Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
So Troy and I have been, you know, having escapades together in Miami. Are you even plotting against me? Is that why we have seven guests today? We're just, is this like auditions for my replacement? Don't be paranoid. Don't be paranoid. That's why Troy keeps going on Dylan's podcast. He's going to replace me with Dylan Byers. Alex is getting replaced first, for sure. Should we get into the episode? Let's get going. That's why I'm here. Okay.
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I think everyone knows who everyone else is, but we're going to be joined by two guests today. Anonymous Banker, who's another breakout. I think he's a breakout star. The recurring character of Anonymous Banker. I think it's a good one. We're still dialing in the voice modification because it grates on some people. So I just, you know, this is still, it's still, it's still working. Yeah. I mean, after a while we've had some feedback, so it's still work in progress. Everyone we're trying to dial it in.
All right, fine. I like it. And then Ana Andralic, who is a tastemaker in my household, is going to be joining us. A little special family episode. We'll see how that goes. I hope it goes well. You want to remind the people who we are? Oh, well, I don't like this. But anyway, I'm Brian Morrissey, and I'm joined by Troy Young and Alex Schleifer. I don't like the intros. I've heard other podcasts that... And we do get guests. We do make the effort to get guests.
occasionally, but only if they're solicited over dinner or something, or they're in our households, or they just agree to do it because they like us. Yeah, I like having the drop-by. That's the approach we're taking. I mean, it was a little shocking, right? Nana Ana's going to drop by, and we asked her last night, and she was enthusiastic about it over dinner. I'm just surprised that we're doing an episode on taste. I was surprised that you never thought of having her on earlier because she...
She spends a lot of time thinking about that. She does. That's her profession, you know, but we keep her professional pursuits mostly separate. Ana's going to be joining us in 15 minutes and Alex has a hard stop. As a way of taste, before you start, because you keep being reluctant about
sharing our names at the beginning of each episode. Do you think that's tasteless? No, I don't think so. It's familiarity. Because I think what I got feedback, and the feedback that I commonly get, the most positive feedback that I think is good, is someone wrote in this week and said, oh, it's like, you know, listen to three smart people like at the bar. And like, I think that's sort of what
I think that's what a lot of podcasts do well. But I don't know. I haven't gotten any complaints on that front. I mean, we probably sound like three smart people at a bar after a few drinks. But I think it's nice for a new audience that comes in to understand the dynamics of
You know, who we are. I mean, when you don't prepare, you got to lean into the banter, Alex. Yeah. You do. Okay. Well, we can weave that in because, Alex, I want to start because we're going to do a taste episode. We did one on like productivity and we're going to try another sort of theme episode. It's going to be a theme newsletter. If you don't already get the People vs. Algorithms newsletter, it's a real banger. Get it at peoplevsalgorithms.com. It comes out every Friday. It's a companion, a weekend companion to this podcast. Yeah.
Even as like a cover image, like as a cover image to the old days. Because Troy is a tastemaker and we will get to that because I think it's an important part of his identity. But I want to start with you, Alex, because to me, when we're going to like unpack taste, I think of like taste is like inextricably entwined with design and you're
You're a designer at heart, even if you're doing video games now, right? Well, I'm a video game designer now. Still a designer. I just design video games. Okay, you're still a designer. It's a very malleable word. You just slap it onto anything. Lifestyle designer. Anything you want can be a designer. Yeah.
All right, what is the role? First of all, what is the role of taste in design? And can you just unpack your point of view on what taste actually is? Because I think a lot of times it's like content. It's applied to all kinds of things. And usually it's just used by people for whatever they want to use it for. Oh, this question makes me anxious.
I think it's because I was doing interface design and brand design and information design, kind of things that people use in apps or see in advertising. And there was always this conversation around
Is taste valuable? And of course it is. Of course it is. But oftentimes you're talking to people that don't truly understand taste. So you're trying to talk yourself around it and trying to speak about these things a little bit more academically because they're paying you for it. And especially when you're starting out, it's kind of hard to say like, well,
I think this is good because I have good taste and I made that decision, right? So the taste conversations has kind of followed me throughout my career. And I think it's really hard for people to talk about taste because in itself that is tasteless to say that, well, the reason my work is good is that I have better taste than most people. And in this case, I think in the case of
a work like design, whether it is for marketing or apps, it is kind of an understanding of what will appeal tastefully to as large a group of people as possible. And that you do it with
enough kind of awareness of what people may like, but push the boundaries just enough so that it's interesting and that you actually become hopefully a tastemaker, right? Like what you want to do is build something that people find beautiful and then others start emulating. That conversation is often really hard to have within organization. And so I think a lot of people in the field talk around it. Maybe it's different in fashion and in music or
or creative media, but definitely in the world I used to come from, we try to avoid the taste conversation, oddly enough. Don't know if that answers your question. I think it does in part. Troy, do you want to pick up here? I think of you as a tastemaker. You have tastes across a lot of different areas. You've got a point of view. To me, taste is like you need a point of view, and I think you're getting at that, Alex, and that a lot of people...
shy away from taste because it requires a point of view. I mean, we've talked about this on this podcast. You can endlessly multivariate tests, like various things. That's not having taste exactly. Yeah. But what is it to you, Troy? Why is it important? Well, thank you for the compliment. I appreciate it. It's important to me. I don't know. Maybe it makes me feel comfortable. Maybe it makes me feel like...
the people around me or the spaces that I occupy that I like are the right place to be and there's something kind of nurturing and comforting and reassuring about it. It was like, I am fussy when it comes to like, I'll tolerate a shitty room or a tasteless restaurant.
if the food and the value and the craft and the execution kind of, you know, offset it. Hotels for me, like, bad taste in hotels is usually kind of sucks.
