We're surrounded by slop.

Content, products, websites, everything. The internet has never looked more crowded or less thoughtful. Most things feel mass-produced because, in a sense, they are. The barrier to creation has collapsed, and when everything is easy to make, it's easy to make something that looks the same. When sameness becomes the default, distinction becomes the only real advantage left.

In that environment, taste stands out. It has become one of the last true moats — and design is often where it's most visible.

Strong design has always mattered, but right now, it's the clearest signal of quality you can send. The best builders use design as a filter and as an extension of how they think. You feel it instantly. Their websites load and you know they care. The typography, the layout, the way the vision is distilled across the site — it all tells you something about the company behind it.

A company's website is still the first impression. Sometimes it's the only one. You have a few seconds to communicate whether you're intentional or generic. People may not articulate it that way, but they feel it. The sites that leave an impression aren't the ones that follow templates or trends. They're the ones that feel deliberate — that show someone cared enough to make choices others wouldn't.

Something changed this year. Designers are building in public again, sharing experiments, prototypes, and sites that actually feel alive. It reminds me of early Dribbble, before things became too polished to be interesting. But the energy feels different this time. Many of these designers are now working directly with the hottest startups, shaping the front doors of the next generation of companies.

That crossover between designers and early-stage startups isn't new, but it's accelerating. Founders are realizing that design isn't decoration. It's strategy. A well-crafted interface can capture attention in ways paid ads can't. A single thoughtful visual can communicate more about a product's values than an entire marketing campaign. The best teams get this. They don't outsource taste. It's built in-house.

You can see it in companies like Clay, Modal, and Sandbar. Clay feels like it was designed by people who actually use it — intimate, personal, precise. Modal's site has cinematic restraint; it's confident without being loud. Sandbar's product design feels like architecture — spacious, weightless, deliberate. They all share the same quality: every pixel feels inevitable.

We're in the most design-saturated era in history, and yet genuine taste feels rare. Tools like Figma, Framer, and AI assistants have made execution easier than ever, but they can't teach discernment. They help you produce faster, not see clearer. Taste still comes from observation — watching, studying, noticing what works and what doesn't. It's the slowest competitive advantage you can build, which is precisely why it endures.

Great companies' design decisions mirror how they operate. You can usually tell how a team runs by how their product feels. Sloppy design often means sloppy thinking. The inverse is also true. If a founder obsesses over spacing, copy, and typography, they probably obsess over hiring, product, and customers too.

Design isn't about being flashy or clever. It's about being intentional. The internet is full of things built quickly and forgotten even faster. The rare ones that last are made by people who care deeply about the details no one else sees. They understand that design isn't the final layer — it's the foundation everything else sits on.

We've entered an age where anyone can publish, code, and ship. That's a gift. But the real opportunity now is to create things that feel distinct. The companies that will define this next decade won't be the ones generating more output. They'll be the ones slowing down enough to build something that actually feels alive.

Because taste compounds the way code and capital do. Every decision informed by it raises the baseline of everything that follows.