Rick Rubin's Two Pillars for Taste

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If you’ve been hearing phrases like “taste is the only thing that will matter for PMs in the AI era” but aren’t sure what that actually means—or more importantly, how to build it—this episode is for you.

In this conversation, Marc and Ben sit down with Sachin Rekhi, founder, former LinkedIn product leader, and creator of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, to unpack the real mechanics of taste: where it comes from, how to sharpen it, and why it’s already the defining skill of AI-native product teams.

Sachin shares the frameworks he teaches inside companies and in his Reforge course—from Rick Rubin’s “sensitivity & canon” model, to daily design-critique habits, to the patterns he saw across design-driven, metrics-driven, strategy-driven, and sales-driven org cultures.

He also tells the untold story of how Sales Navigator went from a tiny skunkworks project to one of LinkedIn’s biggest product lines—why social capital mattered, how he managed leadership skepticism, and how he used prototypes, real customer quotes, and narrative-building to secure executive conviction.

Whether you’re trying to level up your product intuition, navigate organizational taste cultures, or use AI without slipping into “AI slop,” you’ll walk away with practical models you can apply immediately to your product work, leadership communication, and team workflows.

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In this episode, we covered the following topics:

* (01:01) Sachin’s definition of taste: the ability to recognize high-quality work across design, strategy, and problem selection

* (05:36) Why taste matters today (AI slop, generic landing pages, low-quality code, and B-level writing)

* (12:47) How to pair domain insight with AI to produce differentiated work

* (15:28) Rick Rubin’s framework for building taste: sensitivity and consuming the canon

* (28:06) Rick Rubin’s second pillar: consuming the canon of great work (design awards, shareholder letters, essays)

* (32:42) Why leadership taste sets the bar—Steve Jobs, Johnny Ive, Bezos, Pincus, and metrics-driven cultures

* (40:14) Finding your “product culture fit”: strategy-driven, design-driven, metrics-driven, or sales-driven orgs

* (44:32) How Sachin used social capital, prototypes, and customer quotes to earn “rope” for Sales Navigator at LinkedIn

* (52:47) Everything is selling: convincing execs, customers, and teams

* (59:50) Using AI to craft executive memos—Bezos style guides, Paul Graham metaphors, punch-up techniques

* (1:08:36) How customer quotes beat TAM slides—and why new markets look small at first

* (1:20:39) Final lessons: conviction, customer obsession, and taste as a lifelong practice

* And more!

Links:

* Sachin Rekhi’s course on Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/courses/ai-productivity

* Sachin Rekhi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinrekhi/

* David Hahn who supported Sachin in getting Sales Navigator off the ground: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwhahn/

* Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaselga/

* Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benerez/

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