And that's why I like to kind of find places. It doesn't mean they have to be expensive, although hotels with taste generally are. But like last night when I met you, Brian, we went into that wonderful new hotel. I don't know how new it is. I guess a couple of years, a year or two old now in Miami. No, it's been there for longer. Probably one of the nicest hotels I've been to in a long time. It's the Four Seasons Surfside.
And it, it's, it's like an incredible place, right? Like it feels like it has history. It feels even though, you know, it's manufactured, it has like everything. Like it just feels kind of authentic. It feels like you're transported into another place. Like it's kind of dreamy that way. I don't know. It, it, to me, it, it, it shows like good taste has a sense of where it is. Like it's,
It feels like a kind of old-fashioned Miami that you want to hang out in. Yeah. It's like got a 50s, 60s vibe. They got a Havana-style bar. Thomas Keller is the chef there. It's like, you know, the flower arrangements at that hotel were beautiful and kind of...
you know, simple and the whole thing, it smelled good. The staff was incredible. Like it's just, it's just a great hotels. It's interesting what you're saying because it actually, it reminds me that taste, because the taste conversation sometimes gets bogged down by personal tastes, which is one thing. But a lot of what you're talking about here is, is like decisions and execution, right? Like, like,
the execution that matches the decisions that were made to a point where the whole package comes together really well. Like it's likely that you wouldn't design your home or even your hotel like that Four Seasons Hotel is. But there was a vision and it was well executed and it feels coherent. And so even when you're in it, there's lots of spaces that I visit or things that I see where I said, it's not my thing.
But that vision is so clear and it's so well executed that it becomes tasteful in its own way. Yeah. And we forget about an execution. Execution is such a big part of taste, like getting it right. Huge, huge. And the foundation of taste has got to be some kind of empathy, right? Like you've got to...
You've got to be able to feel what's right for people in the moment. You've got to make choices. It has to be underpinned by, you know, craft. Hopefully that craft feels authentic. But, you know, it's just like...
Sense of proportion, you know good taste always has sort of I guess like a kind of cultural literacy Kind of knowing the right references or the history or you get why like a vintage thing is cool or not You know, usually it whispers in Miami. It often yells You know it avoids that you know being over the top but you know if this conversation started because
I was thinking about how you differentiate a business, right? And there's all the ways that you can differentiate a product, which like,
might be price or might be quality or might be service or might be selection or might be, you know, those little levers that you pull to try to create a mode or compete as a business. And taste is a really big one of them. And, and the, one of the reasons this came up is Brian said, well, come and meet me at the standard, which is a hotel that's not on the kind of main beach, Miami beach strip. It's like on the, the Biscayne side. So the Biscayne Bay. Yeah. Yeah. And so literally, uh,
You know, like I went from a hotel that had what I would say is absolutely no vibe to like one that was like overflowing with vibe. The standard has it. And, you know, that hotel was it was a shitty motel on the wrong side of the strip. And in 2004, I think is when it when it opened.
Andre Balazs, who's made lots of cool spaces. He made one on Shelter Island called the Sunset Beach Hotel, but gave the place kind of a vibe. And it still has it 20 years later. And people still want to be there. And so it's interesting to me that you can not have, you know, the competitive ingredients that all of these hotels have on the Miami Beach side, but you can make a place that just is so much better.
Yeah, I think, I mean, this is where taste is...
And same applies in filmmaking or any type of media or anything like that, where like taste, which leads to art direction, which leads to very cohesive vision means that you can punch above your weight usually, you know? And, and I think it's when, but it requires, it requires, I think, leadership with taste. And I think the two people I've worked for in my life were you and Brian Chesky from Airbnb. And I think it's,
the thing that made it work was that you both had taste. Even though you couldn't make me execute the way I could, it allowed me to... What do you mean? You've seen Troy's designs. Yeah, I've seen them. No, I suck. I suck. Troy's got... I mean, just not to underplay it, I think Troy does have... He's one of the people that has some of the best taste and vision for what I think looks cool. Even
Even in his advanced age, he's keeping up with it, which is like... Well, one of the things that I like about Miami, you guys, is like it breaks the rules in lots of ways, which is a big part of taste, I think, which is...
taking something ugly and making it cool, right? Like taking something from one context and just supposing it in one where it maybe doesn't fit, but knowing how to do it in a way that makes you wonder about it or reconsider it. Like those are people that are really good at it. But like Miami is ghastly in lots of ways, right? Like, you know, like,
I mean, the neon green lombos and like butt implants and just like duck lips all over the place. And the public art in Miami is horrendous. Well, the design district is a shopping mall.
Yeah. Like you said about the design district, it's the only place where, you know, someone was paid to do graffiti. Well, no, that's Wynwood and Wynwood. They've got the brand activation graffiti there. And Miami just breaks rules in other weird ways, too, because like like you can do things that are considered gauche in other places, like you can vape in the pool or some people don't care.
I mean, which isn't a big deal, but like you can just, there's lots of stuff that's considered tasteless in other places. You know, it's just like the rules of the road. It's like living in an airport. You know, all the rules are off.
