Founder & Partner @ Kanvas | Foster Innovation, Develop Business Strategy, Drive Growth

Katie Nowak

It’s been 3 years without my dad.
Here’s what I'm reflecting on today -

My dad taught me to build a career that I loved.

He did that by taking me to his medical presentations and dinners around the world when I was young.

I remember I joined him at a private investigator meeting in Munich, Germany, and his colleagues were torn over whether or not Dr. Nowak’s 12-year-old daughter needed to sign an NDA to attend. 😂 

In that same meeting, he introduced himself as being from “Day-toi,” instead of Detroit, as everyone else was from various European cities. Lots of laughter ensued, and the whole room suddenly felt warmer, kinder. It was his magic.

Every time I travel internationally for work or step on stage (virtually or in-person), I think of my dad. 

Every time I make a pun or a joke in a meeting (approx 23408 times a day) and see my team light up, I think of my dad.

I wish I could share with him how watching his love of his work, and thus his love of people, all over the world fundamentally shaped who I am today….

…someone who loves what she does.

I often reflect on how I could someday pay this forward to my future family, someday.

How could I involve them in international travel? Have them attend my presentations or panels? Ask them to join me while I write invoices in my office? (That was hilarious - “what do you think, Kate, let’s add an hour, I read fast!!”) … and how might I make each shared moment more fun than the last?

Today, I’m reflecting that I hope to be even half of the role model that he was for me.

I hope this inspires a reflection for you, too - he would love that.

Miss you, dad.

—
I'm Katie Nowak, an investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.

Innovation Leader, New Venture Designer, Speaker @ Kanvas || Investor @ Altra Venture Partners

If you don’t have a moat for your business, you’re in trouble. 🤯 
A moat is exactly what it sounds like - 

the water around a castle.

If your moat is shallow, intruders can simply walk through it (with some inexpensive rain boots).

If your moat is deep and wide, intruders will have a harder time (requiring expensive speed boats, scuba gear, maybe a small airplane - you get the drift).

In business, moats are imperative.

Here are the two biggest moats to have on your radar:

✨ Technology moats.

A successful tech moat means your cost to deliver drops as you scale, and your switching costs keep rising with every new feature.

The best tech moats are often built via rare talent, intellectual property, budgets, and, historically, time.

Because software is easier to spin-up than ever,

We’re seeing tech moats shift to robotics, complex hardware, and deep infrastructure - things that are still slower, harder and more capital-intensive to replicate.

The harder your tech is to replicate, the deeper your moat!

✨ Distribution moats.

Not a tech person? 

Never fear - distribution moats are one of my favorite angles!

A successful distribution moat means the cost to acquire customers goes down over time, while your stickiness and engagement go up.

“Unique” paid marketing doesn’t go the mile anymore, as most have access to the same ad platforms, targeting tools, and growth hacks. 

Real distribution moats look more like:
+ Being embedded in someone else’s workflow (so ripping you out is painful)
+ Owning a community that actually shows up for you, not just follows you
+ Ecosystem partnerships - my favorite are ones where your “competitors” quietly become your best channels

-

As someone who deeply enjoys all movies/books with magic, this castle analogy makes my heart warm.

I hope that it helps you memorialize how you think about moats in your business.

So, tell us - which of these moats are you most excited about - either in your company, or in the industry as a whole?

Bonus points if you share a moat you've noticed in the wild!

See you in the comments. 😎 

PS - this photo is of Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. It is as beautiful as it is hard to pronounce!! It does not have a water-based moat, but certainly has elevation on its side - proving that the best moats often don't look alike.

—
I'm Katie Nowak, an investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.

Pinterest

Engineering Manager

Journey (YC W21)

Raised $4M seed round. Funded by YCombinator W21. Acquired by a private equity firm 2023.

Journey.io is a storytelling platform for sales, customer success and marketing teams. Journey allows you to combine text, videos, images, calendars, forms or any other multi-media format into a single long form document format that has advanced tracking and security controls.

Co-Founder & CTO

JUUL Labs

Oversaw all of eCommerce international expansion and D2C teams (shopping experience, CMS, warranty, core platform). 
Managed 25+ engineers, helped the growth from ~200 employees to 4000+ employees and $200M+ ARR for eCommerce.

Director of Engineering

First engineering hire in NYC. Built teams in New York and London. Led eCommerce international expansion from just the U.S. to over 20 countries.

Vistar Media

Engineering Lead

NextRoll, Inc. (formerly known as AdRoll)

Tech lead on the growth team at AdRoll.
http://tech.adroll.com/blog/adroll/2015/07/27/how-we-built-the-adroll-growth-team.html

Also worked on prospecting (http://blog.adroll.com/product/adroll-prospecting) and payments.

Tech Lead, Growth

Udemy

Engineer #2, employee #5. Now ~1000 employees, 50M customers, recently IPO'ed on NASDAQ ($UDMY) for ~$4B.
Helped build products that led to over $170M in funding through Series C.

Worked on pretty much everything including infrastructure, backend, frontend, UX design, recruiting, hiring, mentoring.
Helped grow the user base from near zero to 3M customers and the number of employees from 5 to over 100.

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