How to tell if a startup has a moat
- ID
- 34832
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 13 Oct 2026, 8:45 PM
- Fetched
- 13 Oct 2026, 9:44 PM
- Provider
- Lenny's Newsletter
- Category
- product-startup
- Original URL
- https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-tell-if-a-startup-has-a-moat
- Source URL
- https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/feed
Summary
- Score
- 4.0
- Created
- 13 Oct 2026, 9:44 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- foundersdevelopers
What happened
Dan Hockenmaier, writing in Lenny's Newsletter (Oct 13, 2026), argues that startup moats matter more in the AI era because anyone can build a product quickly and 'everyone is building the same things.' He proposes a three-step framework — identify a compounding advantage, gauge how strong it could be, and measure whether it is working — which he claims can be applied in about an hour after receiving a job offer. The excerpt is paywalled and cuts off at the start of Step 1, so the actual criteria for judging a moat are not in the text provided.
Why it matters
If you are weighing an offer or pitching your own SaaS, this gives a named three-step checklist and a time budget (roughly one hour post-offer) rather than vague 'is the team good' heuristics — but the excerpt stops before Step 1's substance, so you cannot actually run the test from this text alone. Treat it as a pointer to the full piece, not as a usable rubric yet.
Discussion angle
Given AI lowers the cost of building, which of the three steps is hardest for a small Southeast Asian SaaS to satisfy — and what would a compounding advantage look like locally (distribution, proprietary data, switching cost, regulatory access)?