Your Guide to Building Defensibility in 2025

Hey ProductLed Founder!

I want to share the story of Submagic —they went from 0 to $1M ARR in just 3 months.

Today, they've multiplied their ARR many times over and are still growing by double digits month-over-month.

What do you think helped them grow so fast?

Spoiler: It's not feature differentiation.

As you're probably well aware, AI has made it easier than ever for competitors to copy what you build.

Most founders respond by shipping more features, faster. But here's the painful truth: The more features you ship, the easier you become to copy.

You need to become hard to copy, but how do you do that?

This week on the ProductLed Podcast, I interviewed David Zitoun , founder of Submagic .

Click here to listen to the episode and subscribe.

Instead of shipping more features, David made a counterintuitive move: He reorganized his entire company around three core moats:

1. 3 Clicks or less to value (user experience moat)
2. Win with distribution (distribution moat)
3. 10-star customer experience (customer experience moat)

David rebuilt his entire organization around these moats:

• Their product team now has one mission: deliver value in 3 clicks or less.
• Their growth team is structured by distribution channel: one CMO with dedicated owners for each high-growth channel (i.e., affiliates, SEO, etc.).
• Their support team has one metric: delivering 10-star experiences.

Here's what I've learned from working with hundreds of PLG companies:

Moats don't mean much unless you develop them into world-class capabilities.

You can copy a strategy in an afternoon. But you can't copy the organizational capabilities that take years to build.

The companies that win don't simply pick moats.?

They restructure their entire organization around developing them.

Want to put this into action?

Here's your challenge for this week:

Run a quick "Moat Audit":

• List your top 3 moats
• Then ask yourself:

If you can't answer "yes" to these questions, you most likely aren't doubling down on your moats.

At the end of the day, what separates companies that have extremely hard-to-copy moats is the capabilities they eventually develop around each of these moats.

That requires you to develop your team, hire A-players, and focus on developing these moats every single week.

So, if you just made it here thinking: "I need to build some hard-to-copy moats in my business," here are three ways I can help:

1. If you want to build your moats yourself, check out the Strategy Component of The Product-Led Playbook for our detailed moat-building framework and implementation guide.
2. If you want me to teach you step-by-step, join ProductLed Academy. I can coach you through how to decide what those three moats are in your business.
3. If you want my team to build out your winning strategy with you, partner with a ProductLed Implementer to scale your GTM to 8 figures and beyond.?

Happy growing,

Wes Bush?

CEO & Founder, ProductLed

P.S. We're hiring! Want to help companies build real moats? Join us as a ProductLed Implementer. Learn more and apply here.