Moats are retention tools sold as growth strategy
Moats are retention tools sold as growth strategy. Switching costs and data gravity make leaving expensive. Neither explains why a stranger picks you next quarter.
The confusion shows up as budget drift. Finance loves retention because it compounds cleanly in the model. Product ships lock-in features because they move net revenue retention. The top of the funnel thins, nobody owns the thinning, and by the time a board asks where new logos went, the acquisition muscle has atrophied past the point of a quarterly fix.
Figma earned distribution before defensibility. Slack did the same. Sequence matters. A moat built before an acquisition engine protects a small aging base with clean margins and no future, which is a worse position than most boards see until the renewal cycle exposes it.