Silicon Valley shifts focus from new features to product taste

In short: As AI makes it easier to build apps that work, more tech companies are competing on “taste,” meaning how a product feels, looks, and fits a user’s identity.

What's going on

Many Silicon Valley teams now say the hard part is not building software, it is making something people actually choose. The reason is simple: there are more tools than ever, and many of them do the same basic job.

AI tools can now help write and fix code, and they can speed up early prototypes (rough first versions). That lowers the advantage of having a big engineering team. It also means lots of new products end up feeling similar, like many stores selling nearly the same plain T-shirt.

In this climate, founders use “taste” as a shortcut for the parts that help a product stand out. They mean design and user experience, which is how easy and pleasant something is to use. They also mean the product’s tone and story, and whether it feels like it was made for a particular group of people.

This shift is showing up in hiring and investing. Startups are bringing in design and brand roles earlier than they used to. Some investors also talk more about whether a product “feels right,” not only whether its technology is impressive.

What to watch

There is a growing pushback to this “taste” talk. Critics argue it can become “taste-washing,” meaning pretty design used to distract from tools that people find harmful, such as systems tied to job loss or surveillance. A key question is whether companies use AI to help people express themselves, or whether it floods the world with more generic, lookalike content.

Source: NYTimes