// Morning!
Rosh Hashanah wrapped up last night, the Jewish New Year. And as a half-Italian, half-Jew, I say apples & honey (or focaccia & red sauce) — either way, we’ll be talking new YEAR, new MOATS, baby. 🔥
And for any new readers, welcome to Signal // Noise — the newsletter read by founders, CEOs, execs, and scrappy builders every Thursday. Each week, what I’m listening to, one deep dive, notes from the field, three links worth your time. No buzzwords, no bullshit.
While I Was Writing Today’s Signal // Noise:
Want the whole vibe? The running playlist is right here. 🎧
From sound to signal, let’s get this baby rolling with what’s on my mind…
The Signal
One big idea, insight, or take - grounded in the real work, not theory.
The New Moats: How Early-Stage Companies Can Build Resilience, Not Just Revenue
For most of the 2010s, capital itself was the moat.
If you raised the biggest round, you could outspend everyone else: hiring faster, subsidizing growth, and buying market share. Think WeWork, Uber, or Bird, where the playbook was simple: pile on billions in VC, then use blitzscaling to overwhelm the competition.
Today, that strategy works much less.
The cost of capital is up, investors want FCF and profits, and customers are no longer dazzled by growth at all costs. The Fed hiked rates from near-zero to >5% since 2022, drying up the cheap money frenzy.
At the same time, public markets punished “growth at any price” darlings like Peloton and Robinhood. The translation: cash is no longer the defensive wall that it used to be.
So what replaces it? Here’s the shift:
Old moats = capital + scale.
New moats = data + distribution + depth.
A few examples:
Proprietary data (Data). Data is a great compounder, but only if you actually collect - and use it. Are you tagging churn reasons, logging customer wins/losses, building benchmarks from your workflows? You can build a flywheel w/ data that competitors can’t buy. Example: Duolingo’s adaptive engine gets smarter with every practice session; billions of micro-interactions are something that competitors can’t quickly replicate.
Owned channels (Distribution). Owning a distribution channel beats the crap out of renting one. A community you control, a super critical partner integration, or a newsletter audience that actually reads your stuff — those are key acquisition & influence assets. Example: HubSpot scaled its entire funnel on the back of its blog (SEO) and free tools (owned media), and Figma’s virality comes from sharing links inside design teams.
Entrenchment (Depth). Depth is how tightly you’re woven into the customer’s world, how much trust you’ve established in the relationship. It shows up as embedded workflows, high switching costs, and earned loyalty. Example: QuickBooks and Salesforce endure not because they’re “the best,” but because they’re embedded in payroll runs and sales pipelines. Atlassian creates high switching costs — retraining engineering teams to move off Jira is so painful most companies never bother. And at a smaller scale, founder-led brands can achieve depth through strong customer communities, where identity and belonging make churn unthinkable.
Here’s the practical founder takeaway:
👉 Pick one non-capital moat to strengthen this quarter or year. Or just take the first step and brainstorm with your team or your co-founder: what’s one way you could add a data, distribution, or depth moat to the business this year?
Whether you build a community, embed yourself deeper into customer workflows, or structure a data advantage, it’s worth figuring out how to build resilience, not just revenue.
Field Notes
Dispatches from the field - lessons, stories, interviews, experiments.
3 Founder/Creator Bets Worth Making in 2025
I joined the Creator Spotlight podcast a few weeks ago, and we chatted about the 3 bets I’d make if I were starting as a founder or creator today:
Move from audience → community. An audience pays attention; a community participates. The latter is harder to build but infinitely more defensible.
Trust before monetization. Revenue follows credibility. Nail the strategy and relationship first — the dollars come easier.
Know your arbitrage. Everyone has one — attention, trust, or taste. Figure out which lever is underpriced for you, then lean in hard.
A few Jawns to Check Out
Smart reads, sharp tools, or internet gems.
🎧 Sweet pod | The Iran-Contra Thriller
For anyone who loves history, suspense, or has ever wondered wtf really happened in the Reagan years, Fiasco (season 3) unpacks the Iran-Contra affair like a political true-crime saga.
📕 Great Post | From 0 to 10M
I really enjoyed Kyle Poyar’s breakdown of how Copy.ai scaled to 10 million users in just four years — with lessons on growth loops, freemium, and riding the AI hype wave without burning out.
💭 Mind matter | AI markets have crystalized
Elad Gil just mapped where things stand with AI: foundation models (Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral), code (Cursor, Devin), legal (Harvey), medical scribing (Abridge), and CX (Decagon). He also flags the next wave — sales, security, accounting, compliance. It’s a monster post, but worth a read.
See ya next Thursday - and, if you’ve found a creative way to deepen trust, own distribution, or use data, hit reply, you know I’d love to hear about it.
And until next time, thanks for reading.
Jordan
P.S. Wanna work on something? Got a pod or content idea? → Email me | Need 30–60 min of advice? → Book here | Want a coach in your corner? → More info