Also, like, and by the way, who approved, this one pisses me off. If you're on the beautiful, the beach is great here, right? Weather's terrific, all that. And like, who approved those floating TV sets that float by? Like, what the hell? Wait, you're against, Troy, you are against an ad network? You're on the beach, you know, you're having a good, you know, it's a beautiful place, you're chilling out. And like, these chit-chat,
gigantic barges with huge screens on them float by advertising some like electronic you know music festival i don't know you see you see the horizon i see available inventory yeah i mean they're putting banner ads on the scene now that's like i mean burn it down start over i'm sorry thank you that's that's ballyhoo by the way ballyhoo if you're listening we're open for sponsorships no we're not
I think they're the floating ad network. They used to be in New York until they shut them down. I saw them floating by. New York, like, famously tasteful city. City full of taste, New York. I think New York is tasteful. I agree. I'm not being sarcastic. Okay, good. Let's talk about, because taste in media used to be a moat, right? And I don't think that really exists anymore. This is, you know, Graydon Carter has his new book out, like,
when the times were good about like the heyday of magazines. This is something you talked about last week, Troy. And I think that era was defined by tangents
Taste being wielded by gatekeepers, right? And that's leaked out, right? I don't think you can really say that maybe Vogue will be an exception to a degree. But I don't know if GQ is setting taste. I mean, because taste is aspirational, right? And I don't know if media, if most of the legacy media doesn't play that role anymore. Is that a question? Yeah, that's a question. You can react to it.
Well, I think they, you know, you wish you did because being someone who influences how people consume is, has economic and cultural power. And, you know, that, that power has, has kind of seeped out of, you know, traditional kind of lifestyle media and other types of media. Yeah.
But it's gone somewhere else. Look who's here. How are you doing, Anna? Nice to have you here. I'm good. Thanks for having me. How are you guys? We're good. It was great seeing you last night. Nice to meet you, Alex. I don't think we ever met. No, we never met. You exist. Yeah. I wasn't sure for a second. This is a drop-by.
I do exist. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. We're talking about taste and we were just talking about the role, how it's sort of leaked out from media being like tastemakers. And to me, like, tastemaking is, it's a form of gatekeeping, I think, to some degree. Because you used to have to work to have taste. Like, if...
I put in the newsletter, but Brian Breaker has great taste in music, I think. And he worked at it. He's gone to all the record stores for decades and developed. He's been DJing. He's a Brooklyn DJ dad. That's an archetype. And nowadays, you sort of give it over to Spotify. You don't have to work to develop taste. And I'm kind of struck by how the tech CEOs...
sort of outsourced taste. Like they don't naturally have taste. It's pretty obvious, right? But then you look at the transformation of like Bezos, of Jensen Wang, of Zuckerberg, you know, they just got stylists. And then all of a sudden they're just like renting taste, which is to me totally contrary. Well, that would assume that the way it ended up, you know, reflected some type of good taste, which it doesn't seem to have at all. No, it's like the appearance of taste.
You think Jensen Huang's all black leather jacket. I mean, it's just like, I mean, it's definitely a shtick, but it's not tasteful. No, I don't think so. Well, also guys, you should know that stylists in Hollywood, like in life didn't exist 20 years ago. That's like a new. Is it a new thing? Employment. You got offended when Troy suggested getting you a stylist to jumpstart on the brand.
Hey, bring it on. Like, I'll take anything. I mean, I was saying that if we could add... When does the budget start? $100,000? $500,000? Like, let's go. Troy, come on.
I'll open the account. You naturally have taste. I think you have taste. I, you know, I'm biased in this, but I think you have good taste. I mean, I wish people watch this on video because you can really see the, the, the taste distribution from, from, from screen to screen. Brian's background looks like. Thank you, Alex, because I don't even need to respond. You know, some things you just don't need to respond to. That's right. What is, what does it mean to you, Anna? You're, you're, you're smart about this stuff. What is taste?
So sociologically, there have been a ton of studies because obviously it's one of the ways that people organize themselves and judge themselves and rank themselves and signal their status. So the blend was used it to kind of say, hey, upper classes have specific tastes, but the lower classes adopt those tastes, upper classes move on and start doing something else.
So that's like Soho House, that's like maybe even Kazuchipriani now. That's, you know, like when you start doing certain things, when like SoulCycle used to be cool. Like, I know it sounds improbable, but so that's kind of those behaviors that you always need to kind of keep going. And that's the class distinction. Now I see why you got pissed off last night when I asked you if you knew what a Veblen Goode was.
because this is foundational well not pissed off i mean but you were like of course right because i wanted you to be available and good right so that you would increase your your subscription prices yeah it's about monetization choice coming but then you become a gas and good you know when your price is just people are buying you just because you have a really high price which is like basically jay-z's champagne and like the crazy stuff
Yeah. So anyway, so like without going, so that's like, let's talk about that because that's important for what Brian and what you guys talked about before. And then for Bordier, he was also talking about how taste is actually important.
You're born into that. It's something that's given. And that is actually the opposite of what I believe in and what other schools of sociology believe in. Because if tomorrow I decide to become a coffee connoisseur and develop that taste, there are so many places to go. There are magazines, there are blogs, there are newsletters, there are videos. If I want to become a bourbon connoisseur, if I want to develop...
Japanese anime style, I can. So that is the whole point that in the video internet with this taste communities, anyone can develop taste. It's not something that's fixed and given, which was, that's why I brought up those two sociologists that in the 20th century, it was something like you're just born into that.
and you're stuck with it. And that's how you're like, oh, that's not quite our class based on how... And in Europe, it's still very much the case. If you go to London and hang out or when you go to St. Moritz or so on, you know exactly...
