How do I build a real strategy to stay ahead of competitors?

You already track competitors, which most people skip. The harder thing, building a real strategy and a moat they cannot easily cross, is where you are stuck. That is normal. Watching rivals is observation. Building defensibility is creation, and creation is harder. Here is the core of it. A moat is not about being better today, it is about being hard to copy tomorrow. Anyone can match a feature. What is hard to match is a thing that compounds, a brand people trust, a network that grows more valuable with each user, deep switching costs, knowledge only you have. Strategy is choosing which of those you will build and then pouring years into it. So ask one question: what advantage do we have that gets stronger the longer we run, not weaker. Find that, and build your strategy around widening it. Chasing competitors feature by feature is a treadmill. Building one compounding advantage is a moat. Pick the thing that deepens over time and commit to it, and the competition stops being the thing you react to.