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.

By Steph Ango08-19 · 24 min read
Deep dive · XiaoHu Explains
One-minute overview
  • 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.

Strategy In plain terms Example: why it works
Specialization Pour nearly all your capability into a narrow problem, until you become the obvious person to call. Vocational schools train for specific skills; giant pandas are highly adapted to a bamboo-only niche. Specialization sacrifices adaptability, but buys depth.
Versatility Don't master just one move; stay useful across many different tasks and environments. CPUs run a huge variety of programs; opposable thumbs assist with countless physical actions. When the environment is unpredictable, general capability is insurance.
Hybrid Combine two capabilities that don't usually coexist, creating a new option that old categories can't cover. Frogs live in water and on land; the cronut blends a croissant and a donut; amphibious vehicles and hybrid cars draw on two separate systems. The value isn't in being "a bit of both"—it's in the new contexts the combination enables.
Divergence Don't try to be better within the old rules. Change the expression, the form, or the approach, so that the criteria for comparison shift. Van Gogh, Picasso, and Frank Gehry didn't perfect a mainstream style; they created a visual language instantly recognizable as theirs.
Authenticity When fakes are everywhere, the ability to prove you're genuine is itself a product capability. Currency, olive oil, and art all depend on trusted provenance. Buyers aren't just paying for the item; they're paying for traceability and verifiability.
Rarity There's simply not much of it, and increasing supply isn't an option. Beachfront property is limited by geography. Victor Wembanyama's physical profile sits at the far end of a distribution. The key factor is natural scarcity.
Scarcity Supply could be higher, but the owner intentionally restricts it, making access harder. Collectibles and NFTs limit supply via controlled editions. The difference from rarity: rarity is a natural condition; scarcity is often a deliberate rule.
Secrecy Others can see the result, but not the recipe. Even if they take it apart, they can't easily reverse-engineer the critical relationships. Magicians hide their methods, Coca-Cola protects its formula, and companies guard key knowledge as trade secrets. Secrecy works only as long as outsiders can't easily figure it out.
Irreverence When everyone in an industry is polite and conventional, you deliberately break protocol in what you say and do. Richard Branson and South Park turned anti-traditionism into a signature style. It alienates some people, but it forges a much stronger bond with others.

05 |Attack: getting stronger by making rivals weaker

We tend to think of competition as simply "building a better product." But in the real world, many strategies target the opponent directly: inflicting damage, causing mistakes, stripping resources, or forcing them through a point you control. This section describes competitive dynamics in the broadest sense—not as a recommended playbook.

Strategy In plain terms Example: why it works
Violence The most direct approach: use physical force to injure, destroy, or consume an opponent so they're no longer a factor. Military attacks and predation don't persuade the other side—they eliminate or exhaust it. It's the harshest and most straightforward form of competition in nature.
Litigation Don't try to beat the rival in the product market. Instead, drain their money, time, and attention through legal proceedings. Patent trolls, commercial lawsuits, and the long-running protections around Mickey Mouse all show that legal rights and procedural costs can be a weapon in their own right.
Nettlesomeness You don't need to land a knockout blow. Constantly creating problems can raise pressure and provoke errors. Magnus Carlsen steers chess games into positions that are persistently uncomfortable for his opponent. Terrorism similarly tries to force a stronger adversary into overreaction through unpredictable threats.
Sabotage Don't attack the most visible part of the target. Find the load-bearing structure and create a critical weakness there. Stuxnet targeted industrial systems; severing undersea cables attacks communication infrastructure. Hit the right structural point, and a localized action can have systemic consequences.
Parasitism Don't build your own complete system. Attach to someone else's and siphon off the resources they've already acquired. Mosquitoes feed on blood; tapeworms draw nutrients from a host's body. The parasite saves the cost of building a supply system—but the host pays the price.
Scavenging Don't fight healthy, strong rivals head-on. Wait for a target to weaken, fail, or become undervalued, then swoop in for the resources. Vultures feed on carrion. Ango also cites private equity as an example: opportunistic intervention when assets are fragile or priced low.
Espionage Steal the answers your opponent already paid for. Save your own trial and error, and know their next move in advance. The value of espionage comes from information asymmetry. Knowing the secret doesn't necessarily make you win, but it shortens your path and robs the opponent's plans of surprise.
Swarming No single member is powerful, but with enough numbers and coordinated action, they can overwhelm a much stronger target. Bee attacks, DDoS assaults, and Zerg rushes in games all show that strength can come from synchronized quantity, not individual capability.
Highest bidder When a critical resource is extremely scarce, simply outbid everyone else and buy up the key people, assets, or opportunities. Real Madrid bids for top players, SoftBank bets with massive capital, collectors bid at art auctions. The advantage comes from ensuring a scarce resource serves only you.
Chokepoint You don't need to control the whole world—just the narrow path that everyone must pass through. The Suez Canal controls a key shipping lane; a grizzly bear waits at a waterfall where salmon must leap. Control the inevitable route, and you can tax, block, or get first pick of everything flowing through.
Puppeteering Don't take over the host's body. Change its behavior so it actively carries out your goals. Cordyceps fungi and Toxoplasma gondii both influence host behavior. On the surface, it's still the host acting—but the direction of that action serves another entity.

