Obsidian CEO Steph Ango’s 80 Ways to Win: How Companies Can Build Their Own Moats
There is no single winning formula in nature or business. Steph Ango has cataloged 80 ways to gain an edge; I've translated each one into plain-language mechanics, scenarios, and examples.
- There is no single winning formula in business or nature. An actor can gain advantage through price, timing, uniqueness, defense, collaboration, speed, or even deception and shape-shifting.
- This article walks through all 80 of Steph Ango's strategies, grouped into 13 categories. Each entry explains in plain terms what it does, why it works, and how to read the original example.
- Low cost and luxury, specialization and versatility, first-mover and late-mover can all succeed. No strategy is inherently good or bad; it depends on the environment you're in.
- What's hardest to copy is rarely a single capability. It's the combination of two or three strategies that feed each other and gradually form something unique.
Every survivor has its own winning strategy
Why does a product get stronger with use? Why does one organization consistently outlast its rivals? Why does a species survive in its environment? Because everything that endures brutal competition has, through trial and error, evolved a moat of its own.
Obsidian CEO Steph Ango has cataloged 13 categories and 80 distinct strategies for gaining an advantage in his essay, Many Ways to Win.
His point: in business, as in nature, there is no single formula for success. A real moat is rarely one standout capability. More often, it's a combination of complementary strategies that reinforce each other. Think "ultra-low prices plus rapid iteration," or "masterful craftsmanship plus authoritative endorsement." Individually, any competitor can copy one piece. Combined, they create an ecosystem that's yours alone.
The 80 strategies span biology, business, warfare, products, and organizations. Some are familiar traditional advantages like reliability, efficiency, and low friction. Others are in direct tension—low cost versus luxury, specialization versus versatility, centralization versus decentralization. And some are openly adversarial: litigation, parasitism, sabotage, and infiltration.
This isn't a moral checklist or a scientifically validated business model. It's a lens for recognizing what, exactly, makes something win.
Below is the complete list of all 80 strategies. Each entry keeps the original English term, but instead of a stiff dictionary translation, I explain what it actually does, why it can be an advantage, and why Steph Ango chose that particular example. The examples are there to clarify the idea—not to suggest any single entity owes its success to that one factor, and certainly not as proof of causation.
Consider this a reference.
01 |Accumulation: turning one win into fuel for the next
Accumulation strategies aren't just about getting bigger. They're about making the users, resources, and channels you already have work to attract even more. Once the flywheel starts spinning, subsequent growth gets easier than the initial push.
| Strategy | In plain terms | Example: why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Usership | A tool is dull when you're the only one using it. The more people on board, the harder it is to leave—and the more valuable the product itself becomes. | Phone networks, the internet, and large social networks all work this way: nearly worthless with a handful of users, essential infrastructure once everyone you know is on them. |
| Completeness | Users don't want to cobble together a solution from a dozen different places. Put an entire need in one spot, and you become the default. | A Swiss Army knife packs many tools into one object; Walmart puts a massive range of products under one roof. The edge isn't that any single item is best—it's the one-stop shop. |
| Aggregation | You don't have to produce everything yourself. Just gather enough people, products, or information in one place, and that alone creates enormous value. | Cities, malls, Amazon, and Craigslist all benefit from more participants and richer selection. The difference from completeness: completeness is one solution covering many needs; aggregation is many participants meeting in the same market. |
| Diversification | Don't bet everything on one revenue stream, one customer type, or one resource. If one source fails, the others keep you standing. | Conglomerates run multiple businesses; omnivores eat a wide range of food. They may not be the strongest in any single area, but they're far less likely to collapse when conditions shift. |
| Omnipresence | Show up everywhere your users need you, and eventually you stop being "an option" and become "the default." | Visa, Coca-Cola, and dandelions all thrive on sheer coverage: the easier you are to find, accept, or spread, the higher the odds you get chosen again next time. |
| Cloning | Perfect one unit, then replicate the structure—don't reinvent the wheel with every expansion. | Aspen groves expand through nearly identical trees; franchise chains replicate proven store models; sourdough starters spawn new starters. The advantage lies in reproducibility, not in each unit being unique. |
02 |Price: cheap is one way to win, but so is expensive
Price competition isn't only about who's cheapest. Some players win by making things affordable and expanding the market. Others deliberately charge a premium to signal status. And some take a tiny margin on each sale but win through sheer volume.
| Strategy | In plain terms | Example: why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Affordability | You don't have to be the best—you have to be within reach for more people. Lower the price barrier, and you bring in customers who were previously locked out. | Mass production, fast food, and fast fashion all use standardization and scale to slash per-unit costs. They win on ubiquity, not on rarity. |
| Luxury | A high price isn't a flaw. When expense itself signals craftsmanship, scarcity, and status, it becomes the attraction. | Veblen goods, supercars, and luxury watches don't compete on value for money. Buyers aren't just purchasing a product; they're purchasing rank and distinction. |
| Skimming | Take a very small amount from each transaction, but if the volume of traffic or resources is massive, it adds up to something enormous. Note: this isn't the classic "price skimming" strategy. | Credit card companies take a tiny fee from a huge number of transactions. Baleen whales and other filter feeders capture small prey with each mouthful, but consume enough water to get all the energy they need. |
| Bundling | Hitch your product to something people already strongly want. They adopt yours as a byproduct of getting the main thing. | Microsoft Office packages multiple programs into one suite; cable TV bundles channels; fruit wraps seeds in flesh that animals want to eat. Distribution comes from being carried along. |
03 |Time: some advantages simply can't be rushed
Money can buy equipment, traffic, and talent. It can't buy history that's already happened, and it can't compress a decade of experience into ten months. The real barrier with time-based strategies is that even when competitors know exactly what to do, they still have to live through the process.
| Strategy | In plain terms | Example: why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Heritage | Survive long enough, and time itself becomes your credential. History accumulates trust, stories, rituals, and identity. | Religions and century-old companies carry multi-generational memory. New rivals can mimic the surface, but they can't fast-forward into having the same past. |
| Craftsmanship | Invest time, effort, and precision that others won't, to make details visibly better. | Handmade watches, bespoke tailoring, and Leica all rely on skilled labor and meticulous control. The barrier isn't a secret technique; it's years of training and a refusal to cut corners. |
| Organic | Some things can't be rushed to maturity. Time isn't an inconvenient waiting cost—it's a necessary ingredient for quality. | Trees, ecosystems, and aged cheese all require real growth processes. No amount of budget can meaningfully compress maturation time. |
| Endurance | Your rival might be more explosive, but you can last longer. | Marathon runners and nuclear submarines aren't judged by top speed; they're judged by sustained performance over long durations. Many contests are ultimately decided not by peak output, but by who runs out first. |
04 |Uniqueness: not just "different," but hard to replace
"We're unique" is usually a hollow claim. Real uniqueness must specify: is it depth of expertise, an unusual combination, a trusted provenance, natural rarity, or a secret no one else knows? Each source of distinctiveness has a wildly different level of difficulty to copy.