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Entrepreneurship & Startups vocabulary · Ideas & Business Models

Moat

Meaning in entrepreneurship & startups, with examples

/moʊt/nounCommon term

In entrepreneurship & startups, moat means: A long-lasting advantage that protects a business from competitors, like the water-filled ditch around a castle; for example network effects, patents or high switching costs.

In Turkish: kalıcı rekabet avantajı, rakiplere karşı koruma, savunma hendeği

How it is used

A favourite word of investors: What's your moat? You build, widen or defend a moat. Common moats are network effects, proprietary data, brand, scale and switching costs. Founders should explain why their moat will get stronger over time.

Example sentences

  1. Anyone can copy our app, so our moat has to be the partnerships with hospitals.

  2. Every new seller makes the marketplace more useful for buyers, and that widens our moat.

Common collocations

  • build a moat
  • widen the moat
  • defensible moat
  • data moat
  • competitive advantageSomething that lets a company serve customers better or more cheaply than its rivals, such as unique technology, data, a strong brand or lower costs.
  • network effectA situation in which a product becomes more valuable to each user as more people use it, as with social networks, payment systems and marketplaces.
  • intellectual propertyCreations of the mind that a company can legally own, such as code, inventions, designs, brand names and content, protected by patents, trademarks and copyright.
  • first-mover advantageThe benefit a company may get from being the first to enter a new market, such as brand recognition, early customers and control of key resources.

More terms: Ideas & Business Models

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