to sleep >builds it, it works, Dallas Market Center grows to 7M sq ft, largest wholesale complex in the world (12:43) EMPIRE BUILDING (1960–1973) >deploys young MBAs to new cities, gives them capital, autonomy, and ownership >Bob Glaze: 13 years, never got a raise from $16K salary, worth millions through partnership stakes >meets Mack Pogue, young broker, zero dev experience, forms Lincoln Property - becomes 2nd largest apartment manager in America >1971: 140M sq ft, 8,000 properties, 26 cities, 6 countries, Forbes calls him nation's biggest private landlord >Fortune headline: "Trammell Crow Succeeds Because YOU Want Him To" (20:21) THE FIRST CRISIS (1973–1977) >Arab oil embargo, oil prices quadruple, interest rates spike >personally liable for $433M, cash flow negative $25M/year >Federal Reserve puts him on credit watch, too big to fail >calls a partners meeting, asks them to liquidate their own wealth to save him - not legally obligated >one partner: "I don't think the partners are safe until you are safe" - they save him (25:15) THE COMEBACK (1977–1985) >back on Forbes 400 by 1982, net worth $500M >Harvard Business School asks: "most important element in business?" >Crow: "love" >builds the Anatole Hotel, numbers every single brick >1984: $13B in assets, 5,000 employees (29:09) THE SECOND CRISIS (1986–1989) >oil collapses, S&L crisis, Tax Reform Act kills real estate incentives >Dallas office vacancy hits 30% >Forbes: "the dinosaurs are dying" >partners hitting golf balls into empty buildings because there's nothing else to do >second crisis, same mistakes (30:48) LESSONS LEARNED (1989) >one partner sends a memo: "please outline mistakes you have made" >101 pages come back, single spaced, names attached >"we covered up mistakes because we could borrow more money" >"we continued to build because that's what we knew how to do" >"when you don't have staying power, you turn into the fish" (35:29) LEGACY (1989–2009) >2006: acquired by CBRE for $2.2B >alumni: Lincoln Property, Starwood, Transwestern, Spieker, Greystar >"spawned more millionaires than anybody in his generation" >dies in 2009 at 94, married to Margaret for 66 years >asked about retiring: "you'd waste yourself instead of using yourself" >partnership built the empire >partnership saved the empire >partnership outlasted the man who created it One more thing: If you're in real estate, private equity, or building anything on partnership, this one's for you This took 7 people weeks to create We spent weeks going through lost interviews, Forbes and Fortune investigations, library archives, and a 101-page internal document so that we could share this with you Our goal is to produce content like this every single week If you want to see more of this, like/repost the video, follow, reply, and share it with someone who needs to hear this story Produced by Collateral, the financial storytelling firm

Announcing our integration with Fulfil, the ecommerce ERP! @IrisFinanceCo now integrates with over 1,000 data sources from ERPs to bank accounts to Applovin to Walmart to inventory management systems. This centralized data warehouse approach allows our agents to access our MCP and build professional grade financial models, dashboarding, and analysis for your omnichannel brand better than anyone else. AI is 20x better than it was a month ago, and iris is your one stop shop for all things data & finance. I have never been a fulfil customer, but all of our customers say really great things so you should check them out! @fulfilio

my hot take is that openclaw is underrated

@patife Have loved following your updates. Congrats!

Rows will be joining Superhuman! This is a big moment for us. We started Rows in 2017. Along the way, more than 2.2 million people used Rows to execute over 17 billion spreadsheet functions, import data from their business tools more than 8.3 billion times, and run over 800 thousand AI Analyst prompts. Now, we get to take everything we’ve learned and apply it at a much bigger scale. I deeply admire Superhuman’s vision of AI that works everywhere you work, and our team is excited to become part of a team building the future of productivity. Huge thanks to Shishir and Mark for the trust and partnership along the way. This is a big milestone for us, and I’m genuinely excited about what comes next. To our customers, thank you for trusting us with your work over the years. We’ve shared more details about this transition, including what it means for you, in the full announcement below. Thank you to our team especially @torbschulz, our customers, our partners, and our investors for being part of this journey. Let’s go!!

you're getting drunk and watching hockey on a sunday morning i'm maxing out opus i wish i was u

Accurate as hell.

