Experian
Experian constructs data moats through network effects: $7.5B revenue, 200M+ consumer members, each transaction strengthening analytics for B2B clients across 32 countries.
Experian evolved from credit bureau to data analytics powerhouse through network effects and preferential attachment. Revenue hit $7.5 billion in fiscal 2025 (up 7% organic growth), but the transformation story is more interesting than the growth rate. The company now serves 200 million+ free members across consumer services, with each new member feeding data into analytics engines that improve fraud detection, credit scoring, and marketing optimization for B2B clients. This is positive feedback loops at scale: more consumers provide more data, which improves products, which attracts more business clients, which generates revenue to acquire more consumers.
The strategic pivot from "credit reporting" to "data and technology business" demonstrates niche construction. Experian invested $1.2 billion in acquisitions during fiscal 2025 to support strategic priorities, including ClearSale (fraud prevention, completed April 2025). Consumer Services grew 7% organically, B2B grew 6%, with strength in analytics, mortgage, alternative data, and priority verticals. The company reorganized from fiscal 2026, splitting B2B into Financial Services and Verticals to reflect how it services clients under the "One Experian" approach. This mirrors how organisms adapt internal structure to match external opportunities—reorganize around client needs rather than legacy product categories.
What separates Experian from information services peers is data moat depth. The company operates in 32 countries with 23,300 employees, processing credit, fraud, and identity verification for billions of transactions. Network effects compound: each fraud pattern detected strengthens algorithms, each credit decision adds training data, each new vertical (healthcare, automotive) provides cross-sector insights unavailable to single-industry competitors like FICO. Experian's advantage isn't technology—it's accumulated data from decades of transactions that can't be replicated by new entrants. The biological principle: organisms that construct data-rich niches (spider webs capturing information about prey patterns, mycorrhizal networks tracking nutrient flows) gain compounding advantages as the network grows.