The founders he admires (Gates&Allen, Jobs&Wozniak, Page&Brin) probably wouldn't be able to articulate competitive advantages that this guy considers "real". They didn't have insider info or authority. They were passionate about what they are doing, but who knows if they were more passionate than their competitors (also applying this point to Apple for design and Google for search is not correct; Apple sacrifices very little to make their products look beautiful (and this is a narrow understanding of design), Google founders cared more about collaborative filtering at first).