People Back People.
We talk about defensibility as if it’s external. But the first real moat is internal: the founder’s craft, their standards, and the quiet pride that shapes how the company is built.
And the quiet craftmanship that builds real defensibility.
In a world obsessed with speed, tactics, and first-mover advantages, I keep returning to something unfashionable:
The strongest founders I know build companies the same way Norwegians stack wood.
Quietly.
Properly.
With pride in the work no one sees.
🪓 What “Hel Ved” Reminded Me Of
I recently read Lars Mytting’s Hel Ved - the little book about chopping, stacking, drying, and preparing firewood.
But of course, it’s not really about wood.
It’s about craftsmanship, culture and character.
About the Nordic instinct to take responsibility.
About doing something properly even when no one is watching.
And as I read it, I was struck by how similar it is to something Nicolai Tangen writes in Alt jeg har lært om ledelse:
that leadership is often revealed in the small, unglamorous choices - the preparation, the care, the decisions that don’t make headlines.
There’s a red thread running through both books:
How you do the small things shows who you will be when the big things arrive.
The Romantic Story We Carry Matters More Than We Admit
We often dismiss culture as “soft.”
But every founder carries a mythology about what they’re building -
a romanticized idea of how it should feel, how it should work, how people should show up.
We pretend it doesn’t matter.
It does.
Because culture is not slogans.
It’s not values on a wall.
It’s not hype.
Culture is:
- how you protect the fragile early version of your idea
- how you handle scarcity
- how you treat the work itself
- how you set the standard for “good enough”
- how you respond to pressure
- how you show care in the unnoticed moments
And here’s the part that I find is rarely said out loud:
This quiet pride becomes strategy.
This became clearer through two conversations I had recently:
With Christopher Hestnes (Arntzen de Besche)
We talked about defensibility, and he pointed out that the real protection isn’t always legal - it starts with identity.
When founders care deeply about the craft, they protect the idea with more precision and more instinct.
With Christoffer Vedal (Abion)
He probably sees more companies trying to secure their IP than I can count.
On from the conversation this is what caught my attention between the words and sentences:
Most of the time, the strongest moat is the founder. Not the patent.
Both conversations confirmed what Mytting and Tangen hint at:
Culture - the lived, quiet version - isn’t soft.
It’s structural.
Pride as Defensibility
In the startup world, we talk about defensibility as if it’s purely external:
- patents
- IP
- regulation
- data
- network effects
But the first real moat is internal:
The founder’s craft.
The pride behind the work.
The part that refuses to cut corners.
And this has three very real strategic consequences:
1. How you protect your idea
Not out of fear - out of care.
Founders with an inner standard think long-term.
They keep the story tight until it’s ready.
They choose their investors carefully.
They build with integrity instead of speed for speed’s sake.
They stack the wood properly.
2. How you build your 0→1 advantage
First-mover advantage is shrinking.
Markets move fast.
Ideas spread instantly.
But pride, real pride, creates a version of the product that competitors can’t copy.
They can steal your features.
They can’t steal your standards.
3. How you create safety
You feel it the moment you meet a founder who cares.
Investors do too.
Safety, in the early stages, is not numbers,
it’s identity.
When the inner culture is solid, everything feels less fragile:
- decisions get cleaner
- teams stay aligned
- investors trust you faster
- the company carries itself with intention
This is what I believe Mytting means when he writes about woodpiles that show character.
A woodpile is not just wood.
It’s a signal.
So is the way a founder builds.
The Old Wisdom That Still Works
Reading Mytting, reading Tangen, and speaking with people like Hestnes and Vedal reminded me of something simple yet again:
People back people.
But the right people back the ones who do things properly.
There’s nothing naïve about the romantic story a founder carries.
It’s not fluff.
It’s fuel.
It’s alignment.
It’s preparation.
It’s a quiet promise:
“If we build this, we will build it properly.”
And that, more than pitch decks or frameworks,
creates the kind of defensibility that lasts.
P.S. I have stacked wood for winter. Have you?
If you’re building something that needs to last, not just launch, send me a message.
