The lines between technology and culture are blurring. And so, it’s no longer enough to build great tech.

Whether in expressed via product design, brand, or user experience, taste now defines how a product is perceived and felt as well as how it is adopted, i.e. distributed — whether it’s software or hardware or both. Technology has become deeply intertwined with culture.3 People now engage with technology as part of their lives, no matter their location, career, or status.

founders are realizing they have to do more than code, than be technical. Utility is always key, but founders also need to calibrate design, brand, experience, storytelling, community — and cultural relevance. The likes of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are admired not just for their technical innovations but for the way they turned their products, and themselves, into cultural icons.

The elevation of taste invites a melting pot of experiences and perspectives into the arena — challenging “legacy” Silicon Valley from inside and outside.

B2C sectors that once prioritized functionality and even B2B software now feel the pull of user experience, design, aesthetics, and storytelling.

Arc is taking on legacy web browsers with design and brand as core selling points. Tools like Linear, a project management tool for software teams, are just as known for their principled approach to company building and their heavily-copied landing page design as they are known for their product’s functionality.4 Companies like Arc and Linear build an entire aesthetic ecosystem that invites users and advocates to be part of their version of the world, and to generate massive digital and literal word-of-mouth. (Their stories are still unfinished but they stand out among this sector in Silicon Valley.)

Any attempt to give examples of taste will inevitably be controversial, since taste is hard to define and ever elusive. These examples are pointing at narratives around taste within a community.

So how do they compete? On how they look, feel, and how they make users feel.6 The subtleties of interaction (how intuitive, friendly, or seamless the interface feels) and the brand aesthetic (from playful websites to marketing messages) are now differentiators, where users favor tools aligned with their personal values. All of this should be intertwined in a product, yet it’s still a noteworthy distinction.

Investors can no longer just fund the best engineering teams and wait either. They’re looking for teams that can capture cultural relevance and reflect the values, aesthetics, and tastes of their increasingly diverse markets.

How do investors position themselves in this new landscape? They bet on taste-driven founders who can capture the cultural zeitgeist. They build their own personal and firm brands too. They redesign their websites, write manifestos, launch podcasts, and join forces with cultural juggernauts.

Code is cheap. Money now chases utility wrapped in taste, function sculpted with beautiful form, and technology framed in artistry.

The dictionary says it’s the ability to discern what is of good quality or of a high aesthetic standard. Taste bridges personal choice (identity), societal standards (culture), and the pursuit of validation (attention). But who sets that standard? Taste is subjective at an individual level — everyone has their own personal interpretation of taste — but it is calibrated from within a given culture and community.

Taste manifests as a combination of history, design, user experience, and embedded values that creates emotional resonance — that defines how a product connects with people as individuals and aligns with their identity. None of the tactical things alone are taste; they’re mere artifacts or effects of expressing one’s taste. At a minimum, taste isn’t bland — it’s opinionated.

The most compelling startups will be those that marry great tech with great taste. Even the pursuit of unlocking technological breakthroughs must be done with taste and cultural resonance in mind, not just for the sake of the technology itself. Taste alone won’t win, but you won’t win without taste playing a major role.

Founders must now master cultural resonance alongside technical innovation.

In some sectors—like frontier AI, deep tech, cybersecurity, industrial automation—taste is still less relevant, and technical innovation remains the main focus. But the footprint of sectors where taste doesn’t play a big role is shrinking. The most successful companies now blend both. Even companies aiming to be mainstream monopolies need to start with a novel opinionated approach.

I think we should leave it at “taste” which captures the artistic and cultural expressions that traditional business language can’t fully convey, reflecting the deep-rooted and intuitive aspects essential for product dev

Taste has historically been reserved for conversation about things like fashion and art. Now, we look for it in our social media feeds, the technology we use, the company we keep, and the people we hire.

When I ask people what they mean by “taste,” they’ll stumble around for a bit and eventually land on something like “you know it when you see it,” or “it’s in the eye of the beholder.” I understand. Words like taste are hard to pin down, perhaps because they describe a sensibility more than any particular quality, a particular thing. We’re inclined to leave them unencumbered by a definition, to preserve their ability to shift shapes.

’ve found a taste-filled life to be a richer one. To pursue it is to appreciate ourselves, each other, and the stuff we’re surrounded by a whole lot more.

I can’t think of a piece of writing that does this more effectively than Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp.’” In her words, “a sensibility is one of the hardest things to talk about... To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble.

Things don’t feel tasteful, they demonstrate taste. Someone’s home can be decorated tastefully. Someone can dress tastefully. The vibe cannot be tasteful. The experience cannot be tasteful.

Someone could have impeccable taste in art, without producing any themselves. Those who create tasteful things are almost always deep appreciators, though.

we typically talk about it in binaries. One can have taste or not. Great taste means almost the same thing as taste.

They’re the people you always go to for restaurant or movie or gear recommendations. Maybe it’s the person you ask to be an extra set of eyes on an email or a project brief before you send it out.

It requires intention, focus, and care. Taste is a commitment to a state of attention.

As John Saltivier says in an essay about building a set of stairs, “surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal with reality.”

To quote Susan Sontag again, “There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.” The sought-after interior designer may not mind gas station coffee. The prolific composer may not give a damn about how they dress.

Taste in too many things would be tortuous. The things we have taste in often start as a pea under the mattress.

it is often formed through the integration of diverse, and wide-ranging inputs. Steve Jobs has said, “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

taste gets you to the thing that’s more than just correct. Taste hits different. It intrigues. It compels. It moves. It enchants. It fascinates. It seduces.

Taste honors someone’s standards of quality, but also the distinctive way the world bounces off a person. It reflects what they know about how the world works, and also what they’re working with in their inner worlds. When we recognize  true taste, we are recognizing that alchemic combination of skill and soul. This is why it is so alluring.

many snobs (coffee snobs, gear snobs, wine snobs, etc.) often have great taste. But I would say that taste is the sensibility, and snobbery is one way to express the sensibility. It’s not the only way.

If rich people often have good taste it’s because they grew up around nice things, and many of them acquired an intolerance for not nice things as a result. That’s a good recipe for taste, but it’s not sufficient and it’s definitely not a guarantee. I know people that are exceedingly picky about the food they eat and never pay more than $20 for a meal.

creating forces taste upon its maker. Creators must master self-expression and craft if they’re going to make something truly compelling.

artists are more sensitive. They’re more observant, feel things more deeply, more obsessive about details, more focused on how they measure up to greatness.

Picasso remarking that “when art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.” Taste rests on turpentine.

the process of metabolizing the world is a slow one. Wield your P/N meter well, take your time learning what you find compelling, and why. There are no shortcuts to taste. Taste cannot sublimate. It can only bloom. To quote Susan Sontag one last time, “taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste.