What makes a business defensible when AI can build anything overnight

As AI sharply reduces the time and cost required to build software and launch products, technological speed alone is becoming a baseline rather than a durable competitive advantage. Drawing on observations associated with SEEK and Square Peg co-founder Paul Bassat, the discussion argues that lasting defensibility increasingly depends on hard-to-replicate assets such as proprietary long-term data, regulatory licences and compliance capabilities, trusted customer relationships, and established distribution networks. AI may strengthen these advantages, particularly by increasing the value that can be extracted from accumulated data, while it cannot quickly reproduce years of transaction history, regulatory approvals, or consistent service delivery. Companies are encouraged to move beyond asking how to adopt AI and instead identify newly solvable customer problems, assess their existing strengths, experiment and adapt based on evidence, and use AI to reinforce structural moats rather than merely adding fashionable features.

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