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- YC CEO Garry Tan: “Moat is not a noun. It’s a verb”
YC CEO Garry Tan: “Moat is not a noun. It’s a verb”
Popular belief says startups win because they have one big, game-changing insight.
But Varun Mohan (Windsurf CEO) argues that’s a myth.
“Every single insight we have is a depreciating insight.”
In other words: the value of your insight declines fast. Competitors catch up. Markets shift. What was once novel becomes table stakes.
He uses Nvidia as the example:
Even at a trillion-dollar scale and 70% gross margins, they still have to innovate, or AMD catches up.
The real advantage?
Continuously generating new insights — and executing on them.
“It’s not about the insight you had one year ago. It’s whether you can compound that advantage over and over again.”
That’s why Varun tells his team: being wrong is fine, but being stagnant isn’t. You need to stay sharp, learn from the market, and compound your edge over time.
Or as Garry Tan (YC CEO) puts it aptly:
“A moat is not a noun. It’s a verb.”