Technical difficulty isn't a moat: profits go to companies that ride the learning curve, says Danielle Fong
anselm · x · 2026-09-17
Danielle Fong endorses a VC's point that technological difficulty and business defensibility are not the same thing: once something insanely hard is proven buildable, competitors can skip the five years by copying roadmaps, hiring from the ecosystem and reverse-engineering.
Fong argues nearly everyone but Andy Grove and Gordon Moore has the wrong idea about moats. In hugely valuable categories like computers, AI, flight and electricity, competition is structurally inevitable; profits accrue to organizations like Intel that keep pushing the learning curve and stay ahead at every step. "Don't ask me about my moat. Ask me about my sappers."
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