06 |Defense: true strength is surviving attacks, not just launching them

Defense isn't just building a thicker wall. It can mean deterring attacks entirely, reducing your own points of failure, spreading risk, or making yourself very hard to find. The strongest defense of all can even convert attacks into nutrients.

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
Deterrence You don't necessarily have to act — the point is to make an opponent believe that attacking you will cost more than it's worth. Nuclear weapons maintain deterrence through mutually assured destruction; trademarks and patents deter infringement through the threat of lawsuits. What matters is that the consequences are credible.
Reliability Don't fail when it counts. Fewer breakdowns, less maintenance, less downtime — that's how users trust you with important tasks. Zippo lighters and Toyota cars are both famous for being dependable. Reliability looks unglamorous, but it compounds trust over time.
Predictability Deliver roughly the same result every time, so users don't have to take a fresh risk each time. Disneyland and Starbucks standardize their processes so the experience feels consistent across locations and visits. For users, “no surprises” is the value.
Unpredictability Stay steady for users, but don't feel obliged to be transparent with opponents. If they can't anticipate your next move, it's harder for them to prepare. Squid ink and smoke screens create confusion; Banksy and Lady Gaga use surprise to hold attention. This doesn't contradict predictability — the two simply serve different audiences.
Decentralization Don't put every critical asset in one place. If one node goes down, the rest can keep operating. Distributed solar doesn't rely on a single power plant; grassroots movements don't have a single leadership hub. Decentralization trades some unified efficiency for stronger resilience against shocks.
Security Stop people from stealing your stuff, confiscating it, or entering your systems without permission. Banks, vaults, and locks all control access. Security protects resources and entry points.
Privacy Security keeps people out; privacy keeps people from seeing what they shouldn't. Encrypted messaging apps and VPNs reduce the ability of third parties to read content, identities, or behavior. The two are related, but not the same.
Durability Withstands heavy use, wear, and impact without failing quickly. LeBron James has sustained a high level of performance over a long career; cast iron skillets last for years. Durability protects the entity or capability itself.
Neutrality Don't take sides too readily, so conflicting parties don't see you as an enemy that must be eliminated. Switzerland and the Red Cross both provide safe spaces through long-term non-belligerence or neutrality. Neutrality gives up some tribal benefits in exchange for survival across factions.
Obscurity Sometimes the best defense isn't strength — it's invisibility. If nobody knows where you are or how you operate, they can't target you specifically. Deep-sea creatures live in environments humans can barely reach; closed-source software hides its internal implementation. Obscurity isn't absolute safety, but it reduces your exposure surface.
Antifragility Normal systems get damaged under stress, resilient systems withstand it, and antifragile systems actually grow stronger from pressure and use. Muscles grow after moderate load; BitTorrent gains more distribution nodes as more users join. Stress gets converted into capability.

07 | Deception: change the other side's assessment without changing your strength

Deception strategies exploit gaps in perception. You can hide, pose as something else, put out fake targets, or let the prey walk into a trap on its own. Changing the signals the other side sees is sometimes cheaper than changing your actual strength.

