When anyone can build the product, trust is the moat
AI collapsed the cost of building credible software. Product superiority now decays in months. The advantages that still compound are the ones marketing builds and protects: trust, distribution and positions competitors cannot copy without abandoning their own.
Product-led growth rested on an assumption that held for a decade: a meaningfully better product would stay better long enough for the product itself to carry acquisition. That assumption has expired. Credible competitors now appear in weeks, and feature parity arrives faster than buyers can complete an evaluation.
When technology stops being scarce, durable advantage migrates to trust, distribution and position, and the company that builds them while it still has a product lead keeps the lead after the product advantage is gone.
Which powers survive cheap software
| Source of advantage | Mechanism | Vulnerability to fast followers |
|---|---|---|
| Product features | Capability competitors lack today | High: replicable in weeks or months |
| Brand | Buyers choose without exhaustive evaluation | Low: built over years of proof |
| Switching costs | Embedded in workflows, data and processes | Low once deeply integrated |
| Counter-positioning | A model incumbents cannot copy without self-harm | Low while the incumbent’s model holds |
| Distribution | Owned access to buyers and their attention | Low: relationships and presence compound |
Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers is the most useful lens I know for this. Read in the context of AI, it points somewhere uncomfortable for product-centric companies: most of the powers that remain durable are built or defended by marketing.
Belief is the scarcest input in skeptical markets
At VRIFY, new AI competitors appeared every couple of weeks and roughly 95% of the market had never heard of us. Mining is a traditional industry that had been burned by tools built by outsiders. Attention was not the bottleneck; belief was. We redesigned the go-to-market around the moments where belief is built or lost.
The implications were concrete. Peer proof and technically transparent content led. Demonstrations were run on the buyer’s own data, replacing our claims with their results. White-glove support was concentrated in procurement, where trust most often dies. And fast time to value turned each customer into the next account’s evidence.
Build a mesh, not a funnel
No single channel carries a skeptical buyer from first exposure to signature. The channels must corroborate each other: a post, a conference conversation, a technical piece and a role-specific page, each making the next more credible. Smaller accounts can then convert through automated inbound handling; the largest require executive briefings and demonstrations on their own data.
The timing problem
The trap is sequencing. Companies defer brand and distribution while the product leads, because growth looks product-driven. By the time the lead erodes, trust and reach cannot be bought quickly enough. The investment has to be made while it still looks optional.
Implications for capital allocation
If durable advantage has shifted toward trust and distribution, budgets should follow. That means funding brand, proof and category presence while the product still leads, not after a competitor has caught up. It means treating customer evidence, such as documented outcomes, references and co-marketed results, as an asset with an owner and a roadmap. And it means investing in the moments of the buying journey where trust is won or lost, particularly the demonstration and procurement, with the same seriousness as top-of-funnel spend.
The counter-positioning question
The most durable position is one an incumbent cannot copy without damaging its own business. Every leadership team should be able to answer: what do we do, or refuse to do, that a larger competitor could only match by undermining its existing model? If there is no answer, the company is competing on features, and features are exactly what AI has made cheap.
Questions for the board
- If a well-funded competitor matched our core features next quarter, why would customers stay?
- What share of our pipeline comes from channels we own rather than rent?
- Where in our buying journey is trust most often lost, and who owns fixing it?
The takeaway
In a world where anyone can build, the scarce assets are the slow ones: trust, distribution and a defensible position. Product-led growth works until the product stops being rare. Build the moat while you still have the lead.