Build so they can copy you (and you still win)
Apple suing OpenAI isn't about trade secrets. It's about fear. Fear that someone faster gets to the AI hardware they've been cooking in Cupertino for years.
And here's the lesson I take as a founder: if your competitive advantage depends on nobody knowing how you do it, you don't have a competitive advantage. You have a secret. And secrets leak, get copied, or get worked out from first principles within 6 months.
The real advantage is somewhere else:
- Speed of execution (let them copy, you're already on the next version).
- Distribution (owning the channel is harder to replicate than the product).
- Accumulated proprietary data (every day that passes, a deeper moat).
- Brand and trust (you can't buy this on an exchange).
When I designed VIVIO, I made a counterintuitive decision: publish how we work on the inside. Processes, decisions, lessons. Afraid of being copied? Not at all. Because by the time someone tries to replicate it, we'll be two iterations ahead and with a community money can't buy.
Apple suing OpenAI is the signal that they're losing the speed race. And when you lose speed, all you have left is lawyers.
What I learned
This week I messed up with a team member. I gave him feedback in the heat of the moment, in front of others, about something that in the cold light of day wasn't even that serious.
What I learned (the hard way, again) is that demanding standards without timing isn't high standards, it's ego. And founder ego is the fastest way to lose the good people you spent months attracting.
I apologised in private the next day. No excuses, no "yes, but". Just owning it. And he said something that hurt more than if he'd snapped back: "thanks, I didn't expect you to admit it".
That sentence sums up the problem. Founders are quick to demand and slow to acknowledge. That's how you destroy culture without noticing.
I'm still working on it. I don't have this one solved.
On the radar
- Meta up 15% in a week after launching new AI models, an API cheaper than the competition and progress on its Iris chip. Zuckerberg is playing to buy the whole ecosystem while OpenAI fights with Apple. A chess move, not draughts.
- China recovers a Long March orbital booster at sea, closing in on SpaceX's Falcon 9 model. The space race is no longer geopolitics, it's logistics. Whoever brings down the cost per kilo to orbit wins the next decade.
- Crypto exchanges have listed more than 350 Wall Street assets (stocks, ETFs, pre-IPO) in 17 months, according to CoinGecko. The line between traditional finance and crypto is being erased. Anyone still thinking in camps has already lost.
- Telegram's Wallet brings tokenised SK Hynix shares to the TON network via xStocks. Mass distribution plus tokenised assets equals the retail banking of the future. And it isn't on Wall Street, it's in your messaging app.
The actionable advice
Take your product or service and answer this question in writing, on one sheet of paper: "What happens if tomorrow a competitor with more money than me copies exactly what I do?"
If your answer is "they couldn't, because nobody knows how I do it", you have a serious problem. You're protecting a secret, not building an advantage.
If your answer includes owned distribution, accumulated data, community, iteration speed or brand, you're in good shape. Double down there.
Do it today. Not tomorrow. Twenty minutes with a sheet of paper can reorder your next quarter.
Behind VIVIO
An internal number from VIVIO this week: 73% of the campaigns we close come from creators who have worked with us before, or from direct referrals from those creators.
That tells me two things. A good one: retention is excellent, a sign the product works. A less good one: our top of funnel for new creators is weaker than it should be.
This week we reassigned two people on the team to activating new creators. Not to sales, not to marketing. To talking one-to-one with creators who don't know us yet. Because the data shouts where the bottleneck is; you just have to listen without ego.
This is a version of what I send every week, unfiltered, in my newsletter "Eso no fue suerte". If you want the rest, subscribe for free.