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
Camouflage Blend into the background so you're less likely to be spotted or locked onto. A chameleon changes its appearance; a stealth aircraft reduces its radar signature. The goal isn't to block attacks — it's to avoid becoming a target in the first place.
Mimicry Look like something else that's dangerous, inedible, or trustworthy, and borrow the other side's existing assumptions. A harmless snake mimics the markings of a venomous one, and predators may avoid it based on the visual cue. This isn't hiding — it's being seen and misread.
Decoy Deliberately present a fake target so the opponent wastes attention, ammunition, or judgment on the wrong object. Radar chaff creates false targets; fake security cameras make people misjudge defenses. If the opponent has limited resources, one wrong shot means one more chance for the real target.
Lure Instead of chasing the target, present something irresistible and let it come to you. An anglerfish uses a glowing organ to attract prey; a network honeypot uses a seemingly valuable system to attract attackers. The temptation is the entrance to the trap.
Infiltration Don't break down the front door — blend in as something normal and operate from the inside. The Trojan horse, malware, and smuggling all bypass perimeter checks. Infiltration is won or lost at the moment of being recognized (or not).

08 | Timing: being first doesn't guarantee winning, and being last doesn't guarantee losing

The same action can make you a pioneer if done early, or leave you missing the window entirely if done late. First-mover, second-mover, and last-mover approaches each have their own advantages — the key is knowing which time gap you're trying to capture.

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
First-mover Get in early and claim a position in user minds, resources, networks, or industry standards. Netflix and Tesla both built brand recognition and scale by entering early. The payoff is being first in place; the cost is paying the market's education bill for everyone else.
Second-mover Let the first person validate demand and expose the mistakes, then quickly copy what works and fix what doesn't. The original text uses Facebook following Snapchat as an example. Followers save some exploration costs, but they have to be fast — otherwise the opportunity gets locked up.
Last-mover Wait until others have exhausted the failed routes and the technology and demand have matured, then build a more complete version. The original text uses Apple as an example: it rarely enters a hardware category first, but it excels at reorganizing the experience once conditions are ready. The last-mover advantage comes from avoiding detours, not from mere delay.

09 | Certification: often users trust not you, but whoever stamped your approval

When users can't judge quality directly, government licenses, prestigious degrees, industry awards, and professional curators become shortcuts to trust. Certification strategies are a contest over who gets to be believed.

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
Monopoly Not just being better than others — making it hard for others to enter through law, licenses, or rules. Patents grant exclusive rights for a limited period; regulatory capture can let incumbents influence who gets in. Institutions build a gate for the leader.
Prestige Use recognition from authoritative bodies to turn “you should trust me” into a familiar label. Michelin-starred restaurants and Ivy League graduates both use third-party endorsement to lower the cost of judgment. Users may never verify the capability themselves, but they trust the certification first.
Curation The more options there are, the harder choice becomes. If you filter carefully on behalf of others, eventually “selected by you” becomes a quality signal in itself. Art galleries, HBO, and venture capital firms don't aim to collect the most — they build reputation on judgment. Curation sells the ability to filter.

10 | Collaboration: what one individual can't do, a group can

Competition happens between groups, not just individuals. Many weak actors bound together by shared rules, division of labor, and aligned interests can create a force far beyond any single member. But collaboration has costs: more unity means less flexibility, and more dispersion makes fast coordination harder.

