It's easier than ever to design with AI

tools, but that doesn't mean you should

always accept all changes. [music] So

today, I'll be joined by Raphael Shod to

look at the good, the bad, and the ugly

of AI assisted design and sort through

how to use these superpowers to stand

out. Welcome to another design review.

All right. Today I am thrilled to be

joined by Raphael Shad, one of the

newest visiting partners here at YC. And

Raphael was the co-founder of Kron, a

modern calendar tool, which you sold to

Notion a while back and are also one of

the top designers that I know and have

worked with. So, uh, Rafael, it's an

honor to have you here and it's an honor

to work together now at YC. Yeah, super

fun to be now back in uh in in YC uh and

helping founders, next generation of

founders build iconic companies.

>> Well, um you're the perfect person to

have on here because uh the topic that

we're going to be talking about today is

AI design trends. On the negative end,

there's the AI design slop and on the

positive end, there's a lot of AI uh

design trends that that now are easier

to build for anybody even if they're not

a designer. So, what are some of the

common things that you've seen recently?

a lot of the AI top AI design trends

that are standing out that that you'd

want to call out for the audience before

we jump into some sites.

>> Yeah, sure. Um, this all kind of started

when I had like a late night thought and

tweeted that I see a lot of dumb hover

effects on landing pages of startups

these days presumably white coded. And

so I was kind of like curious to peel

the the the layer back there. It's like

how did these like what I thought were

dumb effects um how did they make it

into LLMs and why are they everywhere?

Now, a couple other trends that we then

identified was kind of like purple

gradients and all of a sudden all

startup websites um had purple gradients

everywhere or these sections that can

like fade as you go in as you scroll and

they fade in and fade out.

>> Yeah. And it's not so much that those

inherently are bad. It's not purple

gradients are bad. Nobody should ever

use them. It's that now they're just so

ubiquitous everywhere that they kind of

uh lose all meaning and specialness and

originality.

>> Totally. And one of the key things was

when there was a good website kind of

establishing a trend, it took a while um

in the old world uh for others to kind

of like copy these trends. But now with

LLMs, if there's a good website with a

purple gradient, it makes it into the

LLM because the LLM gets trained on like

the good examples that get linked to a

lot. Um and then all of a sudden, like

the next week, all the startup websites

look the same.

>> Yes. And so this is both good and bad if

this power is used in the right ways.

So, we've got a bunch of YC companies

that have submitted their websites that

were all built with AI coding tools. So,

this should give us good grounds to

figure out uh ways that they have been

used really, really well and things that

we would do differently if we were

designing it ourselves. So, let's uh

let's dive into some of those.

>> Let's have a look.

>> All right. Okay. First up, we've got

new.ai.

Solve your game testing with AI agents.

Save countless hours of manual game QA

by using AI agents performing end-to-end

tests at scale.

>> Purple gradients.

>> The first thing that jumps out. It's a

very purple site. Um, which, you know,

we were just talking about that's one of

the most common things that you see. So,

it's interesting like prelooked

at this and gone like, "Wow, this looks

really nice." And now I look at it and

I'm like, "They used AI to design this."

Maybe they didn't, but like that's what

it screams to me. Okay. So, one thing

that's interesting is we as you start

scrolling here, we've got this line

that's following us up and down. Um, and

it's interesting because I actually find

this this line to be a little

distracting. Um, I'm paying more

attention to the line than I am the the

things that I think that it wants me to

pay attention to.

>> It's it's almost like something that

it's kind of like probably hard to

implement for a human. And you would

have never thought to actually code this

up um before AI. Um, and just because we

now can, just because LM are kind of

good at these type of like SVG, you

know, buildups or transforms, doesn't

mean that it's actually a good design

and helps you convert potential, you

know, visitors into into customers,

basically.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I don't know anybody that's

like, we need a line that goes through

here. Let's start coding that from

scratch. Like, you would only implement

something like this because it was so

easy to do.

>> Um, but I don't think it actually adds

value. If anything, I think it distracts

from the rest of the page. Um,

I I can't recall anything from these

sections based on this. Um, okay. So,

now we're down to everything in one

place. You I find this hard to read.

