Free Lesson

Waves -> Moats: How New Value becomes Lasting Value

Hosted by J.D. Meier and John Gusiff

Wed, Aug 26, 2026

7:00 PM UTC (1 hour)

Virtual (Zoom)

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Customer Jobs-to-be-Done Fundamentals
JOHN GUSIFF
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What you'll learn

Know when your wave is ending

Revenue keeps looking healthy long after the wave underneath it starts to weaken. Learn to read the earlier signal.

How Value Cycles Have Changed

The assumption most strategy rests on was written for a slower world. See what changed, and what it costs you now.

The Three Tests a Real Moat Has to Pass

Most of what founders call a moat fails one of them. Learn the bar, and how to tell a structure from a story.

The Six Ways a Moat Fails

Every moat has at least one failure mode pointed at it. Learn all six, and why one moat is never enough.

Making the Transition from Wave to Moat

Creating value and keeping it are different jobs. Learn the two questions that decide whether you get to keep it.

Why this topic matters

By Series A or B, most founders discover something uncomfortable: The product was never the moat. Products launch. Customers arrive. Revenue grows.. Competitors catch up. What felt like differentiation becomes table stakes. As value cycles shrink, one wave is no longer enough. Enduring companies create the next wave while building moats around the current one.

You'll learn from

J.D. Meier

Satya Nadella's Former Head Coach of Innovation

JD spent 25 years at Microsoft, where he served as head coach for Satya Nadella's innovation team — helping leaders run the current business while building the next one. He created Two-Track Transformation and Waves of Value, the frameworks behind the first half of this lesson. He writes at Leadership Impact.

John Gusiff

Founder, Customer Centric Solutions LLC; author of Stacking Moats newsletter

John works on GTM strategy with founders and with product, growth and revenue leaders — buyer psychology, customer progress, and compounding growth. He writes the Stacking Moats newsletter and built the 8 Moats Diagnostic and Defensibility Stress Test, the instruments behind the second half of this lesson.

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