Hamilton Helmer describes a moat as "persistent differential returns." Or in other words, it's something that lets you keep making more money than your competition. There are many kinds of moats but they all end up giving you that outcome.

This website is a fantastic resource: https://7powers.com/

From a business sense, I've heard it described when a company has significant market share with longer contracts, not monthly SaaS types of businesses where in theory everyone could leave at once.

A technical moat? The only thing I can think of is something like search with Google or a company with a patented, hard to build technology, probably involving hardware or something requiring getting thru legal regulation. But legal regulations are a legal moat, not technical.

Usually network effects.

https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual

Ironic how moat is a metaphor based on a defense that has been useless for... I dunno... 200 years? A moat is great until warfare changes.

Maybe thats the point. A moat is your "rent seeking runway", a capacitor that you can draw on while you reinvent yourself or die.

The new trendy moat are multi-verticals in SaaS.

Hard to compete and as a customer it's hard to choose another competitor because the current package includes just so much.

The only moat that matters is gaining and keeping customers.

In addition to the network effects mentioned elsewhere: capital-intensive businesses that have raised significant capital and have a head start have moats.

So for instance, the reason a power company is a natural monopoly is that power transmission infrastructure is massively expensive to build, and the first one to raise the capital and build it out has a moat.

The same applies to something like video hosting that requires massive infrastructure (tho less so now than 15-20 years ago when YouTube was getting established.)

Or AWS — it takes massive capital to compete with them head to head, and even Google hasn’t entirely succeeded at that. (Microsoft sort of has, but mostly because their proprietary OS that’s so heavily relied on by enterprise is its own moat.)

Marketplaces are network effect adjacent. The reason no one really competes with Amazon (or in their niches, eBay or Etsy) is that all the buyers and all the sellers are already there. Same for Uber and Lyft.

IP is a type of moat for content based businesses like TV streaming services (Disney, Netflix, etc).

Apple tries to use the ubiquity of its devices as a moat for its services and massively profitable app store — though it’s a weak moat for the services and starting to be weakened by antitrust laws for apps/IAPs.

Technical moats, well… some tech expertise isn’t sufficiently widespread that any upstart competitor can hire someone to do the work. If you want to compete with Nvidia, good luck hiring all the world-class experts you’d need.

Microsoft’s moat? Switching costs, including learning curves. And all the software written specifically for Windows that’s not available on other platforms.

Switching costs are also a major moat for an email service like Gmail.

You make a most after you've won and become huge. The most prevents smaller, more innovative companies from succeeding even though they're better than you.

For example, good luck building a better search engine without Google's data.

"hot take but i think a moat is skill, extreme execution & luck."

Lol. That is the exact opposite of the meaning. Example moats: having cleared FDA two times, getting a great relationship with a taxi board, getting 50% tax breaks from a city in Ohio, etc etc. Moats are x10000 more valuable than "hard work or execution".