It's uh it's it's very light. Um, maybe

I'm just old. Um,

>> yep. Contrast could be improved there a

little bit. So, these cards are

interesting, right? Where

>> this is cool.

>> Um, this is actually pretty good. Uh

this is uh probably something that would

have been maybe too expensive to do or

only like the very best or like website

designers would have kind of got gotten

to the lengths of of doing something

like that these hover animations for the

cards. But AI is so simple to do and

this is actually like a pretty tasteful

um way of using leveraging so like the

powers of LLM uh to to build more

compelling websites.

>> Yeah. What's cool about it is it feels

like it helps establish the brand and

it's unique and it's creative and it's

fun. Um, and it it's actually trying to,

you know, multiplayer like two

controllers with lightning connecting

them. Um, and it actually helps

reinforce the points that I think that

they're trying to make here. Um, and

this is a great example of, you know,

where the line that was following you

down the page didn't add much value.

This is this would have been really hard

to do. And now, um, you kind of get it

for free.

>> Um, you don't have to go from scratch

building a lot of this stuff.

>> One of the things I want to try out is,

um, up here. Um, so we here have the

main navigation. One of the things that

jumps out here is that as you hover, you

generally kind of want to make things

pop, but here it actually kind of

disappears. So instead of inviting to

click to talk to them, um, it kind of

like goes into the background. Same

here. it kind of fades out as you

activate one of these menu points. Um,

this is something that I think a

designer would almost never choose to

do. And now uh and the default of

browsers also doesn't work that way. And

now lens just somehow decided that

that's a good uh hover kind of like

effect. Um, but it makes no sense. Um,

think about it that way. Like the

browser already has like a built-in

hover effect for free even without CSS.

It turns the cursor into a hand, right?

So that already indicates like I can

click here. So just leaving it white in

this case or just kind of like the the

bright purple and then having the hand

already tells me like I can click on

this thing. So if you want to add a CSS

effect then you know make it maybe like

a little pop. Maybe make it like one

shade lighter um or more active or add

like a little you know a little uh um

glow around it but don't make it go

away.

>> Yeah. Do you have any rules of thumb

when you know you're designing something

and you're trying to come up with hover

effects? Like what are your goals when

you were trying to come up with the

right hover?

>> Yeah, make it sort of like clickable. Um

Steve Jobs famously said you know he

wanted to make things lickable with the

Aqua interface back in the day. I think

you know make things you know clickable

kind of like inviting to to click stick

to sort of like pretty standard again

kind of I think the hand indicates that

something is clickable and so I wouldn't

go much beyond that. Another thing that

I see hover being used um is a lot to

kind of like reveal additional

information. So, not just kind of like a

hover effect to make the UI more feel

alive. Like hover is great to kind of

make UIs feel more alive, right? Um, but

I see it increasingly used to kind of

like uh disclose additional critical

information or functionality. And I

don't think that's the best use for

hover. This whole trend uh that maybe

like kind of like Mac OS kind of started

to over the years get more and more into

kind of like very clean interfaces, get

the functionality and the tools and the

buttons all out of the way so there's

all this space for content. I don't want

to have my computer to be just like all

content. I actually want it to be, you

know, a bicycle for the mind, the tool.

Uh, and so, um, revealing additional

functionality only on hover and you have

to go hunt for what the tool can

actually do, I think is kind of like an

anti-attern.

>> Yeah. Not to mention that, you know,

there isn't a concept of hover on mobile

as well. So,

>> and long press, which is kind of the

equivalent of of hover, um, uh, never

really catch caught on on mobile

>> probably because it's so hard to

discover. Yeah. You you don't want to

sit there long pressing all the time to

try to figure out if there is any

additional

>> think of a desktop desktop interface a

tool where you have to hover around

everywhere to discover where this stuff

actually lives. You know the disclosure

arrows or like hiding something or

getting to a dot dot dot kind of menu to

get to extra functionality. If that's

all hidden behind hover then, you know,

you're just not as efficiently

communicating the functionality of your

software.

