Fund/Build/Scale Is the Defensible Moat a Myth in AI?
For years, founders have been told to build a defensible moat. But in AI, where platforms, models, and capabilities can shift overnight, that advice is starting to feel outdated.
In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Simular CEO and co-founder Ang Li talks about what it actually means to build a company when the underlying technology won’t sit still.
Rather than evangelizing agents or predicting the future of work, Ang gets unusually candid about fragility, speed, judgment, and how founders should think when technical advantages may be temporary by default.
The conversation digs into small-team execution, founder productivity, decision-making under uncertainty, and the uncomfortable question many AI founders avoid: what if the next platform update eats your product?
Note: This interview was recorded before Simular closed its $21.5M Series A in December 2025.
RUNTIME 56:44EPISODE BREAKDOWN
(1:52) What is Simular, and how does it work?
(6:11) How Ang and co-founder Jiachen Yang connected
(9:00) How much time passed between Day Zero and serving their first customer?
(13:54) The moment Ang realized " this is gonna be like something huge."
(17:21) How he approaches founder-led sales and what he looks for in a GTM hire
(26:34) Maintaining cohesion when you're leading a distributed team
(32:23) Should you hire a new employee, or build a new agent?
(34:50) Why Ang made talking AI gorillas part of Simular's GTM strategy
(38:20)"If everyone becomes too cautious there, that actually prevents the innovation part."
(43:55) "There's never a moat on anything."
(51:16) The final question
LINKSMeet the AI Agent with Multiple Personalities, Wired, 4/16/2025
Simular Raises $21.5M to Build Autonomous Computer Agents, 12/2/2025
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?, IBM
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Thanks for listening!
– Walter.