Taste Is Eating Silicon Valley.
Just as software ate the world and dramatically transformed industries in the last era, taste is now eating software—and with it, Silicon Valley, and the world.
Taste is eating Silicon Valley.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously declared that software was eating the world. For a time, that was the undeniable reality. Software was the engine of transformation, revolutionizing everything from tech to finance and retail to healthcare.
Back then, technical prowess meant market dominance. Y Combinator, the spiritual center of Silicon Valley,1 crowned technical founders as the chosen ones. Those who could manifest and master software were seen as gods. Venture capitalists funded those who could scale that code to massive heights. After all, software alone could transform giant, legacy industries, rapidly and efficiently.
It’s a different story today. Software has been commoditized — the result of technological advancement, decreasing cost and complexity, and democratization of coding as a skill. AI’s push into the mainstream has supercharged this shift. The lines between technology and culture are blurring. And so, it’s no longer enough to build great tech.
In a world of scarcity, we treasure tools. In a world of abundance, we treasure taste.
Everyone’s software is good enough. Software used to be the weapon, now it’s just a tool. The barriers to entry are low, competition is fierce, and so much of the focus has shifted — from tech to distribution, and now, to something else too: taste.2
Taste is eating software, and with it, the world. Taste is the new weapon.
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.
The markets being served now are cultural markets, where utility plus taste is the foundation.
In this new era, functional products are increasingly just supporting players in larger cultural movements. And so, in one way or another, 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 competition isn’t just within the tech world anymore — founders are up against celebrities and influencers that have an edge in distribution, community, and cultural resonance, even if they’re not as readily tech-savvy. The elevation of taste invites a melting pot of experiences and perspectives into the arena — challenging “legacy” Silicon Valley from inside and outside.
You could look at companies like Apple and Tesla and AirBnb and say taste matters because they’re classically consumer-facing businesses. But that’s not the whole story — consumer-driven traits like taste have infiltrated every corner of the tech world. 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.)5
Even in the most cutting-edge technical fields, taste is shaping the future as much as the technology itself.
In the general-purpose AI chatbot sector, OpenAI’s ChatGPT came out strong as the market leader. Since then, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Poe, and others have joined the race from different angles. Yes, they’re competing on technical merits, but with how quickly AI is improving, it feels like they’ll converge on similar functionality.
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.7
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. (And yes, people will still question whether VCs even “get” taste.)
Code is cheap. Money now chases utility wrapped in taste, function sculpted with beautiful form, and technology framed in artistry.
But what exactly is taste? 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.8
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.
As Arnold Bennett famously said, ‘Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.’9
Products make you feel something when you use them, and they make other people feel something about you.
Products are no longer just functional tools; they are emotional touchpoints. Increasingly, products are designed as vehicles of self-expression and social signaling, reflecting your values, lifestyle, and identity. Products with technology at their core are closer than ever to art.
If true, this also means that other players become critical to the ecosystem: artists, designers, creators, creative directors, media companies. And more questions inevitably arise:
Who are the kingmakers and gatekeepers of taste? What culture war will the greater focus on taste ignite? Does the city or culture a company is created in matter a lot more?10 Nobody owns “taste,” but enough people will certainly try.11
Just as software ate the world and transformed industries in the last era, taste is now eating software—and with it, Silicon Valley.
In this new era of Silicon Valley, taste isn’t just an advantage — it’s the future. 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.
As taste continues to infiltrate every corner, the roles of founders and venture capitalists are evolving. Founders must now master cultural resonance alongside technical innovation. And investors? They must bet on which companies will lead the next wave of innovation, where tech and culture are no longer separate entities, but fused into one. Some people won’t like this, some will rebel against it, some will just try to wait it out — but it’s a sign of the times.12
The challenge: Utility still demands respect. Theory still needs execution. More people think they have great taste than is reality (how to develop it, hone it, channel it is a topic for another essay). And maybe taste recognizes taste, but can metrics recognize it too? It’s more of a science than just “vibes” — right?
In this new era, founders—of every kind—must become tastemakers, and venture capitalists the arbiters of taste. Because in a world where anyone can create anything, taste is what matters.
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‘Silicon Valley’ here is used, as eloquently explained on Wikipedia, “as a synecdoche for the American high-technology economic sector … a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises.” I use it as an archetype, not a geographic limitation.
Oh yeah, taste helps you with distribution and vice versa. Virtuous cycle of affinity, desire to affiliate, and growth by digital-age word-of-mouth.
There tends to be a cyclicality to how culture and markets move — from survival to sophistication and eventually back again.
Some technophiles will question how important taste is. 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.
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.
I’d have to peg Claude and Perplexity as the current tastemakers in this category specifically.
Can you copy “taste?” No. But you can copy some of the more superficial artifacts of it, with the inevitable lag (and that can still yield gains). Taste is a living, breathing thing that is always a few steps ahead of inauthenticity.
What specifically is tasteful in the here and now has a lot to do with how culture is created and evolves (a subject for another essay in the drafts). Taste is shaped by and reflects the values, aesthetics, and norms of a specific culture, evolving alongside cultural trends and movements.
A quote from an old-time author, but of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Bennett
In this last era, each founding city had its own culture. To a small extent, founders self-selected into cities based on the cultural values they espoused and perhaps their products would too. SF for pure software tech. LA for media and entertainment. New York for finance, retail, and other mixed-bag sectors. Paris for consumer social?The elevation of taste magnifies this spread outside the literal and philosophical ‘Silicon Valley.’
The existing tastemakers, or people who think they are the rare ones — both within and outside of tech — will have a reaction to this essay, as is the case when someone perceives that people are infringing on their desired special territory (especially if they can point to some potential social or economic gain). Nothing new. Such is the game of status, and the circle of life.
Both founders and investors and other players alike will inevitably jockey for position in this latest supercharged dimension of competition. May the best builders and bet-makers win.
makes me think of “product sense” a term that gets thrown around often these days. there’s always an effort to rationalize and formalize emerging insights, but these ephemeral qualities are more nuanced and don’t fit deterministic methods, 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
This was a great read and extremely relevant for the times.
Taste is something that almost all knowledge workers will have to develop and curation will also become a super power.