>> Yeah. Overall, I think this is um a very

nicely designed site. I think it's

easier than ever using AI design tools

and LMS to get a professional looking

site. There's almost no excuse for not

having it now. Yeah. And especially as

we're reviewing YC applications, if you

look at a demo and that demo uh does not

have a base level of quality design, it

seems like the person just didn't even

try

>> because it's so easy to do it now. So,

Noo-Noo, um really cool site and uh some

some really interesting uh applications

of using AI here. So, well done. All

right, next up we got Rosebud AI. Create

games with AI. And and once again, like

you start to see the trend here. We've

got the purple gradient again. We've got

a very similar um kind of pinkish purple

accent color up here. Um and that's why

like in isolation with one of these,

like it looks cool, it looks modern,

everything, but you know, one after the

other, they all start to kind of look

the same, and it takes away a lot of the

core brand and originality and things

like that that I think most founders

want for their site.

>> So, let's dig in here. This is the first

time we're looking at these live.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, so rose by AI, create games of AI.

And there's a prompt to to to prompt to

game kind of interaction, I would

assume.

>> Um,

>> that's cool. There's something you can

instantly play.

>> Yeah,

>> let's try it.

>> Whoa. It's like a 3D game in the

browser. That's cool.

>> There's person walking around.

>> Can I use the arrows?

>> There we go. Oh, wd. We have a old

school game here. [laughter]

>> You can jump.

>> All right, let's uh escape out of this.

Um, but cool. Definitely kind of like

engaging. Um, I wonder whether this is

actually their like product code running

on the website here or this is like

bitecoded

>> sandbox environment. Um,

>> yeah, I would assume that this is the

type of thing you can create with their

product. But um that's an interesting

point is that they don't really tell us,

>> you know, it doesn't say like play a

game made with our product right now. Um

it's interesting. Is this following us?

This top bar.

>> Yeah. These are just anchors jumping

vertically around.

>> Yeah. So what's interesting is I didn't

realize this at the time, but when we

went to that one we were just playing

that was under modify games. And so what

I wonder is if this is a game that has

already been created that we can modify

in real time and that's what they're

trying to show off rather than the

creation part.

>> Yeah. So maybe kind of like a thing to

take away here is that using this non

kind of like non-standard navigation um

is tripping us off a little bit um on

how to use this website. Another thing

that kind of jumped out here at the top

is like I don't think anyone would think

of combining a red logo with purple as

an accent color necessarily. Um it's not

necessarily complimentary. Uh and uh and

I guess whenever I see the use of

emojis, even though they're not the

system emojis, I feel like it's a little

lazy. And so I feel like LLMs kind of

take the easy path because they don't

have any IP really themselves. They're

just like big models kind of cobbling

things together. They use like these

standard icons everywhere and it's just

immediately kind of like a tell.

>> Yeah, I think we could just use more

context up here too. And and you know

the the name of the company is is here.

It looks like it's almost part of the

headline rather than I would expect it

to be up here by the logo.

>> Yeah. And then the value prop kind of

being more clear. Um you know uh uh

create games with AI something

something. So it's kind of like what's

important for the H1 is typically kind

of you know what is it? Who is it for?

and to what end? Why should that person

that it's for care? Um, and if those

three things plus a call to action um

are not kind of above the fault, then

it's a harder time to convert uh convert

visitors.

>> Yeah. Um okay, we've got some I guess

examples of games. Yep. So games created

with Rosebud AI. Um okay, this is

interest. So there's another effect

here. You can see the light following my

cursor um around the edges. And yeah,

this is the kind of thing where, you

know, you're like, "Hey, it costs

nothing to do this." Then maybe you're

like, "Yeah, sure. Let's throw it in.

It's fun and it's playful." Um, but if

you had to spend a week coding this and,

you know, getting it to work, right?

You'd be like, "That's not worth it."

Okay. So, we've got a lot of a lot of

game examples. And it looks like maybe

this is just the rest of the site here.

Okay. And then we hit a footer. There's

a

>> like remixing.

>> Oh, yeah. Okay.

>> Some some of the some of the um projects

you can remix and then it kind of puts

up the conversion wall. Okay. Um, that

would go beyond like landing page.

>> Very cool. Awesome. Well done, Rosebud.

Okay. So, next up we've got Get Crux.

And one of the first things that I

noticed here was kind of the fade in. It

was this automatic fade in. Um. Oh, and

another thing that I noticed is my

scroll is hijacked here.