How the knives are, you know, arranged. You don't know how the forks are arranged. You don't know how people behave. And based on those behaviors, they know what class you're in. But like in general, all of that can be learned. Yeah, but that's the democratization part that I think is like interesting because, you know, taste, democratizing taste to me is interesting.
I mean, isn't that like sort of against the point of it? Well, I mean, isn't that what you were kind of mentioning, Anand, that as soon as like taste, a taste starts scaling, they, you know, the class of like that defines themselves as tastemaker tries to move to something else, which is, well, like taste rarely survives scale. Like once you start doing something mass market, it's really difficult to keep scaling.
But you have a mess taste, you know, like Zara is a mess taste. Fashion is a mess taste. iPhones. And that is, you know, but the thing is, which I think is very interesting, that's what your examples of like...
Elon Musk having hair now, you know, like that's kind of everyone can pay for taste, basically. But really, like when you say, hey, but I sort of think that bald is kind of beautiful. Definitely, Troy. Definitely. Niche taste. For the audio listener, Troy just lifted his hat. So I do think that when you have like fashion sub stack now,
you have all those different new gatekeepers and they have their own niche audience. Is there like maybe 100,000 or so on? And then you still have Vogue. Vogue is mass-tased.
for someone like Zach Posen is fashion for someone. Right. Because he was a project runaway and so on. But actually, how do you want to define what are those tastemakers and groups are doing? Are they advancing the discipline? Are they advancing a market? What is the purpose? Spotify is taste for someone, but not for brand breaker. All of this taste, though, comes...
I mean, even Zara, right? There's a pipeline that comes in from smaller groups, which are often kind of defining tastes. You know, they can be artists, musicians, or some subculture. And then that taste makes it into the mass culture, right? And at some point, it feels that that gets tapped out and new sources get picked out. I mean, Spotify is the same thing, right? A lot of the Spotify spotlight playlists is about like discovering cool new artists that were...
you know, Dochi was like, you know, looking for work a year ago and now she's a massive star. Isn't Zara also kind of like mining the taste of these subcultures popping up? Isn't it looking at like the wider society and saying, okay, this is cool now, we'll just mass produce it. Correct, but that's distribution.
Right. So they're not, are they making taste or are they just scaling taste? Scaling taste. Right. I'm interested in your point of view on the sort of European conception of taste versus the American. Because I think of America, I'll just posit it. I think we're a crass, vulgar people. You know, we're commercializers. We're scalers.
We like ad networks on the ocean. Like, you know, this is just who we are, right? I don't think... This is not happening in Italy. But you can also look at the positive side. You're pioneers, explorers, innovators, inventors. No, no, no, that's a positive. Look, everything is trade-offs. You know, like, I'm not looking to Italy to create, like, you know, the next frontier models in AI. But I trust them more on having, like, great taste, generally. Yeah, but that taste is also really... It's really set in legacy, right? Like, I don't think Italy...
And a lot of it is kind of based on legacy. A lot of it is based on old-fashioned ways and very rigid ways of doing things, which is great, which remains tasteful. And there's some maintaining that is important. But like, you know, rock and roll and Bob Dylan and stuff like that, those influences often came from the U.S. where people just...
No, again, it's trade-offs. I'm just saying when you're looking for like, you know, Troy, if you're going to have like a go to a hotel with great taste, okay, are you more likely to have that in Miami or are you more likely to have that in New York? Like it's not close. Oh, actually, definitely Miami. I think that the... You deserve that, Brian. You deserve it. No, I mean, I've been to really terrible hotels in Milan.
And I think that actually there's a real kind of taste perversion in Italy where it's like either it actually, maybe we shouldn't draw, I mean, because there's some things that Miami and Milan share, right? Like there's, I think there's, well, there's a tackiness to both of it on the, on the, on the,
kind of bad side right like the peacocks the peacocking i mean there's wonderful hotels in miami we were at one last night that hotel we were at last night is better than any single hotel in milan for sure you want to die there right i would like to die there yes i wouldn't mind
I mean, I'm not saying a violent death, but like if you were going to overdose anywhere, that would be not a bad place. Troy's White Lotus exit is kind of the art here. Because there's so many more dimensions to taste that I think that Americans are good at. There's just the sort of fundamental layer of taste, but there's also, you know, the kind of American obsession with like sophisticated execution, right? And service, right?
that make the kind of American tasteful experience so wonderful. I don't know. I think that every society, I mean, even Canadians have taste, right? It's just different. You're a cultural critic. I do think there was a so-called Battle of Versailles in the 70s when American designers went to Paris, and that was Bill Blass' work.
class back then you won't like know them they were like before Calvin Klein, Donna Karan even so you would have those that that sort of define the the 70s Jeffrey Beane I think was there and basically it they staged that in Versailles and it was to raise money and basically they came in and it was
It was unbelievably stodgy affair fashion shows back there. There was like classical music and so on. And Americans came and they were like, it was Pat Cleveland. They were African-Americans models. They were dancing. There was jazz. And they just killed it. And not just with the looks, but the entire format. And they really upset that luxury fashion setting. But then also, when you look at Apple and design of computers, that is another thing, right?
