Every defensibility strategy begins with a single diagnostic step:
What advantage deepens each time a user interacts with your product?
If the answer is “nothing,” you don’t have a moat—you have a feature. The full moat taxonomy from the essay provides the logic behind this decision tree.
The Decision Tree: Which Moat Fits You?
Step 1 — Do users generate unique data that improves your product?
If YES → Moat 1: Data Network Effects
User behavior, corrections, workflows, and feedback generate proprietary signals.
Time compounds advantage; incumbents cannot retroactively recreate this history.
As outlined in the essay: “Usage itself becomes the moat.”
If NO → continue.
Step 2 — Can users connect, contribute, or create value for each other?
If YES → Moat 2: Community Moat
The network produces resources, culture, templates, norms.
As the essay notes: “Community output scales faster than company output.”
If NO → continue.
Step 3 — Are you serving a specific niche, vertical, or domain?
If YES → Moat 3: Specialization Depth
Domain-specific language + workflows + edge cases.
Giants optimize for horizontal scale; you win through depth.
In the essay: “Go deep where giants go wide.”
If NO → continue.
Step 4 — Do you integrate deeply into existing workflows?
If YES → Moat 4: Workflow Lock-In
Automations, shortcuts, data migration, and retraining create prohibitive switching costs.
You become the operating system, not the app.
As defined in the essay: “The only moat incumbents fear more than data is workflow inertia.”
If NO → continue.
Step 5 — Are you building multi-year enterprise relationships?
If YES → Moat 5: Enterprise Relationships
Procurement, compliance, and custom deployments create immense friction.
Champions have personal, political, and operational stakes in keeping you.
As the essay states: “Trust compounds. Ripping you out becomes career risk.”
If still NO: You are operating without a structural moat. You must either:
Narrow your market,
Deepen your specialization, or
Increase workflow integration.
The Power of Moat Stacking
The strongest positions combine multiple moats over time.
Most great AI companies start with one natural moat, then stack adjacent ones as usage grows. The full essay outlines how compounding moats create exponential defensibility.
High-Value Stacks
1. Data + Community
Users generate data and help each other. Example: Stack Overflow, GitHub, Reddit. Defensibility: Extremely high.
2. Specialization + Workflow Lock-In
Deep expertise + becoming the system of record. Example: Veeva, Toast, ServiceTitan. Defensibility: Extremely high.
Data + Community + Specialization + Workflow + Enterprise This is the theoretical maximum defensibility. Example: Bloomberg Terminal — virtually impossible to displace.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
