[HN Gopher] Data is the only moat
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       Data is the only moat
        
       Author : cgwu
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2026-01-15 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (frontierai.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (frontierai.substack.com)
        
       | whatever1 wrote:
       | Information was always the moat for everything. We literally have
       | spies who risk their lives to try to gain access to information.
        
         | tehjoker wrote:
         | This is heavily context dependent... There are plenty of
         | situations where everyone knows the relevant factors, it's who
         | has possession of land, resources, people, etc.
        
         | eloisant wrote:
         | Yes, during the 2000's there was the "mashup" fads. People
         | creating companies around mashing data from one service to
         | another. Like putting Craigslist listings on a Google Map.
         | 
         | And guess what, all those mashup companies didn't last a couple
         | of years. Because they didn't have a direct access to data.
        
       | ralusek wrote:
       | I feel like algorithmic/architectural breakthroughs are still the
       | area that will show the most wins. The thing is that
       | insights/breakthroughs of that sort that tend to be highly
       | portable. As Meta showed, you can just pay people 10 million to
       | come tell you what they're doing over there at that other place.
       | 
       | inb4 "then why do Meta's models still suck?"
        
       | jongjong wrote:
       | Attention is the only moat.
       | 
       | Companies always try to make it seem like data is valuable.
       | Attention is valuable. With attention, you get the data for free.
       | What they monetize is attention. Data is a small part to optimize
       | the sale of ads but attention is the important commodity.
       | 
       | Why else are celebrities so well paid?
        
         | wolttam wrote:
         | User attention to get user data?
         | 
         | I feel like the the data to drive the really interesting
         | capabilities (biological, chemical, material, etc, etc, etc) is
         | not going to come in large part from end users.
        
         | ndr wrote:
         | This surely works with consumer product. Does it equally apply
         | to b2b?
        
       | light_triad wrote:
       | Distribution, brand, network effects, regulatory positioning, and
       | execution speed all create defensibility; "data helps" doesn't
       | imply "data is everything"
       | 
       | Also as foundation models improve, today's "hard to solve"
       | problems become tomorrow's "easy to solve" problems
        
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       (page generated 2026-01-15 23:00 UTC)