Taste is the Moat (Or Maybe Not)

WHAT ON EARTH IS A MOAT?

I learned a new word this week. "Moat."

Not a funny misspelling of "goat" (Schumacher, Senna, Verstappen... depends who you ask) or "boat". Apparently in business it means the thing that protects you from competition. The advantage that's hard to copy. I had to look it up. Felt like I missed a day in business school. (I also didn't go to school in general, so that tracks.)

Once I had the word, I couldn't stop thinking about it. What's ours? What's the thing we're building at PARAGON that isn't just "we work hard and care a lot"? Everyone says that. It's not a moat. It's table stakes.

My first answer was taste. The accumulated judgment that shapes every decision on a project. Knowing when a moment needs to breathe. Knowing where to spend so the money shows up on screen. That felt right for a minute.

But then I thought about how many production companies are out there doing great work. Thousands. Many with excellent taste. Many with people who are genuinely wonderful to work with. If I'm being honest, "taste" isn't something we can claim exclusive ownership of. That's not a moat. That's just the cost of entry at a certain level.

So what is it?

I've been sitting with this for a few days and I think the honest answer is: maybe the whole framing is wrong.

This is a relationship business. It always has been. The work matters, obviously. But the work comes from trust, and trust comes from people actually knowing who you are. Not a pitch deck version. Not a "we're the best in the Midwest" version. Just... who you actually are, how you think, what you care about.

We're not trying to convince anyone we're the best in the world. We're trying to show people who we are and hope that resonates with the right ones. We do great work. We try to be great people. That's it. That's the whole strategy.

Maybe that's the moat. Or maybe there isn't one and that's fine.
‍

INFLECTION POINT

I wouldn't be thinking about this stuff if the ground wasn't shifting. But it is.

Agencies are getting leaner. Layoffs, mergers, projects with budgets that would've been healthy three years ago now feel like a stretch. Everyone's being asked to do more with less, and that pressure rolls downhill to production.

The companies that come out ahead won't be the ones with the biggest rosters or the flashiest reels. They'll be the ones that are flexible, fast, and genuinely easy to work with. Not "we say we're collaborative" easy. Actually easy. The kind of partner where the agency producer doesn't dread the call.

That's what we're trying to build. Small enough to stay nimble. Selective enough to take on work we're genuinely excited about. That's not a limitation, it's the whole point.

THE AI THING

You're going to hear a lot of noise about AI replacing production this year. And next year. And the year after that. I'm already tired of the LinkedIn think pieces and it's January.

We're not losing sleep over it. Not because we think the tools aren't impressive. They are. They'll keep getting better. Eventually you probably won't be able to tell the difference between generated footage and something shot on an Alexa with a 100-person crew.

But here's what we think is actually happening: the middle is getting squeezed.

The commodity work was already on borrowed time. Projects where the execution is fine and the ideas are safe and everyone gets paid but nobody's particularly proud of the outcome. That's what's disappearing. AI just accelerates what was already true. If the only thing you're offering is competent execution, you're competing with software now. Which, to be fair, doesn't ask for overtime or craft services.

What's left? Low-budget content that moves fast on one end, and high-craft work on the other. The gap between those two is widening.

The differentiator isn't going to be execution. It's going to be taste. Judgment. The intangibles that are hard to automate because they live in the space between people, not in the output itself.

WORK THAT FEELS HUMAN

If everything starts to look the same, nothing lands. That's been true forever, but it's about to get more true.

When anyone can generate a competent image or a passable script, the work that cuts through will be the stuff that feels like a specific person made it. A little weird. The kind of thing where someone in a meeting said "are we sure about this?" and they did it anyway.

That's what we're chasing. Not perfection. Presence.

Work that feels unmistakably human is going to become a premium. That's a bet we're willing to make.

SO, WHAT'S THE MOAT?

Honestly, I still don't know. Maybe it's the people. Maybe it's the process. Maybe it's just showing up consistently and doing the work until the right people notice.

Or maybe trying to find a moat is the wrong game entirely. Maybe you just do great work, try to be a great person to work with, and trust that the relationships will follow.

That's what we're doing in 2026. We'll let you know how it goes. Or we won't, and you can assume it went poorly.

‍