>> Yeah, it's maybe a little hard to um to

see on screen. Uh, but there's certainly

some scroll jacking logic going on. Um,

and there's also like a state where you

see both the detached and the fixed uh

header menu all like both at the same

time like right right around here. Yeah.

Um, so typically kind of like they

should just smoothly I like the sticky

header. Um, but it's just like smoothly

transition one to another and here you

see sort of like that you know they're

clearly two distinct menus that just

happen to kind of be the same.

>> I'm sorry I'm so distracted by the

button that's chasing me [laughter]

around the screen here. Um,

yeah. There's I almost feel like it's

hard to get the button to click on it

because it's constantly moving.

>> Does it make you want to talk to the

founders more or less?

>> It makes me distracted. I would say I'm

not paying attention to what they do.

I'm just uh I'm like, why is this button

following me around? Um, it definitely

got my attention, I would say. Um, one

of the other things that I noticed first

too is is almost these like meteors that

are, you know, shooting down from the

angles. cuz you can kind of see him over

there.

>> Um, that's another kind of thing where

like it doesn't feel like it actually

adds a lot of value to the product. And

again, if you had to build that from

scratch, like it would never be worth

your time. Um, but you it's so easy to

do it that people are like, "Yeah, let's

throw that in. It looks cool." Um, but I

actually find it a little distracting.

Um, I don't think it adds value to the

the product here.

>> Then the hero screenshot here is um I

guess a poster image for a video. Um

uh and it goes into what looks like a

completely different video. Yeah, that

was confusing.

>> And the poster image is just very blurry

here. Um I don't know whether this is

like an artifact of like uh using using

AI or not. Um uh but just as a general

design principle, I think all all your

assets should be, you know, high-res,

high quality. Um and this just looks

like something very blur blurry.

>> Yeah. And again, back on the button,

too, because I still see even when we're

down here, it's like still chasing us

around. You know, this is another

example of the type of thing that you

would only do because it's easy. But

just because something is easy doesn't

mean it's worth doing. There's a lot of

things that are now at your fingertips

with AI that, you know, anything

imaginable is possible. Just because

something is possible doesn't mean you

should say yes to it. Here we're kind of

like hitting a little bit on on just a

lack of visual uh consistency. Like this

looks like an entirely different visual

language than anything we've sort of

seen seen above. Um,

>> where do you think that comes from?

>> Yeah, I wonder. Um, maybe different

sections of the website being made by

like different parts of the tool. Um,

maybe it's also just kind of like a

function of like this here looking very

different um than like the website

content. Yeah. Sometimes just like a

clear image with a little bit of text,

maybe a headline and then some subtext

um goes a long way.

>> Yeah.

And I gotta say, we're like halfway down

the page right now. And um if you asked

me what they did, I would not be able to

tell you. Let's go back up to the top

and re remind ourselves. AI creative

strategist to make ads that work. Ads

that. Okay. So, it's something to make

ads. It seems like

>> it's interesting. They they do kind of

have like a visual um like style to it

with a lot of these uh it's almost like

a a vertical motion blur or something on

a color gradient that we see in some of

these images. um like these right here

and we saw the same thing in these here

and these here um and these here. Um but

it's it's constrained to some of these

elements and it feels like you know it's

maybe a little overused here because

it's hard to read these and this feels

like more like a rainbow rather than

calling the attention to it. But up here

does not have that style at all, which

was maybe, you know, the point that you

were making earlier. And I could see

something where the background here is

more reflective of this type of style.

And then that might carry it through all

the way through the rest of the page.

>> Yeah, let me quickly reload the page and

try something. So, we see all these

sections kind of like fading in. Um, and

here again, it's just like fading in.

And one of the things that I noticed, I

just don't see the advantage of having

these things not just right there as I

scroll because scrolling already like is

the motion. Why does it have to like

also then can like fade in? Um, and one

of the things that you get is these

weird um, for example here, right? We

say we're here to answer all your

questions and then there's one question

and we we we break here earlier and I

was like, wow, that's a lame FAQ if

there's only like one Q and one A,

right? Um, but then I was like, "Aha, it

just hasn't come in yet." Um, and so not

a fan of that pattern.

