Fix Quality First Then Personalize Taste

Commodifying taste risks homogenization, but first priority is raising the baseline quality (craft and polish) before tackling personalization.
Lon and Thais agree personalization should follow quality improvements to avoid one-size-fits-all taste.

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This Week In Startups is made possible by:

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Today's show:

AI models can solve PhD-level math equations and code an app in minutes… So why does everything they design look like identical slop? Thais Castello Branco, founder of Taste Labs, raised $18.5M in seed funding to teach frontier models about aesthetics and outputting quality content. She talks to Jason and Lon about why even frontier models regress to the mean on subjective tasks, how paid "TasteMakers" can improve output quality, and whether AI accelerates or destroys the half-life of "what's cool."

PLUS Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI hedge fund liquidated its public stock portfolio, but it may be too soon to count this 25-year-old completely out. Google Earth adds AI generation and turns into a misinformation factory. LinkedIn and Substack join the AI slop crackdown. And why does every venture capitalist seem to have an opinion about the Ceuta border crisis?

Guest

Thais Castello Branco on X: https://x.com/thaiscbranco_

Taste Labs: https://tastelabs.com/

Amplify Partners: "Kill the Slop": https://www.amplifypartners.com/blog-posts/kill-the-slop-announcing-our-investment-in-taste

Relevant Links

Leopold Aschenbrenner's essay "Situational Awareness": https://situational-awareness.ai/

CNBC on SA fund collapse: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/31/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-fund-fire-sale.html

Henk van Ess thread on Google Earth + Nano Banana: https://x.com/henkvaness/status/2082912544394498228

Substack CEO Chris Best: "Against Claudefishing": https://post.substack.com/p/against-claudefishing

NPR on the Ceuta crisis: https://www.npr.org/2026/07/31/g-s1-136507/morocco-spain-migration

Ethan Goodhart's self-driving golf cart post: https://x.com/EthanGoodhart/status/2082136189998682598?s=20

"Wind" app on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/zZqmhhwf

TechCrunch: "Gritt exits stealth": https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/21/gritt-exits-stealth-with-34-million-for-robots-to-build-solar-plants-then-everything-else/

CA Gov: Project Nexus solar-covered canal announcement: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/04/29/governor-newsom-announces-the-completion-of-first-of-its-kind-solar-covered-canal-in-the-central-valley-piloting-a-new-way-to-save-water-and-reduce-costs/

Molly Wood's "Everybody in the Pool" podcast: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/

Timestamps:

0:00 Coming up on today's show…

1:23 Thais Castello Branco on teaching models to have good taste

10:45 YSecurity - The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a $400k CISO? YSecurity gives you 40+ expert engineers, matched to exactly what you need, by the hour, with your first six hours completely free. Go to https://YSecurity.io/TWIST

15:19 The "TasteMaker" community of paid human curators

20:37 MongoDB - AI-assisted and agentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. Start building at https://MongoDB.com/ai

24:40 Jason's personal "cool hunter" prompt

30:16 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Get started for free at https://Odoo.com/twist

37:36 Situation Awareness lacked situational awareness

46:59 Claude models hacked three external organizations

50:54 Google Earth adds Nano Banana for some reason

54:24 The AI Slop crackdown spreads

57:54 Too many opinions about the Ceuta migrant crisis

1:04:05 Self-driving golf carts and also cars

1:09:53 Robot arms are installing solar panels

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