And so kind of like I do believe in that innovation in taste that comes from here. I don't agree with Troy in terms of
service because when you go to a lot of American luxury hotels, it's so over-the-road. It's not natural. When you go to Japan, for example, it's a motel. One step ahead. It feels very flowing and natural. And here someone tells you 15, five times, like, good morning and knocks on your door. Would you like some water? Like breaking and entering. And do you need like chocolate? And, you know, like it's kind of lover, you know, like.
I agree. And he's like, I'm going to go away, you know? You're right. There's no subtlety. We used to do this event at my last job at a resort. We went to a lot of resorts. I spent a lot of time at resorts just for professional reasons. And it was in Deer Valley. And the staff, when you would walk by them in the hallway, they would like pin themselves to the wall. Like,
Like it was like a wide corridor and I was just like, this is a little bit much. I don't need that. But I also think that in Milan you have, like when you go to Como, those hotels are amazing. Like now Mandarin Oriental and then even like the attention to detail is much higher. Armani Hotel.
like, you mentioned last night that you're very interested in the escort scene at Casa Cipriani on Friday night. So when that's the case, like, who mentioned that? Is that me or Troy? Or is that Alex? Oh, Troy! I was not involved in this. I would like, for the record, I might have mentioned it as an observer. I noticed at the Four Seasons Uptown, the new Four Seasons bar. It was not as a consumer. I don't remember it mentioned. And also, yeah, the...
The fashion examples may be, you know, I mean, different countries have primacy in different industries. And, you know, American fashion isn't really, you know, obviously nearly as well developed. If that's the lens you're using, I think... Don't forget Ralph. Respect to Ralph. Well, hold on. But at the same time, Troy, like European tourists are some of the worst dressed people in the world. I can say that as a European.
i mean see tourists abroad trash no you haven't been in milan or paris why do you have parisian style parisian chic if they're that is under no i know but those those are like yeah if you go to milan with your people i don't know who you are no look there's a lot of europeans who wear those i'm french so i'm polo shirts with the giant numbers on them and stuff yeah exactly yeah
This Europe trash, you hear that everywhere. Don't, you know. No, I am judging because I think if you look at, there's definitely the population of, you walk into any city, you walk into New York and you think, you know, America is full of great taste. I think every country has something that another country will find offensive, including kind of like the broad European fashion when they travel. Like, I think, you know. Yeah, but what's the point?
What's your point? Well, my point is that I don't think we can casually talk about one country having more taste than another. I think there are exports of taste that each of these countries can do really well. France, Italy, even America. But I think culture itself, taste is kind of a mishmash. Right, but I think that certain countries made a brand out of themselves thanks to it. Sure. France makes money out of it.
Of their luxury industry, of their Provence, of their wines, of their perfumes, of their luxury brands, of their museums. Like that's their brands based on their taste. Italy the same. They haven't created anything new in like whatever, 100 years. Mussolini. It's an industry rather than like a broad cultural behavior. Yeah.
Oh, my God. The global export. I want you on every week, Anna. We're going to build up, right? I'll get you a stylist. Listen, but I'm wondering, Anna, because this podcast occasionally likes to veer into service territory. You know, what helpful tips would we offer the audience around...
how to be more tasteful, how to think about taste with more, I don't know, sophistication maybe, or like what advice would you give me about taste? I'm looking for it. In terms of service? Well, no, when I said service, I mean service in the context of service journalism. Like we want to help people live a more tasteful life.
Is this something you can do intentionally? Like, can you learn to have taste? That's what I wanted to say. But like, I'm really like, I want to really pay respect to American designers who were at the Battle of Versailles. And I know that your audience doesn't care, but
If that goes, I'm segueing into the next answer is like, what are you really interested in and passionate about, Troy? What would you like to learn more of? Because everything you want to develop a taste in, I have a taste for is an expression. It's basically...
Think of taste as an active thing. Something that can be learned, not something that's given and you have it, but you don't have it. So do you think I could be more stylish if I put my mind to it? A thousand percent. You can hire a stylist. I don't want to hire anybody. Look at that. He's like cover of Vanity Fair shot by Ann Lebowitz. Have you seen him? Are we saying that's tasteful? That's what I'm saying. You can hire a stylist, but you can also learn about style. Read Fashion Substance.
Lauren Sanchez, she tastes whole. Everybody in Silicon Valley right now is a stylist, I can tell you. Absolutely. They all go to Brunello Cucinelli's like Nona is making them like meatballs, they're all into like that. So that's kind of, it's not that there's a shortcut to taste, but
If you're really interested in that, Troy, you go Fashion Subject, you click on affiliate links, and then you slowly go, whatever your recommendations are. Yeah, I'm kind of more interested in, I'm waking up to this morning, right? And I'm a little low on clothing because it's the end of a trip. But, you know, I make decisions in my closet or to add things to my closet. And I'm just wondering if you would maybe have anything for me to think about when I'm making those decisions. Yeah.
If you have nothing to wear in your hotel room, that's pretty much the end.
At the end of your day, I can't deliver anything. It's not going to be there forever. You see, men of my, I mean, I'll just finish this up. Men of my vintage typically just kind of veer towards uniform dressing. Correct. And try to just stick to the same stable of brands and looks and then vary them slightly. Like, you know, I have, you know, classic Lacoste, you know, polo tops in 37 colors.
Just because it's comforting to me and I don't have to make a lot of decisions. Yeah. Would you, is that okay?
I'm not sure that I understand your question. It went from you having a lot of dirty laundry to telling, you know, like, so at the end of your trip. Have you listened? A lot of men. Honestly, I'll just go back. A lot of men behave like you. Banana Republic built an entire, like, American companies built an entire business on the fact that men don't want to make decisions. They buy one pair of chinos when they're 22 and they buy, like, the next time they buy, like...
