Read time 5 min

Amazon Unwrapped: Andy Bryn

• Here’s the scenario: You’re starting a lawn maintenance business but for the age of AI. Think drones doing aerial surveys of houses that take pictures, identify all the plants on the property, a fleet of autonomous lawn mowers, and sprinkler systems that activate based on real time soil moisture.

  In the US your friends and family will respond: Amazing! My neighbor has huge lawn and they were just complaining how much time it takes each week, I’ll put you in touch with him.

  In Europe: Why would you do that? Do you have a background in landscaping?

• In a lot of ways these responses make sense. America is the little kid in this scenario compared to the elder statesmen that is Europe. Little kids just do what they want. Wearing rain boots, swimming trunks, batman cape, and sunglasses to the store? No problem. This confidence of “I don’t care what you think. I’m not even thinking about you thinking about me” is a super power. The business crowd in the US doesn’t care if they fail and that “failure” on your resume is increasingly becoming a badge of honor. 

  America has tons to learn from Europe: fashion, food, how to not dump horrible chemicals into food, and having deep roots. 

  On the other side, Europe can maintain the elements of their cultures while adopting the business mind of the US.

• (Before going further, I want to clarify that this is not a comparison of how hard both groups or how much effort they put in. It’s highlighting how and what they choose to work on.)

• Recent example of this is Ben Lamm from Colossal who just brought back the Dire wolf after being extinct for 10,000 years. Not only is this simultaneously awesome/terrifying/mindblowing but has significant implications on conservation and de-extinction. 

  Ben Lamm didn’t have a background in genetics. He didn’t come up through biology labs. He was a tech founder. He just got interested — and went all in.

• Now contrast that with the European mindset, which tends to be more about craft, tradition, and mastering your subject before you’re "qualified" to take a swing. There’s real value in that. It creates experts, artisans, and world-class operators. But it can also mean ideas stay in the notebook. Or worse, they never even get written down.

• What does this have to do with ecommerce?

  Everything.

  The best ecommerce founders I know are more “rain boots and Batman cape” than PhD. They didn’t wait for permission. They learned on the go. Maybe they launched a pet brand after adopting a dog, or started a supplements line after fixing their gut health. They built fast, failed faster, and figured it out in public.

• Meanwhile, the person with a perfect business plan, beautiful branding doc, and a 2-year roadmap is still talking themselves out of launching their first SKU.
  

  Whether you're growing your brand, launching a new product, or considering something wild (like, say, bringing back the Dire wolf), it’s worth asking:

  Are you overthinking it… or are you just not wearing your Batman cape yet?

-Andy

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