I think you just defined a moat. A tiny low population country that is one of the most hard to reach major countries in the world kind of proves that point, does it not?

Basically no one is competing in NZ because no one cares about the NZ market. It's simply not large enough. Until it is.

I do think there is a lot to be said about not trying to build these giant world-eating companies that require you selling your soul to the devil. Companies like Craigslist I have a ton of respect for. A lifestyle company should be the dream of most, not the crazy disconnected-from-reality VC world we're seeing today.

I simply think anyone betting on their market being small enough to fly under the radar is making a very tenuous bargain.

In Poland eBay didn't make a single dent because Allegro is such a huge beast(and in my opinion is actually better than Ebay is many many ways), and that's in a country of 40+ million people. Even facebook struggled at the beginning because everyone had a profile on nk.pl so why bother with a new service. Even Amazon still doesn't have a presence, because again, Allegro is the best destination for online shopping.

So software is eating the world, except you know, where there are moats?

In Switzerland, ricardo.ch is much bigger than Ebay.

eBay in the USA has largely abandoned its original private party auction market. The vast majority of items are now fixed-price general commercial crap from overseas manufacturers. Note that their advertising campaigns of the last few years have featured only fixed-price items and target whim buyers ("If you're ready, come and get it") complete with bogus representations of the capabilities of their mobile interface.

These are exceptions to the rule.

Living in Poland, I see so many good ideas and good teams, that go absolutely nowhere because they begin with the local market, and struggle to achieve ramen profitability, while their global counterparts achieve scale and funding to ultimately take over the market.

There is a small niche of successful copycats that grabbed the local niche, and maintained the lead over the years due to strong network effects - like a local reddit clone (wykop.pl), or a local ebay clone (allegro.pl), but that's almost it.

All the other projects either failed to get off the ground, or got killed when globally oriented startups entered our country.

Bigger a part of your business software is, faster the growth happens.

Ebay like marketplaces still have a big physical world component present. Even if it isn't ebay, it might be some other company in Australia. Or maybe trademe becomes the company which tries to take over in Austrlia. It's inevitable and just a matter of time!

Australia's eBay is Gumtree.com.au, which was purchased by eBay quite some time ago.

On the other hand, Trademe has never managed to penetrate markets outside New Zealand with any of its products, which limits its value.

Xero, however, has massive potential for growth, because it's international.

> On the other hand, Trademe has never managed to penetrate markets outside New Zealand with any of its products, which limits its value.

I don't understand why that is necessarily a bad thing. If someone is looking to make a shit ton of money, have a chance to monopolize or dominate the international market, then yes, that makes sense. But if you're happy and content serving nationally, and so are your customers, I really don't see why someone would want to expand internationally.

If a product earns money, then hopefully it is providing value to users. If the number of users increase, more value is provided. If the number of users is arbitrarily limited, then people miss value they should get.

1) Why "should" them? Just because some people built a service doesn't mean they owe it to everyone.

2) The internet may scale worldwide, by that doesn't mean any service can do so while maintaining that value per user. Hell, it may not scale beyond a neighborhood, let alone a country.