>> Yeah. What bothers me with the fadeins a

lot of time, and I'm not sure if this

does it or not, is when they're on a a

timer, sometimes I'm scrolling really

quickly and I'll get all the way past

the section as it's starting to fade in

up at the top and I miss the content

altogether. So, I'm curious to try that

here. Um, and see how they did this. So

like if I'm just kind of zooming down um

so these seem to fade in

um at least when it's at the bottom of

the page um

>> but it still feels like going through

molasses because it's all scroll checked

like hijacking the sort of like actual

native browser scrolling um to do some

fancy thing with JavaScript to actually

have the hooks to do all these

animations.

>> Yeah.

>> All right.

>> Super interesting. Very creative. Uh so

well done get crux. Okay. Okay, next we

got Sphinx, your last compliance hire.

All right, we've got some animation

thing going on here. Um, I think one of

the trends that we've seen so far is

just like way more animation these days

than there were, you know, three years

ago probably because these AI design

tools make it so easy to do this.

>> Yeah, let's quickly talk about hierarchy

here. Um, so we start with um a logo

type, kind of a stylized version of the

name of the company, Sphinx, right?

That's cool. Top left, pretty standard.

But then we have the H1 is also good and

the subtext. But also we have like this

kind of like weird in between like

fourth style, right? Um not something

that I typically ever saw designers or

engineers kind of come up with their own

landing pages. is only something kind of

like these many many styles mixed is

something that I increasingly see kind

of LLM do because like somehow the LLM

thought it's clever to have like an

extra label here in an extra style meets

thinks but we already have the company

name we already have you know three

different styles basically if you count

count this here it's like four styles

this just adds a fifth um complicating

the hierarchy not really adding it adds

a bunch of vertical space like we could

just like move the H1 a little bit up

and then you know that value didn't

trust it um logos would already be like

a little higher. Um so this is something

that I increasingly see kind of like

LLM's dream up that just isn't really

tight information hierarchy and graphic

design.

>> Yeah, I I think I going through these I

I keep coming back to the concept of

like it's easy to do anything. You

really have to be um opinionated as the

human that's in the loop in designing

these around what you think is the right

thing. Not just kind of saying yes,

accept all changes.

>> Yeah. You're now the editor suggestion.

Yes. Yes. And and another thing that I'm

noticing happening here is this section

on the right, it just keeps swapping

around. Um if we watch this animation

here for a second, this button over

here, the big star kind of button. Uh

yeah, like moves around and and now it's

a circle button. I think that's a

button. Yeah, I guess that's clickable.

Um and then it's going to come back over

to the left side and it's going to be a

big round rectangle kind of button. And

so we have a lot of different button

styles. I'm not sure why things are

moving like this. Um, and it's very

confusing.

>> It's actually not a button. Like, yes,

it shows the hand, but that's a head

fake.

>> Yeah, I guess if you click it, it

doesn't really Well, I guess it's kind

of like a next button,

>> but then also on auto advance.

>> Yeah, this is very confusing to me. I'm

not sure what it's showing. And And I

can't tell what's happening in this

animation either. It seems to be some

kind of workflow.

>> Um,

>> actually, you can just click anywhere

and it it it advances. So, it's not even

like this button or the whole thing is a

click target.

>> Yeah.

>> This is again one of those things where

it's hard for me to imagine a human just

being like, "Let's have three different

style buttons that every time you click

it, they all reorient and shift and you

know, it's it feels like the type of

thing that uh an AI design tool would

have suggested and you would have said,

"Sure, that seems cool."

>> Yeah, it feels like the visual

manifestation of LM hallucinations.

[laughter]

Um, let's go a look at the menu here.

Um,

all right.

Pretty standard stuff. I never like when

like the menus can like go go away like

in between. Yeah.

>> Like there's the gap and then sometimes

goes away.

>> What's happening on the right side of a

couple of those? There were two of those

and there's there's kind of a grid on

the right. Yeah. With an icon.

>> Is that interactive or anything or is

that

>> Nope. It's just something the LM thought

was cute.

>> How about if you hover over on Yeah.

Okay. So, it's just giving a different

icon.

