For the past few months, I’ve been in rooms with incubators and early-stage brand builders all asking the same thing: What’s going to cut through? What’s the next new-new? What should we actually be paying attention to now?
The answers are getting blurrier. Data overlaps. I’ve been staring at the same decks. Everyone’s got a go-to-market plan, a clean logo, and a tone that sounds just edgy enough. But underneath the veneer of innovation, I'm seeing the same safe choices, the same "validated" approaches, the same fear of true distinctiveness.
I always say: cover up the logos, and I wouldn’t be able to tell one landing page from the next. And I’m exhausted by it.
What I’m really looking for
Last week a founder asked me point-blank: "What do you actually care about when evaluating brands?"
I paused, because the honest answer feels almost embarrassingly simple: I'm looking for taste.
The brands that stand out, the founders that people can’t stop watching, the ones you notice early on, before traction, and before hype. They have taste. And not the Pinterest-board kind. I’m talking about taste as an alpha signal. The kind that shows up as instinct, clarity, and the ability to make sharp, specific decisions in a world built on templates.
The Taste Paradox
Here's the tension I wrestle with: the business world has convinced itself that taste is subjective, a luxury, something to be engineered around rather than cultivated. Yet every brand we genuinely admire, every product we're willing to pay a premium for, every company that maintains margins during downturns – they all have unmistakable taste signatures.
When I mention this, I see the discomfort. Taste feels unquantifiable in a business culture obsessed with measurement. It feels risky in a landscape built on best practices.
But I've watched too many "data-driven" brands slowly fade into irrelevance while taste-driven brands command loyalty that defies explanation.
Taste is a form of early intelligence
You can’t coach someone into taste. But you can recognise it.
It shows up in how someone edits — what they choose to leave out.
It’s in how they build — not just to meet the market, but to express a point of view.
It’s how they filter noise, trust their gut, and stay culturally tuned without becoming predictable.
When someone has that kind of intuition, you don’t need a focus group to validate their positioning. You feel it.
The founder with taste doesn't need to chase trends because they instinctively recognize patterns before they emerge. They sense when the culture is shifting beneath our feet. These same founders built the brands that now define their categories. Not because they ignored data, but because their taste gave them permission to interpret that data differently than everyone else.
Taste gives brands texture and edge
Taste isn’t just about what something looks like. It’s about what it feels like, and how that feeling can’t be easily replicated.
Founders with taste build brands and businesses with a certain weight to them. They’re layered and they’re specific. Rooted in something real, backed by insight and inconvenient truths, not just in what’s “on trend.”
Taste shows up in:
- A tone of voice that doesn’t try too hard
- A brand experience that isn’t over-designed
- Product decisions that reflect discernment, not category norms
- Cultural references that land with the right people without over-explaining
You can’t fake that. Not convincingly, at least. And that’s what gives a brand an edge. Not because it’s loud, but because it’s clear. When everything about the brand makes sense in hindsight, and feels intentional even if you can’t explain why. That’s what makes people remember it, trust it, and talk about it without being asked. Brands built on taste aren’t trying to be for everyone. And that's exactly why we can’t forget them.
Taste doesn’t scale fast. But like cultural capital, it compounds
In most rooms, taste has nothing to do with brand or business growth.
But its layers could reveal quiet specificity, a niche audience, or a founder who’s particular about what they say yes to.
And that’s not a limitation. It’s what defines a new brand. Taste is the build.
When taste creates alignment across every part of a business, it gives shape to the brand before there's scale. It filters out noise, shortens creative cycles, and brings the right people in sooner, drawing in customers, collaborators and investors.
Over time, that internal clarity turns into equity. Not just cultural equity — commercial equity. The kind of value that comes from brand love that powers community engagement and successful founder exits.
So what’s the business case?
Let me be uncomfortably honest: developing taste requires marginalization. It requires standing outside consensus. It demands periods of being misunderstood.
Every founder I know with extraordinary taste has stories of being told their vision was wrong, their instincts were misguided, their approach would fail. They've all experienced the loneliness of seeing something others couldn't yet see.
This isn't romantic – it's brutal. It's why so many default to the safety of convention. It's why true taste remains rare.
If you’re in the business of scouting the next brand, the next founder, the next idea, taste is one of the sharpest signals you’ve got.
It’s not a shortcut. But it is a filter. And in the right hands, it sharpens everything else. You just have to recognise it before everyone else does and trust yourself.
This is part two of a series on taste — how it shapes brands, influences decisions, and signals long-term potential. If you missed it, read part one: In Pursuit of Taste — a reflection on instinct, sameness, and why trusting your own sensibility still matters.