Can you give any example of such “advanced technology”?

Consider all these:

https://technology.nasa.gov/patents

And the NSF's equivalent, the many national labs, defense labs, and research-intensive universities (eg UC Irvine is keen to for entrepreneurs to pick up IP; as are lots of others). There's so much out there, and it's just waiting for entrepreneurs to commercialize it. Many things won't have direct commercial application, but much of it does. Typically the entity doing the licensing doesn't just give you the IP, but a full teaching program and network to help you get further.

For example, there is significant IP around additive manufacturing beyond plastics that are sitting as a squatting duck with national labs and universities that can be leveraged

You are describing a moat, and it is indeed important. I’ll step up on the soapbox for a moment…

A moat can be unique technology, an exclusive licensing agreement, an exclusive IP (patent or otherwise), very unique experience or insight, an exclusive geographic location, a very unique business model, a very unique skill and/or reputation, etc.

Follow the leader seems like a plan, but it’s probably not a good plan unless you have tons of money to spend on marketing and sales.

In my previous home city, someone opened a bake shop with coffee that was targeted at the growing Korean population. It was unique: Korean pastries, Korean friendly faces, great coffee, etc. They probably invested $100k in opening this shop. It became very popular. Then, in about nine months, five more copycat shops opened up within a mile or two of this store. Result: business went way down for all of them. They all lost revenue, and they all invested a lot of money.

Software is prone to this kind of copycat behavior. The thinking goes like one of these two sequences:

1. People like software—>I write software—->People like [note apps, for example]—>I can write a note app in a week—->I’ll start a SaaS business

2. I write software—->I think [fill in the blank] is cool—>I will write an app for [that] in a week—->I’ll start a SaaS business

Writing software is not a differentiator. It’s not a shortcut to big bucks. It’s not a solution in itself. It’s just a tool. Anything you can write in a week (or 3 months) can be done by 100,000 other people—-in a week (or 3 months).

You have to start with a problem, defined by a large group of people, that you have the experience and expertise to solve in a unique and valuable way. Software may be part of that solution, but it’s just a fraction of the whole pie. You need to think about the whole solution—-and the moat. It may take 5 to 10 years to develop your moat. Be patient and be observant.

Good luck.

> Writing software is not a differentiator. It’s not a shortcut to big bucks. It’s not a solution in itself. It’s just a tool. Anything you can write in a week (or 3 months) can be done by 100,000 other people—-in a week (or 3 months).

> You have to start with a problem, defined by a large group of people, that you have the experience and expertise to solve in a unique and valuable way.

That precise argument is why I didn't make Slack. And yet Slack is a lots-of-dollars business, made by people who, as far as I can see, started with no more expertise in the domain than any of us who've ever worked for a big company has.

As I get older I'm more and more convinced that actually doing anything at all can be a differentiator.

Doing a thing, and doing it well is a really good differentiator! The thing about software is that it scales way easier than a Korean bakery, so the brand itself is the important differentiation. If you can identify a need in the market and throw the right pieces at it, and spend 6-months building it in secret, that 6-month head start building your product and adding features before you release to the public is your moat. Yeah it's not the deepest moat but those features are a moat nonetheless and you can totally build a successful business on top of that. Anybody that starts after you launch is going to be 6 months behind and forever playing catch-up.

Did Slack even spend 6 months building something in secret? Microsoft and everyone else were already in that space. If anything it felt like Slack were the ones playing catch-up.

ah yeah that's a fair point. Look at Skype, they've been doing video calls since approximately the beginning of the public Internet. Yet zoom was still able to become the dominant cross-platform video chat app. So that "build in private for 6 months and be ahead of your competitors" isn't a one size fits all tactic. "doing it better" is another good moat.

It's not a "moat" in any meaningful sense as far as I can see. Doing it better isn't a particularly defensible position, it's just something you can win by doing.

You have to rotate your thinking 90° to see things my way (you don't have to. your opinion is as valid as mine, I think my reasoning make me right, but I'm biased). But your moat is how you defend your castle, and, outside of having a patent on the core piece, all moats only take time and money to shovel in enough dirt to be moot. Does Tesla have a moat? They have a huge head start on EVs, and being vertically integrated to a degree that other car makers are trying to catch up to. They'll eventually get to where Tesla is in 2023, but by that time, Tesla is going to be ahead by however many years it took them to get there.

> As I get older I'm more and more convinced that actually doing anything at all can be a differentiator.

Indeed. This has always been true, and will always be true. Thus the old saw about how "80% of success is just showing up."

>Thus the old saw about how "80% of success is just showing up."

I'm old and I saw that when I was young.

>actually doing anything at all can be a differentiator.

The other 20% is taking action like so many do not do.

Yeah!! Wrote a blog post about this recently: https://startupspeed.substack.com/p/mental-shifts-for-deep-t...