The 2026 10x moat
Product moats are collapsing - here's what's replacing it
I had a call this past week with a former client from my Refine Labs days. They reached out to gut check something they noticed to see if it was a them thing or a larger trend across the industry.
They’ve been seeing a dip in their site traffic numbers over the past handful of months. Nothing catastrophic by any means, but definitely noticeable. They wanted to understand what was happening. I told them about the alligator effect that’s come about with the increase in AI overviews + LLM searches and the rise of dark SEO + how to understand acquisition performance through this new lens.
Later that night after letting the conversation marinate some more, I realized something that’s been nagging at me for a while + crystallized through that conversation.
No one (in their right mind) wakes up excited or wanting to migrate platforms, especially a core system of record platform. They certainly don’t want to deal with data migrations. Then there’s the whole needing to learn new workflows + training the team on a new platform. It’s all painful + expensive in terms of time + resources. The only reason anyone has done this historically is if what they’re moving to is at least 10x better than what they’re leaving.
And that’s been the unspoken rule of software for years - if you want people to switch, you need to be 10x better. The 10x bar + guarantee of future improved results is what made migrations worth the pain.
Sponsor: HockeyStack
Imagine you have a deal sitting in your forecast that's expected to close, only for it to stall because no next step was scheduled. Or because the decision-maker stopped engaging.
These signals are often unnoticed until it’s too late. The team doesn't think anything of it when the decision-maker hasn't replied for a week or two - "they're probably just busy"
Having an agent that identifies this risk + also proposes a recovery plan (i.e. finding a new champion there + proposing how to engage them) is the natural evolution of how agents should support our efforts.
HockeyStack’s new AI Revenue Agent released this week brings use cases like this to the forefront so GTM practitioners can keep + win the pipeline they worked so hard to generate. This is the future of AI agents in GTM.
The Times They Are A-Changin’
The barrier to entry for building software is basically gone now thanks to Claude Code, Lovable, Codex, etc. It’s never been easier to build something that works + ship it to market.
The corollary to that means maintaining a true 10x product is harder than ever before. By the time you build something that’s genuinely 10x better, someone else has already copied it + built a 7x alternative that costs half as much. Then someone else copies that + builds a 5x version that’s easier to use. Then another. And another.
I’m watching this play out everywhere. The product moat is collapsing in real-time. And with this collapse comes a race to the bottom on pricing. When product/feature differentiation becomes marginal, the next lever is almost always price.
BUT - here’s one thing I’ve noticed with the companies that are actually winning in this environment + holding their ground as commoditized versions are popping up around them left + right:
They’re shifting the focus of their 10x factor from their product to the underlying knowledge infrastructure it’s built on top of.
Playbooks
Proprietary research
Frameworks for how to actually execute + get results
The community of users + UGC content from them
In short: the type of expertise that can’t be replicated by code or copied by a competitor in a weekend.
When someone uses to their platform, yes, the product is good, but what they’re really paying + staying for is the underlying knowledge + expertise that comes with it. The guidance that comes from the employees + community of users. More impactfully, the “oh yeah, we’ve seen that scenario play out before - here’s why that’s happening + here’s what does/doesn’t work to get through it.”
THAT is the stuff that makes moving platforms worth it now.
Anyone can copy a feature product in a month. But it’s really hard to copy the knowledge + insights gained from someone who has spent years in the space gaining the type of experience you can only get from first-principles thinking + execution.
Let the market copy your dashboards + features. Let them put on your clothes + dance around trying to tell the market that they’re the same as you, just a little more affordable. Because when push comes to shove + they start to get the hard questions like “why am I not getting the results your platform claimed I’d get?”, they’ll be standing there at a loss for words, because they never learned the fundamentals or gained the underlying knowledge for what the platform is actually solving for + how to execute the proper strategy from it.
You can’t build the frameworks that show people how to get 3x better results with it.
The new 10x
Most companies are still playing the old game. They’re trying to out-engineer their way to differentiation. Ship a better feature, add a new automation, etc. It’s the 10x product game + they’re losing because the that game is over.
The companies breaking ahead right now are playing the knowledge game.
This is especially important if you’re someone building something on the side thinking you have a shot at the market. You don’t need to out-build anyone. Or even if you do, expect that others are going to quickly follow suit and that moat will be gone within a few months.
BUT, you can out-think them.
What do you know that no one else knows?
What have you seen work that competitors don’t fundamentally understand?
What frameworks have you developed that the market can’t get anywhere else?
What patterns have you noticed that, if codified + shared, would be genuinely useful?
This is the real 10x. This is the new moat.
Most of you reading this are working at a company that’s already established in the market. Over the past year you’ve probably been watching new competitors pop up every month + the same thing applies here. It’s going to become harder + harder to win by having a slightly better product. But you can continue to win by being the most trusted advisor + authority in the space - AKA the ones who actually know how to help your customers succeed in driving the results they’re after.
So instead of spending all your time thinking about how to market new features, spend it on knowledge capture. What are your customers actually doing that’s working? What’s not working? What patterns are you seeing in the market? Take that + turn it into playbooks, frameworks, training sessions, etc.
My hypothesis is that over the coming year, there’s going to be a shift that starts to take place where we do less marketing of the product and more marketing of the thinking/knowledge/experience that comes with the product.
Positioning is going to shift from “we’re the #1 product in [category]” to “we have the knowledge + expertise to help those in [category] win + we’re going to teach you how.”
The knowledge you have that makes your customers 10x better at what they’re trying to do is going to be the new 10x rule.
Product is table stakes now - anyone can build one in a weekend. The true moat is the underlying thinking + knowledge.
See you next Saturday,
Sam
A quick note from me:
Everything I just wrote about above - about how the moat has shifted from product to knowledge - I’ve been living this while building Affect over the past handful of months.
I (someone with zero coding skills) built a platform in a few months that I’m sure someone else can/will replicate in a weekend. But like I wrote about above - the code isn’t the moat, the underlying knowledge is.
Affect isn’t just software. It’s the framework for how I think about marketing accountability. The playbooks I’ve built from 15 years of seeing what works + what doesn’t. The underlying conviction that marketing’s job isn’t to hit vanity metrics - it’s to move the business.
Affect is for the marketers who have sat in a room where marketing celebrated hitting its MQL targets while the business missed revenue. For the marketers who want to be held accountable because they’re confident enough in their work to let the math speak for itself. For the marketers who understand that clarity is earned, conviction is a choice, + being a force on the business is the only version of this job worth doing.
The waitlist is open today + the product will be coming out of beta in a few weeks. It would mean a lot to have you on it 🙏