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
Union Rivals accept a common set of rules and merge into a larger whole. Mergers, the United States, and the European Union all reduce internal friction through integration, then act outward at greater scale. Union is like becoming a family — it means giving up some independence.
Alliance Partner up without getting married. Everyone keeps their own identity and cooperates only on shared interests. Partnerships let parties share channels, technology, or resources while remaining independent. Alliances are more flexible than unions, and more likely to loosen when interests shift.
Emergence No single individual holds the full picture, but many simple actions layered together produce complex collective intelligence. Ant colonies, beehives, and democratic systems all rely on local information from many individuals. A single ant is simple; the colony finds food, divides labor, and responds to threats.
Centralization Pull decision-making into one center, reducing debate and coordination, and making action faster and more uniform. Authoritarian regimes are the original text's example. Centralization enables quick decisions, but it also concentrates bad judgment and single points of failure.
Standardization Agree in advance on the same language, size, or interface, so you don't have to translate and re-adapt every time you collaborate. Language, railway gauges, and the metric system all reduce connection costs. Once a standard becomes widespread, every compatible participant benefits from a bigger ecosystem.
Symbiosis Not just simple cooperation — each side provides what the other lacks, building a mutually beneficial dependence. Fig wasps pollinate fig trees, which provide them a breeding ground; the original text also cites a two-party political system. Symbiosis derives its power from the fact that both sides weaken without each other.
Herding When individual members are too weak, cluster together so bigger opponents think twice. Industry associations give companies a collective voice; schools of fish reduce the odds an individual gets eaten. Herding doesn't make each member stronger, but it changes the opponent's cost of attack.
Distributed ownership The community doesn't just use the system — it owns it. Participants are both customers and stakeholders. REI co-op and the Green Bay Packers are owned by members or the community. Ownership binds loyalty, governance, and long-term interests together.
Transparency Don't ask people to trust you blindly — open up the process so they can check it. Open-source software publishes code and change history. Trust comes not just from brand promises, but from “I can verify it myself.”

11 | Speed and scale: make the whole system easier to expand

Speed and scale strategies solve execution problems: how to learn faster, consume less, pivot more flexibly, and reuse one capability across many more contexts. The most common confusion here is between "composability" and "modularity": the former emphasizes building new things out of existing parts, while the latter emphasizes that each piece stays relatively independent and replaceable.

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
Iteration Don't wait until you get it right — build fast, observe results, and adjust, so your learning loop is shorter than everyone else's. SpaceX uses high-frequency testing to turn failures into design inputs for the next version. The real advantage of iteration isn't being busy — it's learning faster.
Efficiency Accomplish the same outcome using less energy, capital, time, or material. LED bulbs provide similar illumination with far less electricity. When results are comparable, lower unit consumption becomes an advantage in price, profit, or battery life.
Agility When you realize the direction is wrong, turn around immediately instead of being dragged down by size or legacy structures. Gymnasts, squirrels, and go-karts can all change posture or direction quickly. Agility matters most when conditions change.
Precision "Good enough" isn't enough — you must consistently hit a very small error margin. Swiss watches and CNC machining turn tiny tolerances into quality differences. Precision suits tasks where small errors change the outcome.
Blitzing Suddenly pour massive resources into a short window, using density and speed to leave the opponent no time to organize a response. Hostile takeovers and flash marketing campaigns both rely on concentrated firepower. It can shift the situation quickly, but it can also burn out if it can't be sustained.
Composability Like building blocks — reconnect existing capabilities to quickly assemble new products that didn't exist before. APIs and Stripe let developers plug payment and other capabilities into different systems. The key isn't whether a single component can be swapped — it's whether components can combine freely into new uses.
Modularity Split the whole into relatively independent units, so a broken one can be replaced and expansion doesn't require rebuilding the entire system. LEGO and prefabricated buildings are both made of standard units. Modularity focuses on independence, replacement, and maintenance; composability focuses more on how many new configurations can be assembled.

12 | Ease of use: remove a little friction, gain a lot more users

A product can lose not because it lacks capability, but because it's too hard to learn, requires too many steps, or is too boring to bother with. Ease-of-use strategies all share one goal: reducing the resistance between "I want this" and "I did this."

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
Intuitiveness You roughly know how to use it without reading a manual. The product's shape, placement, and feedback tell you what to do next. Dieter Rams's design philosophy emphasizes clarity and self-evidence. Intuitiveness doesn't reduce features — it reduces the mental effort needed to understand them.
Fun Users don't just use it for the end result; the process itself is enjoyable, so they keep coming back. Video games, amusement parks, and Duolingo all build feedback, challenge, or rewards into the experience. Fun turns persistence from a matter of willpower into a matter of attraction.
Simplicity Fewer parts, rules, and choices make things easier to understand, with fewer places for errors and failures. A hammer and Muji products both use restrained design to cut unnecessary complexity. Simple doesn't mean few features — it means nothing extra weighing you down.
Low-friction One less form, one less wait, one less decision — and the easier it is for users to complete the action. One-click ordering compresses a multi-step transaction into a single action. Every bit of resistance you remove is a user you keep from dropping off.
Charm Beyond the features, people simply enjoy being around you. Personality, aesthetics, and temperament create emotional attachment to an ordinary experience. Oprah Winfrey and Paris both evoke warmth, aspiration, or loyalty. Charm is hard to put in a spec sheet, yet it genuinely influences choice.

