Why Your API Is Your Moat (Mohit Aron)

Mohit Aron has spent nearly 20 years watching technology shifts play out, and his read on AI moats is blunt: the fundamentals of competitive advantage haven't changed, the tools just have. Most founders are asking the wrong question entirely.

With AI agents increasingly acting as the primary interface between users and software, Mohit breaks down exactly where durable value lives, why the "SaaS is dead" crowd is conflating two very different things, and why most AI-native ERP and CRM startups are walking into a market positioning trap they don't see coming.

Topics discussed:

• API depth as the primary moat for AI agents, not data or model fine-tuning

• Why "SaaS is dead" confuses the UI layer with the underlying service value

• Ecosystem interoperability as a moat that wipe-coded clones cannot replicate

• Why early-stage startups should use vanilla LLMs before touching fine-tuning

• The SMB gravity trap pulling AI-native enterprise challengers permanently down-market

• Working backwards from go-to-market motion before designing the product

• The insertion point strategy for breaking into enterprise without trying to replace incumbents directly