They're buried at 92. You know what I mean? They buy the same over and over and over again. An American retail business is created like that. So you know what I mean? That's kind of you're an archetype of that sort of behavior. So if you want to sort of evolve your taste, then I have the same
recommendation is before having 37 low cost is amazing that really takes decision making out of your your day and which is more important it creates a brand for you repeatability and uniform is like oh i know how troy is going to look like it's steve jobs black turtleneck and so on so you project a specific image so what do you want you want to have a different image
I think I'll stick to this one for now, just because it's... Cool. So what's your question then? Well, I was being... It was a hypothetical question. It was hypothetical. So let's... Okay, so let's do what you wanted. You're getting the what's your question treatment, Troy. I love this. So I have a hard stop. No, but I want to be helpful here. I want to be useful to your audience. So kind of my thing is... Oh, there is an anonymous banker. Wait, an anonymous banker is here, Anna. Anonymous banker. That's what I was... I was going to ask you. Okay.
Ana, thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Hey, Troy, can I give a tip to anonymous banker? 100%. You know what? What do you think about banker fashion? Well, he has 30 of those blue Oxford button don'ts.
That's not a brand. That's something different. No, but I do want to just wrap up and leave you on a... If you really wanted to explore, you can say, hey, Ana, tell me which podcast to listen to. Tell me which newsletters to read. Tell me which stores to go to. And it starts from there. Because like I tell, read the Continuous Lean, for example. Read Spreza. Go to those Instagram accounts. See what you like. You like more of that? Algorithm is going to take care of the rest.
You're going to look like him in no time. Bye. Give us five tips for the PVA weekend. Thank you, Anna. Bye, Anna. Ciao. Bye, Anna. Thank you. Please come back. All right.
All right, AB, you're here. That's a lot. That's your daily? Yeah, that's a Tuesday. She's fabulous. Ana's very accomplished and she's very high energy and she's a lot of opinions and she takes this shit. So I've got a hard stop in six minutes. He's got a hard stop. I just want to say hi to Anonymous Banker. We keep missing each other. Hey, Alex. How's it going?
I'm nice sworn to secrecy. I've seen your face, so it's a scary place to be. Well, if they found out at Goldman that he was doing this, they would be pissed. Exactly. So, AB, is there a taste premium? Can this get the multiple up? How's taste value? Is that just an intangible? Where does that go on the balance sheet?
So I think there's sort of two layers to taste, especially in the media space. So taste around personalities and then taste around companies. For personalities, you see people like even a Joe Rogan, who you might say doesn't have taste, but he has this cultural zeitgeist. And that allows him to get these massive Spotify deals. Howard Stern did his deal with SiriusXM. And at the company level, I think where you see it pushing up valuation is where
larger media companies are trying to say either they feel like they're getting behind and so they need to capture new taste or they need to basically align themselves with the next generation of content creators. So I think it totally plays into valuation. Okay, but how much? I don't know. It's hard to say. Is it going to get me from like a 5x EBITDA to like an 8x EBITDA? Like what are you going to get? I think it absolutely can. Yeah. I mean, the best way to drive a price is
is running a competitive process or have people believe that there's scarcity of a business. So depending on the size of the deal and your counterparty, I've been in situations where I had an offer that I tripled and not based on any sort of revenue multiple or EBITDA multiple. It ultimately tied out.
in this case, to a revenue multiple. But I think it can actually drive significant value. I don't know. There's not a specific percentage. But I mean, it would make sense that in an algorithmic world where standing out is so important and getting kind of beyond the noise that taste and tastemaking would be a huge premium for any brand at this stage. Exactly, yeah. They built a billion-dollar company by calling it
water liquid death, right? I mean, it was just like hitting culture right at the right moment. And I think you can do that in anything. It's always been the case. And it's more the case today than ever, I think. Yeah, in the YouTube space,
One of the things that's happened and what you saw, so last year there were a couple YouTube channels and brands for sale and no one was really biting. And then they just recently sold, one of them sold last year, the hot one. And so one of the big things with the reason why that deal got done is because people believe that you could connect now taste with monetization. So another deal that just got announced is this company called Good Good Golf. And that thing's been shopped for 18 months. And
And so now what you're seeing is the market believes in all these different analyst reports that YouTube is the next TV, that they believe that they can connect taste with monetization. And it's really interesting when you hear how the guys from FirstSweefy sell their advertising. It's not based on a CPM. It's basically selling brands on the adjacency to the content. They sell out one week.
to these different brands and get them to pay premium advertising rates. That's not taste. That's just media. But here's the thing about the algorithmic thing. I was talking... I've been raising money for our video game studio. Thankfully, that's all behind us. But what happened is we talked to a few industry publishers, big publishing firms that they used to be able to find a decent product and push that out and build an audience. But I said...