>> Icon. Now, the icons are actually kind

of cute. Um, this seems somewhat

original and on brand here. Um, I would

just never thought to to do this little

little uh like if if you want to make a

point that on board is like four circles

in the square arranged in that way. Like

if that was important, which it doesn't

seem like it, like you probably just put

the icon here kind of back to the like

why reveal stuff as you hover that is

essential, but it's probably

non-essential. So, I can probably just

like leave it out.

What happens when we go further down?

Valued and trusted by. Okay, we got a

bunch of lines going everywhere.

>> All right, so we've got that line

following you down the page pattern

again.

>> And now we're scroll jacked. We're

locked into this uh position here of the

website in order to build up this

animation.

>> Mhm.

>> Um and I wonder

what it wants to tell me. like why is it

important to capture me here on this

point to like build out this animation

versus it's just like showing it already

built in the in the built out state

>> and I find the animation is getting all

of my attention rather than what it says

all the way over here on the left side

so I'm not even noticing any of this and

this is not on the right side it's not

giving me enough visual information to

communicate something valuable about

what they do or how the product works so

I just kind of miss everything over here

on the side the animation is too

distracting Yeah.

>> Outcomes.

>> It's also with these with these landing

pages that kind of like build up and

then keep you in a in a section for a

little while. It's really hard to know

when you're like how far into the book

you you have read. Yeah.

>> Right. Like if you have a physical book,

you're kind of like, oh, halfway

through. here. It's kind of like I don't

know, maybe it feels like we're halfway

through, but maybe, you know, it's gonna

keep me for another 15 seconds on some

some like really rich buildout um of a

of a landing page. So, the scroll

indicator um uh is is a really important

tool, I think, kind of like to get a a

grasp on sort of like the you know, the

landing page. And here it's it's um it's

completely failing me kind of like where

am I in the website?

>> All right. Overall, like visually, I I

think it looks nice. Um, it looks

modern. There's a theme that they're,

you know, you've got the orange accent

color. You've got the black as kind of

your primary brand color. Um, you've got

the line that's kind of following you

down. And, and my hunch is that that is,

uh, sort of reproducing what the product

looks like because we keep seeing all

these workflows with orange lines in the

product itself. And I think that's what

they're trying to communicate here. Um,

and so, you know, that makes sense to

me. their headline up at the top. I

think uh does a great job of explaining

what it is and who it's for. Um so I

think they really nailed that. Awesome.

Sphinx, great work. Next up, we got

build zero. Let's take a look here. Uh

build custom internal apps with AI. Um

so right off the bat, we got some purple

gradients.

>> Yeah, there there we go again. Um and uh

let's see here. So the menu nicely

morphs. Oo, and then my pet peeve um

dumb hover effects. Um just doesn't add

anything. this vertical movement is just

distracting and not cool. Uh it pushes

also there's another thing where um

because of the effect it kind of like

>> horizontally shifts the whole menu which

kind of just seems like a bug. Um and

then here's another like effect um kind

of like the arrow has to move somehow

vertically. Why? Um

>> the arrow at least should go to the

right also. It feels like when you're

hovering

>> it goes like backwards. Um this hover

effect here I don't mind. You know, it's

like it's a black and white button and

then it turns into the primary brand

color. In this case, kind of purple.

Like that's not a bad hover effect here.

This here pretty bad.

>> Um then what else have we got? Uh we got

a little like interactive element here.

Can click through it. Ooh.

>> Okay. There seems to be some like bug

with the selection here. Yeah.

>> Um if this was handcoded, like no way

someone would have not noticed it. I

almost wonder like if you just oneshot

landing pages um do you actually go and

really like use it with the same

attention detail as you feel if you had

like built it um from scratch and then

because you don't um you just ship uh

things that are that you wouldn't have

um because you don't even notice the the

little bugs that the LLM made.

>> Um go back to the engineers tab here.

Now, if this is their product, one of

the other things that stands out to me

is this kind of dashboard. Um, that's

got, you know, it's got like the red,

green, blue, purple kind of callouts up

here. That's one of the hallmark classic

things that a lot of, uh, AI design

tools will will actually create. Um,

>> yeah, every fake dashboard looks

basically like like something like that.

