Defensibility
topic on 5 shows · 13 statements across 12 episodes
Lenny's Podcast 
the Neon Show 
A Product Market Fit Show 
TBPN 
20VC
13 statements about Defensibility, every show
Krishnan: Rapid growth and 10x product improvements trump AI defensibility
“The number one thing before you know, you get into defensibilities, make sure that whatever it is you're building is is was impossible to build four years ago. Make sure, you know, it is a 10 X or a hundred X better than the status quo. Make sure that it has a…”
Walker: Startup Defensibility Has Never Been Lower
“I think the defensibility has never been lower.”
O'Driscoll: Enterprise Defensibility Only Emerges at Scale Post-Consolidation
“The defensibility theorem emerges at scale, right? In other words, if you, I do believe what's true in most enterprise businesses, once you become the anointed winner, once a market coalesces and there's two or three people at that point in time, you know, It'…”
Slonimski: Startups Cannot Build Defensibility Through Small Incremental Moves
“Defensibility you cannot build through those small moves.”
Truell: AI defensibility comes from economies of scale in R&D
“If you're in a place where, you know, big investments and you know, having more and more great people working on the right path can keep giving you value, then you can get kind of these economies of scale of R&D, and you can kind of have, you know, deeply work…”
Ramade: Defensibility questions will hit startups much earlier than before
“I feel like the question of defensibility probably is going to come up much sooner in a company's lifetime than it's ever done before.”
Perret: Startups over-index on early defensibility and ignore late-stage moats
“I think a lot of people worry too much about defensibility In the immediate term and like at the start of a new project and they were far too little about defensibility in the late stages.”
Guo: Looking for defensibility at the seed stage is a mistake
“Yeah, it doesn't exist, right? Like quite literally you're starting with nothing. And so I think that it is a like I think investors are wrong to look for it. What you are investing in is trajectory, right? And the ability for founders to navigate a market and…”
Stebbings: Assessing defensibility at pre-seed and seed is complete bullshit
“I find so many investors oscillate on defensibility and I think it's just complete bullshit, especially at pre-seed and seed.”
Avlok Kohli: Early-stage startups have zero defensibility on day one
“Definitionally, you don't have any defensibility on day one because you don't have a business or even day 30, unless you magically get the, you know, pretty large network effects. And even then I would doubt that because that means if you were able to get a la…”
Des Traynor: True defensibility does not exist on day one for startups
“Like, real defensibility, no, it does not exist.”
Hsu: Nothing in tech is defensible in the long term
“I think in the long term, you're absolutely right. Nothing is defensible in the long term, right? The question is like, are you in an era where you can defend it for a while and give yourself enough breathing room to possibly innovate something else, build som…”
Flint: Marketplace defensibility requires high fragmentation and low multi-tenanting
“Fragmentation aids the aggregator. And so understanding what is the degree of fragmentation in a marketplace, and often the more fragmented and the less multi-tenanting, either the kind of less cost usage between substitute platforms, the more defensibility is…”