2026 Part 1: Macro Ecommerce Predictions & Big Bets

2026 feels like a reformation year. The economy and technology are colliding, change is the constant, and I’m building like crazy.

Welcome back to the Operators pod. We’re doing a macro setup for 2026 with bull and bear cases, plus one tactical play from each of us. This is part one, and we’ll go deeper on tactics in the next episode.

I’ve been shipping custom apps for my team in days. It makes me feel like a weapon because I don’t need a developer to speed up real work.

Anyone can make software now, and that unlocks a ton. People who used to live in spreadsheets are building simple web apps. The future of work will look wildly different.

It’s early, but some things truly reshape society. The web and smartphones did, and AI will too.

Moats are shifting. Models are passing hard coding tests, and the role of a software engineer is changing fast.

Jobs won’t vanish, they’ll morph. Humans invent new work, and tech pushes costs down, so quality of life can rise even if GDP sags for a while.

New tech births new classes of work. Management scaled with railroads; the next 30 years won’t look like the last 30.

I keep hearing that AI isn’t moving the needle for big companies. As owners, are we actually seeing impact?

Think dot com. The ideas were right, timing and infrastructure were early, and non‑tech constraints slow adoption. The destination is clear even if the path is uneven.

Change management is the hard part. Swapping a project tool can take a year. AI will diffuse over a decade and then feel obvious, like the internet and mobile.

I lived through the dot com era. Most companies failed, but the web was still transformative. I’m optimistic AI lands in that category.

Mindset is the real edge. Tools flip every few months and knowledge doubles fast, so a growth mindset beats static expertise. The unseen second order effects will be the biggest opportunities.

Intelligence is getting cheap. Degrees with weak ROI will fade and more people will rethink school.

You can see it in enrollment shifts toward majors that pay back. That reallocation is healthy.

True or false, is AI materially improving your efficiency today?

The smaller the company, the bigger the impact. Large orgs have incentives to resist tools that threaten layers and roles.

Founders optimize to win; big companies optimize for safety. We use AI daily, and creative is about to go fully AI for us.

Valuations can be bubbly while the tech is real. A reset could force efficiency and spark new breakthroughs, narrowing the gap between compute power and energy efficiency.

Is it a bubble without leverage? I want Jason’s read.

There’s plenty of debt and it’s fragile. That’s what worries me.

Debt is getting obscured off balance sheets, credit risk is widening, and the biggest AI plans likely require borrowing. That’s the phase we’re in.

All the more reason for scrappy operators to be bullish. The system has strong incentives to keep moving, and nimble teams can thrive.

This might be the most bullish time for individuals and the scariest for institutions.

Consumer is the swing factor. If the top ten percent feel poorer, tools won’t save demand.

Outside AI, the economy looks recessionary and shoppers are deal‑driven. A market drop paired with white‑collar layoffs would hit the core e‑commerce buyer hard.

My 2026 bull: rates ease, maybe some stimulus, and tech gets better, which is great for small operators. My bear: a deeper recession masked by AI, a twenty to thirty percent drawdown, and layoffs create a negative loop.

My bear: AI leaders unwind, high earners get disrupted, hiring slows, and the divergence worsens, even if creature comforts get cheaper.

My bear: AI asset deflation dents the wealth effect. My bull: rate cuts unfreeze housing, asset prices lift, and millennials enter peak earning.

Valuations look stretched in places, but what matters is better tools and channels. Parts of the economy have been in recession already, and rate relief would get money moving.

My biggest 2026 lever is price. We overshot on tariff‑driven hikes, so I can cut and capture elasticity to grow units and deliver more value per dollar.

We win by delivering value. We’re building a world‑class product development team to push beyond cookware into big adjacencies.

Ridge will scale new products we could not keep in stock, crack TikTok Shop, push personalized AI and TV ads, and expand wholesale and corporate gifting. I expect strong growth.

I’m copying that playbook and finally have domestic capacity to meet demand without getting backlogged.

Tech also lets us go wider. We’re leaning into a holding approach and new verticals, because going broad across categories is becoming the super power.

It’s often easier to sell someone two different things than two of the same. Next episode we’ll get practical and show the app.

Be aware without being paralyzed. Like a river guide, read the current, then put energy into the levers you control; for me that means price in this economy.

Therapy pod energy today. Here’s to a clean fourth quarter and a nothing but net 2026—thanks for listening and goodbye.