Brian O'Malley

It feels like everything is moving so quickly. Changing faster than ever. However, there are six macro trends which have been steadily shifting the reality for American consumers for the past decade. We dug into the underlying forcing shaping consumer behavior for our State of Consumer 2026 report. The clear pattern: knowledge has never been more accessible. Knowing who to trust has never been harder. That gap isn’t just a divide. It’s an opening. The open question is going to dictate how we live our lives. At @tactilevc, we’re working towards a future where people come first, where progress is measured as human progress. Here’s a recap of the report, which you can read in full here: tactilevc.com/notes/state-of…

If you want to see the report in its entirety, it’s here: tactilevc.com/notes/state-of…

We named the firm Tactile for a reason. Progress should be something you can feel. Does it actually make life better? Can it be a sustainable business? Without scale and resilience, any benefit will be fleeting.

Technological progress isn’t the same as human progress. To us, it starts and ends with putting people first.

With AI, we now have infinite knowledge, but have we gotten smarter? With so many versions of the truth, knowing who to trust has never been harder. Closing that gap is essential to realizing the promise.

The future is rapidly becoming the now. But is it the future we want? We’re not here to accept the future. We’re here to shape it.

No doctor prescribes a whole-body scan for a “healthy” person. No insurer covers one. While expensive today, @prenuvo is optimizing the cost curve to become broadly accessible across incomes.

We used to hand our health to the system. Now we want a hand on the wheel. People used to get 10 minutes with a doctor a year; AI makes it possible to have one continually in your pocket.

At the same time as we’re seeing science fiction become reality, commonly held beliefs around vaccines are up for debate again.

Living longer used to be luck, genetics and making it out of childhood in one piece. Now we have a way of proactively shifting the curve.