Code stopped being a moat. These are what's left.

Distribution59 startups

Channels that bring customers without the founder: SEO rankings, a viral open-source project, a community, an affiliate army, app-store ranking, partnerships that refer customers, a content engine. A clone ships to nobody.

Switching costs32 startups

Customers would have to migrate data, rebuild workflows, retrain teams, or lose history to leave. Lock-in, not loyalty.

Founder brand19 startups

A founder (or team) whose personal brand sells the product: a big, engaged following on X, YouTube, LinkedIn or a newsletter, building in public, a reputation people buy from. You can copy the product, not the person.

Real-world operations17 startups

Physical products, hardware, inventory, logistics, or a human workforce doing work offline. Not software.

Brand & trust14 startups

Reputation that decides purchases in categories where getting it wrong is costly (money, security, health, a company's main account). Reviews, case studies, years without incidents.

Proprietary data10 startups

Datasets, benchmarks, historical records, trained models or user data that took years or money to gather and can't be scraped or bought.

Integrations10 startups

Breadth of integrations or supported platforms that each took separate work and maintenance, which buyers check before choosing.

Platform approvals6 startups

API access, app-store or marketplace reviews, partner programs, verified-publisher status (TikTok, Meta, LinkedIn, Google, Apple, Shopify APIs and the like). Months of waiting, not code.

Infrastructure at scale5 startups

Infrastructure that's hard to match at the same price or reliability: email deliverability and IP reputation, real-time systems, GPU capacity, media pipelines, global uptime.

Compliance & licences4 startups

Certifications and licences a buyer or regulator requires before switching: SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, GDPR processing agreements, money transmitter or lending licences, legal or medical approvals.

Hard tech4 startups

Genuinely hard technology or rare domain expertise that AI coding tools can't reproduce in weeks: novel models, research, complex algorithms, deep specialist knowledge.

Exclusive access3 startups

Exclusive partnerships, licensed content, supplier relationships, or insider access a competitor can't get by asking.

Marketplace liquidity2 startups

A two-sided marketplace where buyers and sellers (or creators and brands, etc.) are already there. A clone starts with an empty room.

Funding2 startups

A war chest a newcomer can't match: venture funding, or profits ploughed back into paid ads, a sales team, partnerships or prices below cost. Find funding rounds, investors and how hard they spend on marketing.

Network effects1 startups

The product gets more valuable for each user as others join: communities, social graphs, shared workspaces across companies, user-generated content.