The discussion here is going sideways, and I blame the underwhelming blog post.

Having money is NOT an economic moat-- i.e., a durable, structural competitive advantage.

He overlooks broader, true definition of moat attributes like labor supply, infrastructure, PP&E, brand, network, natural monopolies, switching costs, regulation. These don't go away with commoditized CRUD apps.

And quoting someone with decades of experience implying that things are hard now and innovation didn't turn over industries in the last 25+ years is a joke.

Knowledge ? For b2c it might be more difficult, but in b2b, understanding your customer and their specifics issue and developing something made for them is one of the big challenge. Being able to spit out code for free is useless if you don't know what and who you are making the code for.

The same way you prevented this previously. Copying successful products is nothing new, AI just makes it easier.

Marketing, lawyers, good customer support, creating relationships with customers.

You work on niches that have very specific requirements that you can only derive from having a good relationship with customers and so you attend to those needs faster than competitors who are out of the loop.

Let's just say, building software alone is not enough.

You cant. You can only focus on building your own product and making it durable and just much better

by keeping the how part a secret

You don't.