Betaworks put me on the calendar for a public session called “Your Network Is Your Moat.”
The event was part of a series about distribution for startups. The premise was that software was becoming easier to produce while reaching the right people remained specific to each company.
My session connected that subject to Goodword. Professional networks are often discussed as a list of contacts. The product work had focused instead on the context around those relationships: how people knew each other, what they had discussed, and what follow-up might be useful.
The public event listing described my background across consumer and business products, search, recommendations, and data infrastructure. It placed the session at Betaworks in Manhattan and presented it as a morning discussion for startup operators.
Preparing for the session meant choosing examples that could be discussed without exposing a person's private network. A product demonstration could use prepared profiles or public relationships instead of opening a founder's real messages and notes.
The talk also needed to separate distribution from indiscriminate outreach. A network can help a company reach people through relevant introductions and trusted context. Treating every contact as a target removes the thing that made the network useful.
The private archive includes event coordination and draft discussion points. Those details are not reproduced here. No attendee list, private relationship, company performance, or customer information appears in this article.
The public Betaworks page later marked the event as postponed with a new date to be announced. The archive therefore supports the scheduled session and its preparation, not a claim that the April 30 event took place as originally planned.
The public-safe record is the listing itself: “Your Network Is Your Moat,” with Goodword, inside a broader series about startup distribution.
By April 30, the material was ready for a public conversation even though the event schedule changed.