I agree that distribution is a moat but then you need to rinse and repeat with retention. One example (and I have spoken about this to a recent vibe coder who came out of retirement at 67-years old after decades as a CEO because he was bored): a vibe coder creates an already existing solution but is able to distribute to a low-price, underserved market that is well-below the economic return point for the incumbents. The quality of the product can go upstream but the solo vibe coder can continue to penetrate the underserved market with a super-low cost solution. Then they have to focus on retention, but what's interesting at this level is the switching cost can become higher than the reduction in price provided by the next vibe coder with a lower price. So retention might be less of an issue than we might suspect.
I think retention is way harder to move. There's a natural gravity of retention based on the software. Maybe there are a few things you can do to move it but not a lot.
I agree that distribution is a moat but then you need to rinse and repeat with retention. One example (and I have spoken about this to a recent vibe coder who came out of retirement at 67-years old after decades as a CEO because he was bored): a vibe coder creates an already existing solution but is able to distribute to a low-price, underserved market that is well-below the economic return point for the incumbents. The quality of the product can go upstream but the solo vibe coder can continue to penetrate the underserved market with a super-low cost solution. Then they have to focus on retention, but what's interesting at this level is the switching cost can become higher than the reduction in price provided by the next vibe coder with a lower price. So retention might be less of an issue than we might suspect.
I think retention is way harder to move. There's a natural gravity of retention based on the software. Maybe there are a few things you can do to move it but not a lot.