As things have turned more and more algorithmic and it's harder and harder to reach audiences via just like, you know, blasting paid media at them. What they're investing in is that they're actually taking investment into smaller studios, smaller companies. And the entirety of their search is around taste. Trying to find people who have taste. There are tastemakers that can kind of like build a number of things, not only a product, but like products.
not only a product, but like content, media, social activity that kind of breaks through because of taste. So they're taste scouts now. They went from, you know, and I think that makes a lot of sense. Here's where it applies. So in the first we feast, I agree with Troy's point that it's just a, it's a packaging example that I gave, but the reason why taste drove value at, at hot ones is that they were very like thoughtful about,
And like how they put the content together, how they get the actors or whomever the celebrities they have into the studio, get them comfortable with the content. Like that's very intentional. And so there's a taste element to the content that's been created that resonates with an audience. And it has like that basically built in a very embedded audience that continues to grow. And so you can leverage that.
good taste, being intentional about content creation to then sell because the brands like CMOs want to be aligned with good content. Right. So I agree with Troy's point, but it's a little bit different in that there's a bunch of cooking shows online that haven't been able to tap through as much as the hot ones. Yeah. I think the big question is whether taste gets you off the spreadsheet. Right. Of course it does. Of course it does. Well, it used to, I don't know if it still does.
Maybe less so now, but I think there's always a contextual premium in places where people believe that the media is cultural. Alex has a hard stop. I have a hard stop. I got to go, guys. We'll continue on. You got to stop saying hard stuff. No, I'm going to keep saying it. Hard stop. I'm going to try to do it as a spinoff. Yeah, let's double check. It's our journey loves Chacha. The biggest thing I think that tastes, because the
The way that it pulls it off the spreadsheet is basically people are saying we have to have this. If we don't have this, then we're missing out on an opportunity. It's not just like a capability ad. It's media. It's media for crying out loud. Of course, taste matters. Of course, context matters. Of course, your ability to influence culture matters. Of course, that translates into CPM premiums. It's media.
Like, I don't even know why we're even discussing this. It's crazy. Oh my God. We'd be better off talking about whether AI has taste.
Does AI have taste, Brian? To me, taste is like a point of view. And that's when taste really excels. And I think by its nature, AI flattened. AI is basically an accelerant to what we see with algorithms that flattens everything. And so I think there's a good case to be made that AI will make
taste, particularly in media and other areas, actually be more valuable because taste is inherently human. But let's break it down into the pro and con, right? So can it, could you create a tasteful AI bot? Can AI do the, automate the things that are part of taste making? Well, is taste making pattern recognition? Yes. Can AI do it? Yes.
Is it understanding references and bringing those in? Yes. Can AI do that? Very well. Can it curate based on a rule set? Sure.
Could it therefore do playlists and interiors and maybe fashion selection based on those rules? Would that be in 90% of people's minds, the equivalent of taste for sure? Does that mean knowing your preferences? Probably because they're going to customize to what it believes about you and you might find that tasteful. On the other side, the more exquisite part of taste, which is
emotional resonance and you know sensitivity to culture and time and knowing when to break rules and instinct right in that sort of sixth sense that you know when you know people that are super tasteful they have that sense of things and when to break the rules and surprise and all that you know like this idea of taking something ugly and making it cool like ai will never do that well
So I think that actually for a lot of the world, AI could be a taste companion. But at the top end of the pyramid, it doesn't have the sensory capability, the history, the memory that gives great tastemakers their sort of effervescent or elusive quality. That would be my take.
But I mean, that's the thing. It's like most people don't want the taste. It's just like it's good enough. It's the simulation of taste is fine. But if you're going to, I don't know, if I was going to like Tokyo, I would trust like
You know, Colin Nagy, like he's, he's like a, he's like a taste guy. He's like a Japan guy. Like I, I go for his like recommendations because I know he, I know his taste and you know, it's not going to be the same thing that AI would give me. I mean, AI is, is just going to be the average at the end of the day. You know, Brian, I had this funny conversation this morning with a guy that owns a hotel and he said, you know, there's this guy, he's like some things, uh,
that are considered sort of tasteful and I'm not and I'm and I'm gonna deliberately confuse this with like stuff that that is memorable or quirky or you know just like surprising you know they he's like when you when you operationalize it in a hotel it it it loses its taste kind of appeal
So he was saying that inside of their hotel, there was this quirky guy that always walked around and took the coffee orders, just walked around the hotel and became a character in the hotel. And it probably didn't pencil out as a good investment, but it was just part of the vibe. And he's like, you can't just make that as a role.
Inside of all of our hotels. And so it does kind of speak to like, you know, the humanness of it. And when, you know, the challenge with like hotels are a great lens for this, like the challenge of scaling taste and why you have to really admire companies that are able to do it.
you know, like to kind of add surprise and taste in ways that are not cheesy or feel manufactured across a big chain. And that's why that hotel last night was so impressive to me because, you know, I've been in lots of shitty Four Seasons, but like this one is special.
Well, Four Seasons is like a licensing play, isn't it? Don't they just license it out to others? Yeah, but I think there's a taste book, obviously, and a playbook that goes along with it. Alex said it. When you try to scale these kinds of things, they inevitably get diluted. At the end of the day, and that was my point about Americans not really having taste as a...
