# Sales Channel as Moat

#concept #gtm #positioning

## Summary

The vault's **third moat candidate**: not your method ([[methodology-as-moat]]), not your relationships ([[relationships-as-moat]]), but a **repeatable, scalable sales channel with predictable acquisition economics**. Source: [[2026-07-26-how-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-2027]] ([[oskar-hartmann]]). The claim in one line: *products are now cheap to build (everyone has "10–15 great products in Cloud Code"), so the differentiating, reusable, defensible asset is the distribution machine — "уникальный, масштабируемый, повторяемый канал ценнее уникальной технологии."* Single source, `Status: tentative` — but it names a moat neither prior account covers, and it is the only one of the three stated as an *investor's* screening criterion rather than a practitioner's self-description.

## Current Understanding

**The core contrast — Pediant vs FlatPay.** Pediant had superior technology (QR payments) and landed Walmart and Best Buy; integrations dragged, champions churned, the startup died. FlatPay had a commodity product (payment terminal) with a dead-simple promise ("1% commission, no asterisks") and a **door-to-door sales force** in Holland/Germany — one rep sells 10–20 terminals a month — and became a billion-dollar company. The kicker: FlatPay's founder is on his **sixth business run through the same distribution playbook**. The channel, once built, accepts *any* product — which is exactly the property a moat needs and a product rarely has.

**Why a channel is a moat mechanically** ([[unit-economics]]): a business that has run a channel long enough *knows its LTV* and can rationally pay up to ~⅓ of a client's lifetime profit on day one (US credit cards: ~$1,000 CAC). A newcomer without that knowledge can't bid against them — the burned-in channel is an **entry barrier**, and venture money exists largely to fund that burn until the LTV math closes. Restated in the author's second source ([[2026-07-26-main-principle-of-successful-business]]: post-PMF, spend $80–100 CAC precisely so competitors can't afford entry) — framework stability, not corroboration.

**Repeatable is the load-bearing word.** One-off spikes don't count ("Michael Jackson rose from the grave and told people to come" — not a channel). Nor do one-off partner deals: Hartmann's own first store hit $20M on a single 10%-of-revenue traffic deal, which he explicitly files under *boost, not system* — partner management changes, audits arrive, terms flip, and by then you need the statistics to compete in open auctions. The test is: **can you spend a predictable amount and get a predictable customer, again and again?**

**Relation to the vault's other two moats.** Not rivals — different layers: the method is *what* you deliver, relationships are *one particular channel's* trust substrate, the channel-moat is the *machine* that makes any of it repeat. It is also the closest thing to an independent restatement of [[marketing-system]]'s "money in at the top → more money out at the bottom" definition — from a different tradition, which is worth more than another Martell clip saying it. Where it *does* take a side: against [[methodology-as-moat]]'s implicit premise that the differentiated method is the scarce thing — in Hartmann's telling the product/method is the commodity and distribution is scarce, which is Sebastian's "relationships" argument generalized beyond in-person.

**Stage nuance the source itself carries:** FlatPay built **one** repeatable channel (door-to-door); the AI land-grab example (Anthropic/OpenAI ~$4B PE joint ventures) runs **all channels at once**; and his through-principle says one channel = concentration risk, resilient = multichannel. Read together: one repeatable channel gets you the company, multichannel makes it durable — which happens to match the vault's staged reading of pick-1-vs-pick-3 ([[client-acquisition-channels]]).

## Evidence

- Pediant vs FlatPay contrast; "channel worth more than technology"; sixth-business playbook — [[2026-07-26-how-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-2027]]
- LTV×⅓ CAC / entry-barrier mechanism — same source, detailed on [[unit-economics]]
- Convergent (same claim, different tradition): a marketing system is "money in → more money out," and referral/word-of-mouth flow is not one — [[marketing-system]], [[2026-07-20-referrals-will-sink-your-business]] ([[dan-martell]])
- Convergent from the services side: a repeatable *method* is what gets sold ([[methodology-as-moat]]) — but the method-vs-channel priority is contested, see below
- Slogan echo (2026-07-29): "distribution is the moat, not code — landing page + outbound = go-to-market; the product is the last step" — [[2026-07-29-start-a-business-with-claude-code]] ([[dan-martell]], attributed same day; folds into his existing marketing-system convergence above — asserts the priority, supplies none of the repeatability/CAC mechanics that make this page's claim a *moat* claim)

## Related Pages

- [[methodology-as-moat]], [[relationships-as-moat]] — moat candidates #1 and #2
- [[marketing-system]] — the same machine described from the operator's side
- [[client-acquisition-channels]] — the channel taxonomy this concept ranks
- [[unit-economics]] — the math that makes a channel defensible
- [[venture-fit]] — what funding the channel-burn implies
- [[oskar-hartmann]] — the source's voice
- [[overview]]

## Contradictions / Uncertainty

- `Status: tentative` — single source for the *mechanism*, stage-talk grade, told by a coach/investor selling a founder program. The FlatPay and Pediant details are unverified war stories. The 2026-07-29 echo turned out to be [[dan-martell]] (attributed same day) — so it folds into the already-recorded Martell convergence rather than adding a voice, and corroborates nothing load-bearing (no repeatability test, no CAC logic) — status unchanged.
- **Three moats now compete for the same investment dollar.** Method says productize; relationships say show up; channel says build the machine. All three can't be the *first* priority for a solo operator. Likely resolution is stage- and audience-dependent (method → something to sell; relationships/channel → how it repeats), but no source arbitrates.
- **Scope:** the exemplars are product companies (terminals, e-commerce). Whether a *services* firm can own a channel-moat in this sense — or whether for services the channel-moat just *is* relationships/partnerships — is untested in the vault.
- The "products are commodities now" premise leans on the vibe-coding claim, which [[ai-productivity-evidence]] contests at the expert end.

## Next Questions

- What is the services analogue of FlatPay's door-to-door — the one channel a dev-services operator could run repeatably to 10–20 closes/month?
- Does the LTV×⅓ CAC rule transfer to B2B services where LTV is lumpy project revenue, not subscription flow?
- Is there a documented case of a services firm whose *channel* (not method or relationships) was the demonstrable moat?
