Moats

Their wordsThe most difficult analysis to do as an investor is that, is kind of figuring out how wide is the moat, how much at risk is the business to disruption? And we're in, I would say, the greatest period of disruptability in history.

Their words15 years ago we essentially learned that software is not a moat, right? Which is something that everyone is discovering today with AI, right?

Their wordsthe more that we could build a platform uh around our business, the more that we could build an ecosystem with creators and developers, the harder it would be for folks uh to to just copy that.

Their wordsYour your models can be leaked, algorithms can be replicated, but hundreds of millions of miles of fully autonomous operations in the real world, backed by evidence-grade evaluation and publicly audited proof, that is much, much more difficult to replicate.

Their wordsThe competitive moat for a business right now is not the use of AI. It's human-originating, high-quality, high-fidelity data that other systems can't replicate - even if they implement the exact same features and are built by the same agentic systems.

Their wordsSalesforce is abandoning UI as a moat, which is a very smart move because it's disappearing for everyone.

Their wordsAnd then, I think the other is that we seem to have forgotten that the classic moats, none of the classic moats are based on how hard it is to make the software.

Their wordsBut here's what I know for certain: product isn't a moat. Software engineering capability isn't a moat. Not anymore.

Their wordsI believe that data - real-world data, mostly human-generated, validated, and cleaned - is the only reliable moat we have as software founders in the near and mid-term future.

Their wordsNo agentic coding tool is going to replicate that for your competitor.

Their wordsI think it's all about having regulatory clarity and ease for all sizes of of companies. Um and if we can work with Congress to do something like that, I think that would be that would be the biggest boon for for for startups.