My dad celebrated his 80th birthday a few days ago. Eighty years old is a pretty big milestone, and it got me thinking about something slightly uncomfortable: How many years does he have left? And maybe more importantly… How many do I have left? I know—it’s a morbid thought. But when you have aging parents and a lot of time to think, mortality tends to sneak into your brain whether you invite it or not. That curiosity led me down a rabbit hole researching life expectancy. I w

We’ve now covered four of the five economic moats : Cost advantage moat Brand moat Network effects moat Switching costs moat Today, we’re finishing the series with the final moat: the intellectual property moat . Quick note: Most great businesses don’t rely on just one moat. Many of the companies below have several. But today we’re focusing on just one weapon in their arsenal — legally protected ideas. WHAT IS AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MOAT? An intellectual property moat is a

In the previous posts, we explored three economic moats : the cost advantage moat , the brand moat , and the network effect moat . Today, we’re looking at another powerful competitive advantage: the switching costs moat . With a network effect moat, a product becomes more valuable as more people use it. Customers stay because the service keeps getting better. But what if customers stay even when they’d rather leave? That’s exactly what happens when a company has strong switch

In this economic moat series, we’ve covered two types of competitive advantages: the cost advantage moat  and the brand moat . Now let’s talk about one of the most powerful economic moats in investing — the network effect moat . Imagine a business that gets stronger every time a new customer joins. More users make the product more valuable. A more valuable product attracts more users. And the cycle keeps reinforcing itself. WHY NETWORK EFFECTS CREATE POWERFUL COMPETITIVE ADV