Taste Is the New Scarcity
Joshua Stylman@jstylman
+5.0%
since Oct 2
The idea
I believe AI is making competent execution cheap everywhere, so value shifts to whoever decides what's actually worth making. I hold a small slice of the AI creation tools driving that shift, but weight most of the basket toward platforms where curation gets paid and brands whose whole value is good judgment. It's spread across many names rather than one bet, with some cash kept aside for dips, since this plays out over years. I'd rethink it if curation itself gets automated the way production has.
What it owns
- These companies sell a track record of taste and judgment that stays scarce no matter how cheap execution gets. · S&P GlobalIt charges for decades of accumulated judgment in ratings and benchmarks, value that sits in the track record, not the execution labor., Moody's CorporationIt is a judgment brand in its purest form: people pay for its track record of calling credit risk, not for the analysis work itself., New York Times Co.It sells editorial judgment deciding what is true and what matters, which gets scarcer as AI floods the internet with competent-sounding text., Ferrari N.V.Its value is entirely judgment and restraint, deciding what to build and how few, at margins execution alone never earns., MSCI Inc.It gets paid to decide what belongs in an index, which is curation with fees attached to a judgment business., RHIt sells an aesthetic vision and design authority for the home, extracting value from taste curation rather than from furniture manufacturing itself., Walt Disney Co.Its library is a century of picking which stories work, a track record of judgment that stays scarce when generic content production goes cheap.38%
- When anyone can make anything, platforms that sort good from bad and charge for that filtering collect the toll. · Spotify TechnologyIt gets paid for deciding what listeners hear next, and a flood of AI-made music makes that filtering worth more, not less., Netflix Inc.Its real product is deciding what's worth making and funding, exactly the judgment layer that gets scarce when production gets cheap., Pinterest Inc.It is a map of what people find beautiful, and that taste graph gets more valuable as AI makes infinite mediocre images cheap., Reddit Inc.It is human judgment at scale, upvoted answers that AI models pay to train on precisely because they are not machine-made., Live Nation EntertainmentIt sells being in the room, which AI cannot produce at any cost, keeping pricing power as recorded content gets infinite., Etsy Inc.Its pitch is human-made and hand-picked, the opposite of cheap AI output, charging a premium for provenance as generic goods get cheaper.36%
- AI-powered tools making competent creative work cheap are the engine of this shift, so a small slice rides the cause itself. · Adobe Inc.It is the default toolkit driving the cost collapse in creative work, so it grows as AI makes creative execution faster and cheaper., Figma Inc.It is where teams decide what gets designed, not just how, which keeps it useful as AI cranks out drafts for free., Shopify Inc.It makes running a store nearly free to execute, so the merchants winning on it are the ones with taste in what to sell., Unity SoftwareIt sells the engine that makes 3D and game creation cheap, growing as AI expands who can build in 3D.16%
- Cash10%