>> They've got the icons that are a darker

version of the lighter background color.

Um it's it's usually like the Google

colors, you know, it's like red, yellow,

green, blue prize primary.

>> Yep. Yep. So that that that we tend to

see a lot. Um ideas to working apps in

minutes transform.

>> Yeah. And these like kind of like bento

bento boxes um is is not a bad pattern.

Um but it's also very non-original. Um

and so this LMS often times kind of come

up with these just like icon at the top.

Uh and then a bit of text and you know u

in this case kind of like a 3x two um

that that's yeah quite common.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh we've got some quotes. We got the

purple gradient.

We've got some frequently asked

questions

and then more gradients.

>> Yeah. you know, we're I don't know, a

few into reviewing these now and and I

think we just keep seeing a lot of these

common patterns. Um, which I think just

highlights how ubiquitous they've become

and how um it it almost like takes away

from the brand and originality that I

think most of these companies want to

create.

>> Um, when it it has elements that every

other site and every other product has

too.

>> Yeah. Look, I think the really cool

thing about AI tools is that it kind of

frees you from having to kind of like,

you know,

fiddle with like the technical details

so it can really work on the hard hard

kind of questions of your offering, of

your product, of your company such as

like what are we making for whom, why is

this valuable to them, right? And that's

the cool aspect. But if you then can

like just use it um to create uh what we

sometimes call like AI AI slop, I think

this idea of having sort of like you

know all this power that you should use

responsively um gets a little bit

wasted. And so that's the fine line to

walk I feel for for builders in 2026.

>> Yeah, there's there's nothing inherently

bad about this. You know, it's just that

we've been through a few and we've seen

this before. You know, that that's kind

of what it feels like is I've seen this

before. And for any anybody else in the

audience, like you lose a little bit of

credibility, I think, you know, when

your customers are are viewing your

product and they're saying like, "H,

this looks like a bunch of other things

I've seen. They probably just use AI to

build this and design it." If that's the

case, like how good is the actual

product, you know? Um, or are they vibe

coding that too?

>> Use AI to build this by any means. Um

but just kind of like you know really

then evaluate the output and uh use AI

to make it even better and more original

and spend the time that you saved

oneshotting it or whatever um to then

really think about your messaging and um

and you know designing a wonderful

product that you can then showcase etc.

>> Yep. That's great advice. Awesome. Build

zero. Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> All right. Next up we got Zarna AI

associates for private capital markets.

Oh we're scrolljacked again.

Oh yeah,

>> it's 10x everything. All the things.

>> Unlocked irr

this this site. Yeah, it feels like I'm

in molasses. It just feels so clunky to

use. Not to mention there just isn't a

lot of like information. Um I feel like

I have like even this is deal volume 10x

like uh

>> this all everything 10x just feels made

up. Um and it feels like there's just so

much space. It feels like I have to

scroll through this molasses forever to

get to anything that helps me understand

what this is.

>> Yeah. One of the things I personally

like, if we go to the top, um, right now

the, uh, sort of background here uses

100% of the vertical space.

>> Um, which kind of like almost like vis

visually kind of locks me in and then

there's like nothing more.

>> Um, and I hate when when people can like

put like scroll down to see more because

like of course we're on a website. Of

course I know how to scroll down. So,

one of the things that I personally kind

of like um to interrupt the visual um a

little bit is kind of like to start a

landing page like maybe like like this.

You know, now I have kind of like

something here at the top. Um but I know

there's like more good stuff down here.

The good stuff better be good because

close better deals faster doesn't, you

know, tell me much, but maybe there's

like, you know, like 10 pixels of like

an awesome hero image kind like peeking

up or something like that. That would be

cool. And then I immediately without any

indicators like know and want to can

like scroll down and discover it, right?

>> Yeah. Well, we've stopped at the perfect

point here because you cannot see

anything in the top navigation bar.

>> Yep. It's uh you better know what's in

the background and if there's a dynamic

background such as a video playing which

might have all sorts of bright colors.

Um all of a sudden your bright menu

isn't uh readable anymore.

>> Okay, so this is interesting.

>> So here it picked it up. So it's smart,

but it's not smart when there's video

behind it.