strong suit is we're hyperscalers. We blitz scale. If taste comes along, fine. But at the end of the day, it's in service of monetization. Am I right, AP? We're about monetization here. I think of some of these media companies, and as I mentioned some of these names, some of these people have been canceled, but I would make the argument that a traditional media company that had scale, there were people like
Aless Moonves or Barry Diller at Paramount or Sheila Nevins at HBO Docs, their taste drove a significant increase in value because they were picking the content. They knew what resonated with viewers. I think what's happening, there's a really good subset post about this guy talking about the evolution of
sort of taste at Netflix and how when you combine it with the algorithm and viewership metrics, it's sort of getting diluted in the sense that all these shows have the same sort of look and feel. Like they feel like movies, but they have these like ways of getting you hooked to keep watching. And so it's like a delusion or a perversion where when everyone's looking at the metrics,
taste is sort of going out the window to just get people to basically become like hyper consumers of content so i think that there was a role to play because like brian roberts at comcast he doesn't have any taste right it's a it's a telephone or it's a cable business with a bunch of content there but no one would argue that he's green lighting shows and things like that i think the media executives of the past had a lot of say and drove a lot of value creation through having taste but i think
I think that's changing. Yeah, I mean, look at HBO, like Richard Klepler era, like HBO versus Doctor... What is it? The Pimple Popper? That's a show. I mean, you got to pick a lane. And like, ultimately, you know, we picked a lane of scaling and monetization, and that's fine. But you're going to lose something along the way. I think that's taste. I think where AI plays its role in this taste world is it allows you to action on it. So in your example of Japan...
It will just rely on some of these tastemakers or say you want to update your wardrobe. AI should be the sort of the layer that's telling you, hey, you follow these five people on Instagram.
And, you know, you want to wear this. Here's what fits with you. And here's how you can buy it. That makes monetizing having great taste really difficult. I mean, we got to get, it's like Chris Black. He's a good example of someone who, you know, how would you describe Chris Black? I mean, he does all kinds of things. Like he's like a, he's like a tastemaker guy. He'll be DJing. He's a male influencer, DJ, podcaster guy.
Journalist. Yeah, he's at fashion shows. He's at all kinds of things. He would be an interesting guest because how he monetizes taste, I think, is pretty interesting when I can tell. Okay.
I mean, his desire is to make more content to try to monetize. What's interesting is he wants to move kind of into the traditional media realm. That's like one of his goals is to move back into the traditional media realm with a show to monetize it more. He has a big audience or an audience that's highly engaged around a specific group of men. But what's interesting is...
If he thinks about building future value, it's actually going backwards, not forwards in terms of content. Why do you, that would be good to have him on to talk about this. Why would that be? I mean, because to me, it's like the way the world is now in digital media, it's like, it's all algorithmic. It's, you know, we talk about it on the show all the time and it inevitably, Kyle Chayko was on here. It flattens everything. And so you might want to just go back to traditional media because there you can actually opt to,
to your taste versus here where you're pattern matching. There's much better substack riders than some of these Fox or CNN or MSNBC news hosts that
that some of these people on MSNBC are making $5, $10, $15 million a year, and what they're saying on a daily basis doesn't make any... They're just reading off a script or just kind of going off on their own thoughts, whereas people... Like, I think there's a ceiling on how much money you can make on Substack, and so most of those people are figuring... Like, audio is one of the best channels to make a lot of money because the traditional media companies are still writing pretty large checks because they have the depth of advertisers to be able to push premium CPMs
You just, you just saw the world. It could change, but for now that's sort of how you have to navigate. All right. Do you want to do good product, Troy, or do you have closing thoughts? Do you have like a sermon? I don't really have a sermon. I mean, I think that, that the, the Chris example is just another one where someone who's considered to have great taste and
is someone whose recommendations move the needle in commercial settings and therefore their premium is justified. I mean, it's just, to me, it's like the difference between franchise media and
that has incredible kind of, you know, an elusive cultural power and stuff that sits in the middle where you have to work really hard to kind of, you know, make a media business work versus the far end, which is just, you know, monetization where you're taking commodity impressions and turning them into money. So, yeah, in media, the game will always be to get, to turn taste into premiums, I think.
You know, particularly. And I think that taste exists on different strata, right? Like there's taste in economics. There's taste in politics. There's taste in fashion. There's taste in travel. There's taste in all those places. It generally is the sort of thing that differentiates someone who, you know, is seen as positive.
you know, as having weight from a, you know, kind of cultural perspective or economic perspective. So I'm glad we did this and it happened to nicely coincide with my visit to Miami, which is. - So is that, let's get into Good Products. I think he has some books for us.
I think we should revisit Preppy Handbook and Anonymous Banker probably has a couple of copies of it. I noticed, by the way, that it's 119 bucks on eBay. It's out of print. Really? Because we have a copy at home. I hope Ana didn't pay 120 bucks for that. Well, and then there's also the funny thing about Miami is it doesn't feel like the most kind of literate city. It's an understatement. Jillian and I had to travel 10 miles by bike to find a bookstore.
And there isn't a bookstore. Like you asked the people at the hotel, you know, is there a bookstore around? And they point out like a Tashin bookstore. Yeah, there's a Tashin. That's the only thing in South. These are picture books for grownups. These are not books. Right. So anyway, I bought, I went to the bookstore and I bought that book Miami by Joan Didion. And I got to read that last couple of days. That was fun. There's a, it's fun to try to understand what made this city into the city it is because
And in particular, the Cuban influence on the city was really fascinating to me. And they were, you know, an incredibly idealistic crowd, the exiles in Miami, and also seemingly quite violent.
It's a great mixture. Yeah. But yeah, no, last night was fun. And that hotel is a good product for sure. If you could bring yourself to spend the exorbitant amount that they charge, I think you would enjoy it. You're welcome, Troy. It was on me. Yeah, you paid last night. That's also a nice product. Yeah. AB, if you come to Miami, I'll buy you a fancy meal. Sounds good.
Thanks, guys.
Remember, you can find People vs. Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next week. All right, that's it. We're going to wrap it up. Thank you. This was a good, special episode. And yeah, we'll keep bringing people on for DropBuzz. All right, thanks. Bye.