The Next Great Tech Moat: Why World-Class Operations Will Define the Winners of 2026

We used to say our unique tech was our moat.

That story is over.

For a decade+, tech advantage meant intellectual property: a stack, a dataset, a system.

In 2010, code was the moat. More engineers and offshore cheaper cost centres crumbled the walls

In 2020, data was the moat. Then it commoditised and anyone with a credit card could buy it, or use AI to capture it

By 2026, operational excellence will be the moat. Those who operationalise world class tech will win in this next cycle

Traditionally we built slow. We protected code. We guarded secrets. We bought patents. We layered up engineers and boasted we were a tech company because 30%+ of headcount was “eng”

But 2025 changed the rules. And changed them bloody fast

AI hasn’t just shortened development cycles - it fully pancaked them.

Anyone who can prompt can now prototype.

Anyone who can connect a few APIs can deploy.

And any serious team can move from whiteboard to working product in a weekend.

The idea of “we’re defensible because we can build faster” is gone.

Velocity is now table stakes.

Before I get screamed at in the comments - this is not to say that a serious business can vibe its way to products. It’s to say product teams can prototype rapidly and offload serious technical specs to an engineering team who have their own layers of AI, increasing their velocity many fold.

The process of building has changed.

Just look at how Anthropic are doing it now:

AI Killed the Technical Moat

The old startup game was to build something hard to copy. Come up with a bloody good idea, build it stealthily and then hire a team to sell it

You did that by writing code others couldn’t easily replicate. Better ideas and better engineers spawned a Silicon Valley arms race that made serious millionaires out of software engineers

But the AI layer has decoupled innovation from engineering.

You don’t need 12 backend devs when GPT-5 and Replit can scaffold your stack in hours.

You don’t need bespoke analytics when OpenAI Agents can orchestrate an entire reporting pipeline.

That doesn’t mean tech no longer matters — but it means the barrier to “good enough” tech is now dramatically lower.

I would argue that pretty dammed awesome or even great tech becomes table stakes

Great tech is necessary.

But it’s no longer sufficient.

And if that’s the case - how the hell does a technology business differentiate over the next cycle? I think by operationalising the technology better then their competitors

Enter: Operational Excellence as a Moat

So if the tech advantage is eroding, what replaces it?

Operational moats.

The ability to execute repeatedly, precisely, and at scale — becomes the real differentiator. A layer that incorporates human + AI companions

Here’s what that looks like in 2026:

1. Signal-driven decision systems — where data is piped, cleaned, and actioned in real-time across sales, marketing, and product.

2. Agentic workflows — not just automations, but intelligent feedback loops that evolve processes without manual supervision.

3. Cross-functional velocity — marketing, ops, product, finance all sharing a single operating rhythm and measurement layer.

4. Founder-level clarity on metrics — everyone knows the scoreboard and the levers that change it.

5. Cultural durability — documentation, rituals, and learning loops that scale knowledge faster than headcount.

The new advantage isn’t how fast you can code — it’s how well you can run. And that is now well as opposed to how fast…

Your operating system is your moat.

The New Stack: Business Operations as Product

Founders used to separate product from operations. In my businesses I have done both roles over time separately, often with little overlap between them

Today, the best companies treat them as one.

• Amazon turned logistics into software.

• Stripe made compliance and finance developer-friendly.

• FunnelFuel (and others like it) are treating data pipelines, analytics, and activation as an internal product stack — an OS for execution.

This is the mindset shift:

Your business processes are no longer backstage. They are the product.

When your quoting system, analytics loop, or client onboarding flow runs with near-zero friction — that’s not admin, that’s IP.

The “moat” isn’t a model, it’s a machine.

How to Build an Operational Moat (Today)

Let’s make this actionable.