>> Ah, you're right. That is the the

nuance,

huh?

Okay, these I can't click on. I would

have expected that I could click on any

of these.

>> Maybe the chevron.

>> Oh, I don't know what just happened.

Okay, now I can click on those. Yeah,

some of it is clickable and some of it

is not, it appears. And also, it's like

jumping me up and down on the screen.

Um, it seems to just be moving on its

own timer and not letting me do

anything, which is confusing. Um, and

again, this is one of those things where

it feels like you wouldn't intentionally

design it to work this way. Instead, you

just it created a component and you went

and it does sometimes work.

>> Only on those nested ones. If you try

the other ones, it doesn't do anything.

>> Yeah. And this better label here is um

super super hidden. There's sometimes a

chevron, sometimes not. Um, yeah, this

feels maybe like a little bit sloppy.

[laughter]

>> Yeah, one agentic layer generate an

investment memo.

Um, yeah, even the little bits of motion

here is the kind of thing that like AI

will just give you that for free and

you're like, "Yeah, okay. Let's go with

that." But you would never create

yourself. Um, yeah. I can't even tell

what I'm supposed to do with any of

this. It hovers and expands a little

bit, but like nothing is clickable.

We got some fadeins.

This just feels like it's lacking a lot

of like useful information presented in

the right ways. Um

and at least not purple though. Got a

lot of blue.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fit and finish as well

as kind of like meaty content.

>> Yeah.

>> Um like clear messaging is maybe lacking

a little bit. Um the visual style if I

didn't have to scroll through it um is

actually kind of fresh. Yeah. Yeah. Like

it it reminds me of uh lovable or or

things like that that kind of have that

like grainy zoomed in kind of picture in

the background.

>> Not not sure what these boxes um here

represent uh in the background.

>> Yeah. Some weird artifact.

>> All right, Zarna. Thank you. Okay. Well,

thank you everybody for submitting your

sites and uh Rafael, we we've seen a

bunch of them now. What are some of your

takeaways here?

>> Yeah, I think definitely lots of purple

gradients. Um, and in general kind of

like a lot of kind of like the same the

same patterns. You know, we see

animations kind of like for animation

sake just because it's uh it's possible

now. I would have killed to have these

kind of like AI superpowers when I built

my first website. So I think it's

wonderful that we have them, but you are

still kind of like responsible to not

outsource your thinking to LLMs um and

actually just use them as tools to get

your brilliant ideas, designs

um novel maybe kind of like interactions

um out on the web um to dazzle your

customers and uh and I think that's what

a landing page should do in the end.

It's kind of like a customer acquisition

channel, right? This is not your

product. This is not a web site as in

kind of like a cool thing on the web.

there's space for that as well, but

these are like startup landing pages and

they're basically customer acquisition

channels. So, and that's how I would

really um use these tools.

>> I totally agree with all of those.

Couple others I would add. You know, one

I think it's really important that uh

you QA everything. It's very easy to

create something, but we went through

and we found, you know, some quirks or

bugs or things like that here or there

or things that were confusing.

ultimately you know you the founder you

the human need to be the one that goes

through and make sure that um you know

the interactions and and everything else

um work right. The other one is um you

know it it's important that your site

and your brand they come through as the

thing that you want to represent your

company and that originality and

something that feels different and it's

very easy using the same tools that

everybody else is using to end up in the

same place. you have to be intentional

about ending up in a different place.

And so, um, rather than start from what

does the AI spit out and then let's

tweak that, I would start from, you

know, what color palette do we want to

use and what is our brand and and how

can we feed that into the system and use

that to make sure we end up at an end

goal that represents us rather than just

going with, you know, whatever uh the AI

spits out there. We've seen a lot of

people do that and I think you know like

you said one of the most powerful tools

ever to create incredible designs and do

things that would have been impossible

or taken forever that you can do just

like this. And so um to use that for

ways that that actually help you move

the lever uh upward and make the sites

more engaging and convert better is one

of the most powerful things that you can

do.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, thank you so much for joining uh

Raphael. It's been uh amazing to get

your perspective on all of these and uh

thank you to everybody that submitted

websites and we will see you on the next

design review.