A healthy organic early growth implies product market fit, or at least some promising alignment. Unless it's technologically hard service, there's no moat that a well funded team can't replicate and surpass.

Until they have sizeable operations, all startups are "company == product". They are pretty vulnerable of being copied.

The company is more than “techology”. It also marketing, sales, regional, leadership, market size, etc. That can be (and it is) a big moat preventing a well founded startup to replicate.

In short one needs to have something is hard to replicate - but that does not need to be technology.

I know, the point is that at early stages there’s little of it. That’s when they copy you, just like that unless you have something else that’s hard to replicate.