We are asked this question, but were not able yet to craft an answer that was convincing enough without going deeply into technical details - and at the same time easy enough for investors to understand. I would be curious to get some good and short answers to this question by you - either for your own startup or for one of the YC startups.
I don't have a good answer for that myself either (yet.) But for what it's worth, there have been some good articles and discussion around this topic before, that might be of interest to anyone who hasn't already seen them:<p><a href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/not-competitive-advantage.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.asmartbear.com/not-competitive-advantage.html</a> / <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1507887" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1507887</a><p><a href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/unfair-advantages.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.asmartbear.com/unfair-advantages.html</a> / <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1528614" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1528614</a>