Where the Moat Lives: Building Defensible Companies in an Age of Easy Replication
In a market where capital is more disciplined, technology cycles move faster, and software advantages are easier to copy, founders and investors are returning to a fundamental question: what actually creates durable competitive advantage?
This HVCA Equity Thursday, hosted with Interactive Venture Partners, explores how the next generation of venture-backed companies can build real moats — through distribution, ecosystem position, proprietary data, embedded workflows, technical depth, brand trust, and customer switching costs.
The discussion moves beyond generic innovation narratives and focuses on what defensibility looks like in practice: how companies earn the right to scale, how investors evaluate durability, and why some advantages compound while others disappear.
🎤 Speakers and Perspectives
Aurel Pasztor — early investor in Deligo, representing an AI-powered checkout company where real-world deployment, customer workflows, and computer vision create defensibility beyond software alone.
Gábor Kiss-Vámosi — founder of LVGL, a leading open-source embedded UI framework demonstrating how developer adoption, ecosystem integration, and standards can become powerful moats.
Jared Schrieber — bringing an operator and market-building perspective on how companies create category leadership and lasting advantage.
Moderator: Laszlo Czirjak — Interactive Venture Partners
Why Attend
• What “moat” really means in today’s venture market
• Why software alone is often no longer enough
• How distribution, standards, data, and embedded workflows create durable advantage
• What investors look for when assessing defensibility
• Why CEE founders can build globally relevant companies from deep technical and operational strengths
Interactive Venture Partners brings a US-standard, high-conviction venture perspective from Budapest, supporting ambitious Hungarian and CEE founders building with global ambition.
Join us for a conversation on where lasting company value is created — and how founders can build advantages that compound over time.