My list wasn't meant to exhaustive. Honestly not much of a list, just a few examples. SpaceX and Nvidia are both examples of deep technical moats, as are some of the others mentioned by commenters.
I agree with you that many moats are regulatory, but disagree that most moats are. Networks are powerful moats, customer lockin can work well, brand is a strong moat (at least for a time), speed and culture can function as moats.
Fwiw, I don't think any moat is ultimately perfect. Moats themselves are not meant to permanently stop an attacker - they are delaying tactics at best. Companies that stay ahead continuously re-invent and rebuild their differentiation and defenses.
I don't fully understand how he did it. I know he took a lot from the line in the Talmud that said "whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."
My mom says that his baseline was incredibly high and that he was incredibly resilient. He also had a big rebellious streak, an analytical mind, and endless compassion.
My dad started his work as a Pediatric Hematologist Oncologist in the late 60s. He had a firm belief that cure rates could and would climb as a result of research and better clinical care. He spent his life pursuing both.
When people would ask him how he managed to stay so positive - he was one of the happiest people I’ve ever known - he’d reference the trends highlighted in this article.
That didn’t change how hard it was when he lost a patient, but I know he always had his eyes and his mind on the future.
This is an incredible example of science and medicine. Thanks OP for posting it.
I was six when Flood came out. My brother had a bootleg copy, which I later "borrowed" and carried around with me in my walkman (also "borrowed"). It was so...different than anything any of my friends listened to, and I loved it.
But maybe the greatest thing about Flood was seeing Particle Man and Istanbul on Tiny Toons. It was as if all my favorite weird things in the world (at least for a kid) were part of the same pocket universe.
I still find myself humming different songs from Flood on the regular, unprompted. Thanks for posting this.
On photography, in no real order, and probably overweight on street photography.
- Henri Cartier Bresson
- Joseph Koudelka
- Gordon Parks
- Phil Penman
- Alan Schiller
- Annie Leibovitz
- Micha bar Am
- Bruce Gilden
- Steve McCurry
- Constantine Manos
- Dorothea Lange
Well I do have you to thank for teaching me about combinatorial auctions :).
That said, you can think of the auction in two parts - the first gets the relevant people from the starting line to the actual bidding. The second part is where you actually make decisions. The latter part in this dynamic usually has few enough participants that a founder can run the variables in his/her head.
What would be interesting to see is whether or not more funds would get to the bidding stage with a robust combinatorial auction at the beginning of the whole thing.
In an ideal world, you'd build an order book of every investor that wants in and how much they want. Once you had that book filled, you'd allocate by weighing long term value, price, etc.
Realistically you can't do this (ok sometimes you can). The situation is dynamic and you generally want to take the bird in hand vs. risking the longer process. BUT there's a limit to that, and if you sequence things well - say start the longer processes first - then you have more flexibility.
But remember, the biggest point is that the seed round is just 1 moment in time. If you can't fit someone in but you like them, build the relationship for next time.