Could the moat be speed? First mover advantage has proved to be a huge factor in the past. Share of mind, messaging, audience loyalty, eyeballs, etc. ?
Blackberry created an industry and made hundreds of billions of dollars before resting on its laurels and getting derailed by internal battles over direction. There are still huge numbers of people that would buy a modern BB device today if they could.
The notion that BB didn't have massive levels of success due to their first-mover advantage is simply wrong. Of course, I would also suggest that BB was a network effects driven company; I wasn't a customer, but they offered the original (mobile) walled-garden group chat system.
Bigger picture, while lots of companies succeed entering crowded markets with new innovations, I also know that if you could somehow offer founders a choice between being first mover and, I dunno, getting 10% of their first round equity back, probably 100% of the founders would opt to capture the market first.
