Co-founder and CEO of Snap
Evan Spiegel is CEO and co-founder of Snap, where he and his team invented stories, and Snapchat has over 1 billion monthly active users. Rivals keep copying Snap, and he says the company learned 15 years ago that software is not a moat. So he builds what is hard to copy: an ecosystem of creators and developers, and hardware. He also thinks people don't spend nearly enough time figuring out distribution.
Lenny's Podcast 01:10 01:33 04:42 09:45 10:06 11:00 11:14 11:35
Distribution
Software features get cloned, faster than ever with AI. The durable advantage is distribution and the ecosystem of creators, hardware, and habits rivals cannot copy.
15 years ago, we essentially learned that software is not a moat, which is something that everyone is discovering today with AI.
Evan Spiegel
says software is not a moat. Features get copied, and distribution is what actually holds.
argues in 7 Powers that software businesses absolutely can hold durable power, through counter-positioning, switching costs and scale economies.
