A Smart Bear · Jason Cohen
articleprincipleBuilding in public forces true competitive advantage
15 October 2023Profit
Source excerpt
About A Smart Bear"Building in public" is popular: How fun when strangers cheer you on! But isn't competitive advantage ruined when competitors know your growth rate and steal your source code?
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Apollo layer
What a founder can learn
Founder takeaway
Treat building in public as a stress test for your moat: if sharing progress, metrics, or methods destroys your advantage, the business may rely too heavily on secrets rather than hard-to-replicate strengths such as customer insight, execution, brand, or compounding systems.
Why it matters
Competitors can copy visible features and tactics. Founders need an advantage that remains durable even when others understand what the company is doing.
Relevant guides
Put it to work
List what a competitor could learn from your public updates, then ask: What advantage would remain difficult to reproduce, and how can we strengthen it this quarter?