Fifteen years ago, Evan Spiegel and the team at Snapchat learned a hard truth: software features alone don't build lasting competitive advantage. “Software is not a moat,” Spiegel declares, a lesson he notes is now reaffirmed by the rise of AI. Every new, clever feature could be cloned almost instantly by rivals. This meant Snap needed a new strategy to create a business that could stand the test of time.

He realized that to build a truly durable company, they had to look beyond easily replicable software. “Because all the software features that we could create were so easily cloned by our competitors, we started to think about how to build a more durable business,” Spiegel explained. Their shift involved focusing on two key areas: comprehensive ecosystems and hard-to-copy physical assets.

This isn't about incremental gains. It's about fundamental change in how you think about defense. For ambitious founders in their 20s and 30s, the takeaway is stark: your killer feature, no matter how clever, is likely fleeting. The real long-term value comes from what surrounds it, or what underpins it, that can’t be downloaded or reverse-engineered.

The Building Durable Business Moats Beyond Software

Evan Spiegel’s method for creating defensible businesses, as shared on Lenny’s Podcast, moves beyond simple feature replication. Here are the components verbatim:

  • Component 1: Focus on building ecosystem and platform: One of the first things we did was focus a lot on building ecosystem, whether those are the relationships between creators and Snapchatters, whether that's the platform we built around augmented reality where developers have built millions of these lenses.
  • Component 2: Invest in other places that are really hard to copy, including hardware: And then it also informed a lot of our thinking about investing in other places that are really hard to copy, including hardware, where it's really, really challenging to copy our only vertically integrated stack around augmented reality.

When This Works (and When It Doesn't)

This method applies directly when “software features that we could create were so easily cloned by our competitors” and the objective is to “build a more durable business” with “bigger and more effective moats.” It's particularly powerful for companies that have reached a scale where direct feature copying is a constant threat, and have the resources to invest in complex infrastructure or hardware.

However, this approach doesn't suit every startup. For early-stage companies, the capital and expertise needed to build a vast ecosystem or vertically integrated hardware stack can be prohibitive. The risk of sinking immense resources into unproven hardware or a nascent platform can be deadly. It also assumes your software features are strong enough to attract an initial user base to build around. If your core product isn't compelling, no moat will save it.

What to Do With This

Tomorrow, pull up your product roadmap and identify your top three upcoming features. For each, ask: How quickly could a competitor clone this, and what's my plan if they do? If your answer is "quickly," apply Spiegel’s framework.

Let’s say you’re building a new AI-powered writing assistant. Instead of just launching the software feature that rephrases text, walk through the components:

  • Component 1: Focus on building ecosystem and platform. How can you turn this into a platform? Can you create a marketplace for users to share custom AI prompts, templates, or integrations with niche publishing tools? Can you build a community around specific writing challenges or genres, making your tool indispensable for that group?
  • Component 2: Invest in other places that are really hard to copy, including hardware. Could a custom input device – perhaps a specialized keyboard with dedicated AI function keys, or a smart stylus that directly integrates with your platform – make your writing assistant truly unique and harder to replicate? The goal isn't just a gadget, but a vertically integrated experience that elevates your core software and locks in users.