# Borrowed Data Is Not a Moat ## The pitch claims exclusive proprietary data, but the contracts give access and not ownership The deck claims exclusive access to proprietary data from many large industries. The roadmap and the contract summaries of the company show fewer industries with data in hand. They also show that other parties hold the data rights. | Claim | What the sources show | | --- | --- | | Exclusive access in five industries | The roadmap shows a domain database in some sectors and a fine-tuned model in one sector. One summary says four industries. A third version says five industries. | | Data is proprietary | Institutes supply the domain data. The institutes own the domain data. | | The results of training are an asset | In the largest contract, **the contract gives the results of training and the validation data to the customer**. | | The company can use derived insights again | One customer or more do not let the company use again the outputs from the data of the customer. | | Use compounds | The company promises to isolate the data of each customer. Thus the use does not train a shared model. | > [!danger] The sources disagree > The deck and a deal summary give different industry counts for the same claim, and the roadmap does not agree. > > This item moves one decision. The decision is if the data moat is an **asset** or a **partnership**. The company owns an asset and can use it again, but a partner can cancel a partnership and give it to competitors. > > This item is in [[Open Questions and Numbers to Reconcile]]. > [!quote] The primary point > The promise to isolate the data is the right commercial promise. It is also the cause of the missing data network effect. The playbook compounds. The data does not compound. ## Why it matters A well-funded competitor can go to the same institutes. This is possible unless the institute agreements give exclusive rights or perpetual rights to use the data again. The length and the exclusivity of the agreements show how long the moat lasts. The agreements were not seen. ## Related - [[Foreman MOC]] - [[Data Moat]] - [[Data Flywheel]] - [[IP Encumbrance Map]] - [[Defensibility Principles MOC]]