The Moat

A moat is only valuable if it compounds — a feature lead is not a moat, a switching cost is not a moat unless the cost genuinely exceeds the pain of leaving, and a network effect only works if the network makes the product better for every incremental user. Fintech products that forecast or predict get structurally better as they aggregate more data, which means the moat question is really a question about which structural advantage is hardest to replicate. Brand and distribution are slow and expensive; switching costs in B2B are real but fragile; data network effects compound quietly and are nearly impossible to catch up to.