@paulswaney3 Not one soul liked or responded old man. Valentine’s Day brutal for you

I’ve been packing things in bottles, bags and blisters for the last 20 years and built microbiology labs for said factories all of which have been FDA or equivalent country agencies Something tells me you’ve never been on the inside of a steam jacketed food production mixer… but I digress The problem here is the product is nutraceuticals The FDA doesn’t really pay attention to them. They don’t have the bandwidth The company gets to do a risk assessment for everything they do… they are the architect of their process and these are the requirements for it: 1. Build a written risk assessment for microbiological hazards tied to ingredients, process, and “intended user population” (I put that in quotes because it’s important) 2. Set microbiology specifications for incoming components and finished product, then choose tests that actually verify them 3. Common minimum for powders- Salmonella absence in a defined sample size plus basic indicators like total aerobic count, yeast and mold OK HERE’S WERE IT GETS GOING. What a contract manufacturer can do that looks reasonable on paper and still be wrong in practice 1. They rely on a supplier COA for micro and do no verification testing 2 They classify the ingredient as low risk based on being dry and shelf stable 3. They treat micro as a supplier responsibility rather than a finished goods responsibility 4. They skip a written hazard analysis that ties to specs and verification 5- They only test when a customer demands it I’m guessing that they “Risk assessed away” the requirement and said “our supplier runs a COA” so we’re totally good. (It’s note worthy that a finished goods micro test from an outsourced lab is about 100$, but I digress) —— If you dig deeper into the supply chain. Nutraceuticals are particularly problematic TLDR - Supplements behave like food from a contamination standpoint, and like pharma in the consumer’s mind. That mismatch creates trouble. 1. Raw materials are dirty- Botanicals come from farms, open air drying, soil, animals, and informal supply chains. That means Salmonella, heavy metals, pesticide residue, and adulteration risks 2. There is no kill (super heating etc.) step in the process -Many supplements are powders, capsules, tablets, gummies. Often no validated lethality step after the ingredient arrives. If the ingredient is contaminated, the finished product stays contaminated. 3. Margins / market reward cutting corners - Quality costs money. Every added test, audit, and hold time hits cash flow. 4. Regulatory structure leaves room to maneuver In the US, supplements sit under cGMP and adulteration and misbranding rules, but there is no premarket approval for most products. Companies can operate with thin evidence until something breaks. 5. Long interconnected global supply chains…Multiple brokers, repackers, and relabeling. Traceability degrades.

@paulswaney3 Does not sound like you’re in ecom or cpg then which means this is irrelevant

@ADHeckmann This is why I don’t outsource production of anything that can cause a complete revenue drop

This is how your brand dies overnight and you become radioactive

@drewfallon12 @tryramp Gonna run ads to your calendar link

@ADHeckmann @tryramp i bet they’re devestated over this news

@tryramp REFUSING to use plaid as a data integration source has guaranteed I will never use the system for the foreseeable future

@SanjayAtPlay do you respond here

#5 is cool because you can connect things like cold outreach tools and use the market/people research skills we're building to - spin up wholesale outreach for your brand by finding the right partners in Faire and spinning up a campaign for your specific products - find better talent faster for your brand (this is how replo does recruiting internally now) - cooler stuff i can't think up right now (SickBrain™)

@zachmstuck What about Alex

Drew is building something special. Big fan of him and Iris. Fin looks sick, would highly consider checking out the launch video 👇

Introducing Fin: The world’s first AI Chief Financial Officer. Fin outperforms humans 100% of the time. RT + Comment “FIN” and I’ll send you an AI agent that saves 6-7 figures/year.

@drewfallon12 This was actually good for you

gm

Fuck behiiv