Something that founders don’t get told enough is just how important creating a “moat” around your business is.
The principle of a moat is to own a particular part of the market in a way that makes it very difficult for anyone to try and prise you out of the bit of the market that you’ve staked a claim on.
The big tech companies are obsessed with moating – a lot of their growth comes from just how aggressively they will moat their offerings. 20, 30 years ago, they all seemed to get that, but that lesson didn’t generalise.
If you’re just starting out and you have your MVP and maybe £250k in the bank, anyone can take that market from you – you’re too small not to be vulnerable.
So strategies to create moats have to be put into place from Day 1. And the reason why I mention this is, because as I say, the need to do this and the methods by which you do it are almost always kept secret.
Some of the challenge is that it’s not a strategic ROLE, but it’s a very strategic activity that touches every part of the organisation.