13 | Transformation: when the environment changes, change how you operate

Many failures aren't about lacking strength — they're about being locked into one fixed form. Transformation strategies let a subject be modified, swap in a different set of capabilities at different stages, or directly copy methods the market has already validated.

Strategy Plain English Example: Why it works
Malleability Not shaped once — able to be revised, customized, and adapted to different needs repeatedly. Clay can be reshaped, software code can be continuously modified, and method actors change their state for different roles. Malleability lets one base material produce multiple outcomes.
Metamorphosis Not small adjustments — switch out the entire body and capabilities at different stages, so each stage suits a different task. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly; a tadpole becomes a frog. After the change, both have different ranges and ways of surviving. They don't make the original form stronger — they switch forms entirely.
Copycat Someone has already proven a method works — copy it directly and skip the cost of exploring from zero. Fast fashion quickly follows popular designs; generic brands replicate proven product formats. The difference from "second-mover" is: second-mover is about timing of market entry, while copycat is about replicating a method or style.

80 strategies: you're not meant to have them all

After reading through all 80, it's easy to get the wrong idea: wouldn't my company be better off with more of them? Actually, the opposite is true.

Steph Ango's real point is that successful players usually develop standout strength in just a handful of strategies. Low cost and luxury, specialization and versatility, predictability and unpredictability — these are inherently opposing choices. You can't be extreme in every direction at once, and you don't need to be.

A real moat usually comes from two or three strategies that reinforce each other.

Take a typical example: a product starts with low friction to lower the barrier to entry. More users come in, creating a user base advantage. That brings demand and supply together, producing stronger aggregation effects. Better matching makes the service more reliable, and reliability pulls in even more users:

Low friction → User base → Aggregation → Reliability → More users

At that point, competitors are no longer facing a feature they can copy. They are facing a system that has already started to compound.

Of course, “helping you win once” and “building a long-term moat” are still two different things. First-mover advantage, a surprise attack, litigation, or the highest bid can all produce short-term wins, but they don’t necessarily get stronger with usage or hold up over time. The three checks below are my own additions to a framework from Steph Ango—they are not his original model.

How to read this framework

Run each candidate advantage through three gates. If it fails any one, stop and use a more accurate label.

Steph Ango offers the broad winning approach; the outcome, compounding, and durability checks are the boundaries we added for business use.

Finally, you can test your product or organization with three questions:

  1. What outcome are we actually trying to win—more users, lower cost, higher trust, or stronger survivability?
  2. What two or three strategies are actually working right now? Do we have real evidence, or just well-sounding labels?
  3. Do these strategies feed one another such that more usage, more time, and more scale make it harder for later entrants to copy?

If your only answer is “we have lots of features, our team works hard, and the product feels nice,” that isn’t a moat. But if you can explain how a few capabilities connect end to end and keep amplifying each other, you’ve actually seen your path to winning.

Source
Many ways to winSteph Ango·2023-11-18·View primary source
Further reading
About me — Steph Ango·Berkshire Hathaway 2007 Annual Letter
Site note
Based on Steph Ango's personal strategy taxonomy published on 2023-11-18; the 80 items are a heuristic framework, not an empirically validated exhaustive list.
↑ End of article
✓ This article is free to read in full

Members can copy or download the full Markdown, and let their AI subscribe and ask.

Subscribe · $59/yrSee what's included →
Read the original ↗
📮 New explainers, straight to your inbox

Found this useful? Leave your email — every new explainer, the moment it's out. Unsubscribe anytime.

Related explainers

洞察
AI Is Reverse-Engineering Everything. Is Software Development Still Valuable?
10-12 ·
Deep Dive
When Does an Enterprise Truly Need FDEs? Before Building an FDE Team, Pass These Two Gates First...
09-17 · 9 min read
Deep dive
Codex lead Tibo, the “God of Resets”: Codex is only a transitional form—the real race is expanding from individual models to entire systems
08-25 · 13 min read