The key to understanding this more broadly is that nearly all of the massive returns to you and your investors — the 100X or 500X returns — come from businesses that have long-term defensibility.
Some founders will start on the web to iterate and build an audience as a means to hack mobile distribution, but not every startup can take on that task given the runway they have or technology defensibility in their plan.
We asked only two questions in the brief attitude survey, both with limited validity evidence; a more robust development and validation process, or use of an existing scale, would have enhanced the defensibility of these scores.
(As noted below, such views need not completely eschew the armchair methods just sketched, but to the extent these methods remain viable, a very different explanation of their defensibility would have to be given).
The other hard question mobile developers have to ask is around defensibility.
We know that the iron law of raising capital is to prove expansive power and defensibility, and we have analyzed how Square and Box both appear to be in typical commodity markets given their performance and metrics.
We found various lines of evidence for patchiness at different spatial scales, which could have important implications for territory defensibility.
Data moat Unlike SaaS businesses that compete on new features, AI startups have an opportunity to build long-term defensibility.
In the old days, the business literature listed many ways to create defensibility: unique access to raw materials, favorable geographic location, government regulations like tariffs, patents and licenses, etc. Network effects have emerged as the native defense in the digital world.
We have found that "joining the dots" between assessment results not only improves defensibility but helps identify previously hard to define concerns, particularly around professionalism.
