The Rick Rubin Era of AI: Taste Is the Last Real Moat in eCommerce

We live in an era where AI can generate a marketing plan, write code, remix a song, and summarize a board meeting in minutes. What once required teams of specialists now takes a few prompts. So what still sets great companies and great people apart?

One word: Taste

You’ve seen it before, but maybe haven’t named it. It’s the difference between Spotify’s shuffle, which feels “random enough” (but never repeats the same artist twice in five tracks), and a real randomizer that just feels broken. It’s why Notion’s six-dot drag handle appears only on hover, whispering “move me if you want,” rather than cluttering the UI like a loud hamburger menu.

It’s not aesthetic fluff. Taste is the practiced, often painful, ability to know what should exist, what shouldn’t, and why.

And in the world of AI, where anyone can now spin up apps, pitch decks, and demos on demand, taste becomes the one thing you can’t fake, scale, or speed-run.

What Is Taste?

Let’s start by clarifying what taste isn’t: it’s not just good design. It’s not a better font or a cleaner UI. Those are outputs.

Taste is a point of view. It’s encoded in what your product chooses not to do. It shows up in the bugs you fix immediately, the features you kill despite their revenue potential, and the time you spend fine-tuning an interaction most users won’t consciously notice—but will feel.

Taste hurts. It costs you something.

It’s turning down a feature request from a Fortune 500 prospect because it compromises your core experience. It’s saying “no” to growth hacks that would triple signups but erode brand trust. Taste is restraint under pressure. And it’s rare.

Enter Rick Rubin: The Patron Saint of Taste

Rick Rubin, the bearded music producer behind artists like Jay-Z, Adele, Johnny Cash, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, has no formal music training. He doesn’t play instruments. He barely touches the mixing board. Yet artists across genres revere him.

Why?

Because Rubin has taste. Deep, intuitive, fiercely unshakable taste.

In a now-famous interview, he said:

“I know what I like and what I don't like. I'm decisive about it. And that’s proven to be useful.”

Now, Rubin is bringing that same philosophy to AI. His collaboration with Anthropic, called The Way of Code, reframes Taoist principles for working with large language models. His concept? Vibe coding.

Just like punk rock lets you make music with three chords, Rubin sees AI as punk for programming: you don’t need to be a CS PhD, you just need an opinion.

“I’m the record producer who doesn’t know anything about music. So the idea that there could be a coder who doesn’t know anything about coding—that’s vibe coding.”

Rubin is reminding us: you don’t have to master the tools. You have to master your taste.

Taste at Velocity

In this new AI landscape, everything moves at breakneck speed. The temptation is to chase every model, trend, and viral demo. But the best builders know that taste is what makes speed sustainable.

When you know exactly what you're building and why, decisions become obvious. You stop chasing features and start shipping coherence.

Taste isn't the opposite of shipping fast. It’s the reason you ship well.

Taste Compounds

The best teams build products that feel inevitable.

That feeling that clarity isn’t a fluke. It’s the result of ten thousand micro-decisions that align with a consistent point of view. Think of the last time you used Linear or Superhuman, or Figma, and thought, “This just feels right.” That’s taste made visible.

And it goes beyond product.

Great taste shows up in sales decks, onboarding flows, support docs, and even in how your team runs Zoom demos. Coherence creates trust. Trust creates traction.

Taste Is a Team Sport

So, how do you build for taste?

You start with a founder edit, where every user-facing moment flows through a single point until the team learns what good looks like. Then you hire “multipliers” designers who code, engineers who notice kerning, marketers who obsess over tone.

You log moments of delight and friction. You track “delight debt” the same way you track tech debt.

Taste spreads through apprenticeship, not documentation. The best founders don’t just ship, they narrate their decisions, explain their “no’s,” and model what high standards look like.

Taste Doesn’t Matter Until It’s Everything

Let’s be honest: there are billion-dollar companies with atrocious design. Salesforce, Workday—they win on lock-in, not experience.

But if you’re building something new, in a competitive market, where switching costs are low, and the user is the buyer?

Taste is your advantage. It’s the last moat.

How Do You Develop Taste?

The good news is that taste isn’t magic. It’s not some inborn creative genius. It’s a discipline. A set of muscles you can build—if you’re willing to put in the reps.

1. Expose Yourself to Excellence

Steve Jobs famously said:

“Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It’s about exposing yourself to the best things humans have done.”

Taste is trained by consumption. You can’t build a great product if you don’t know what great looks like. Study not just competitors, but the best of every category. Why does the Dyson vacuum feel elegant? Why is the iPhone packaging as refined as the device itself? Why does one onboarding flow make you feel confident and another confused?

2. Learn to Notice More

Rick Rubin calls this “active noticing.” Taste isn’t just recognizing what you like; it's understanding why. What specifically makes this feel polished? What part of this experience jars or delights you? Pay attention to the micro. Was that email subject line inviting or flat? Did that font choice feel confident or desperate?

Train yourself to see what most people miss.

3. Practice the Edit

Good taste is subtractive. It’s about knowing what doesn’t belong. Rubin often says his greatest skill is helping artists remove things. The same applies in product design, pitch decks, and messaging.

Start small: trim words from a headline, cut a redundant step from onboarding, eliminate a clever feature that adds clutter. Sharpen your kill instinct.

4. Develop a Point of View

Taste isn’t a consensus. It’s conviction. The best builders don’t ask, “What do users want?” They ask, “What should this feel like?” Then they build toward that.

This doesn’t mean being stubborn, it means being deliberate. Not everything has to be beautiful. But everything should be intentional.

5. Surround Yourself with People Who Raise the Bar

Taste compounds fastest in culture. Hire people who notice when the CTA is slightly misaligned. Collaborate with those who push for one more iteration. Make room for the engineer who cares that the animation curve feels right.

You’ll know you’re getting closer when teammates start saying things like, “That feels off—but I’m not sure why.” That’s your gut getting smarter.

6. Reflect and Revisit

Taste isn’t static. What felt like good UX five years ago may feel clunky now. Go back to your work. Ask: Would I still ship this? Would I still say it this way? Would I still make that tradeoff?

Good taste evolves. Great taste never stops looking.

And...Taste Is Lonely

You’re the one who notices the button is two pixels off. You feel the loading state drag too long. You cringe at the broken voice in an error message. But then, someone else notices too. And then another.

Suddenly, you’re not just a perfectionist. You’re building a culture. You’re setting a bar.

That’s how taste scales, not with a manifesto, but with people who give a damn.

Maybe we are entering the Rick Rubin era of technology. Where the value of a founder, a designer, a PM, or an engineer isn’t just how fast they can ship, but how well they can judge. How clearly they can see. And how deeply they care.

Because in a world where AI can do almost everything, what still matters is why you do it.

And that, ultimately, is a matter of taste.

Personally, I'm all for it.