Official skill · Strategy
Durable advantage check
Tests each claimed moat for a benefit and a barrier, sorts it into one of seven types of durable advantage, matches it to the company's stage, and says what to build now. Use it when someone claims a moat and nobody has asked what stops a rival.
AI skill
Have your AI test which of your advantages will last
14 days free · No card needed
Works in Claude, ChatGPT, and coding agents. On Team and Business, the official skill in your pod updates itself when we improve it.
When to use it
- Someone claims a moat and nobody has asked what stops a rival
- Writing the competitive-advantage section of a memo or deck
- Choosing which advantage a growing company should build next
What you give it
- What the business sells, to whom, and named rivals
- The claimed advantages
- Evidence: prices, unit costs, churn, contracts
- The company's stage
What you get
A table of claims with type, benefit, barrier, materiality, and verdict; a stage-fit note; and decisions on what to protect, stop claiming, and build now, with owners.
How it works
- Set the frame
- Write each claim as a benefit
- Classify the claim into one of the seven types
- Test the barrier
- Check materiality
- Match to the stage
- Give each claim a verdict
- Decide actions
Example
What you give it
Do we have a moat? We're Ledgerline, monthly bookkeeping for independent restaurants, 2 years old, about 600 restaurants, adding roughly 8% a month. We charge a flat monthly fee; receipts and invoices are read by software and checked by a small team. Main alternatives: local accounting firms that bill by the hour, and two software-only bookkeeping apps (TallyPal, Booksy). Our claims: (1) accounting firms can't copy our flat fee because their partners are paid on billable hours; (2) once we have 12+ months of a restaurant's books, they don't want to move mid-year; churn after month 12 is under 1% a month vs about 4% before; (3) network effects: more restaurants train our categorization model; (4) customers love us, NPS 61. Unit cost per restaurant has dropped from $90 to $55 a month as we grew from 200 to 600 restaurants.
What you get back (the start of it)
Durable advantage check: Ledgerline
Market: monthly bookkeeping for independent restaurants · Rivals: local hourly-billing accounting firms; TallyPal; Booksy · Stage: take-off (2 years old, ~8% monthly growth) · Date: [date]
Claims tested
| Claim (user's words) | Type | Benefit (cash-flow effect, evidence) | Barrier (why the strongest rival can't take it) | Material? | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firms can't copy our flat fee | Counter-positioning | Lower cost to serve than hourly firms [check: cost comparison]; [check: whether customers choose Ledgerline to avoid hourly bills] | Hourly firms would cut their own billable revenue and partner pay by copying | [check: share of new customers who came from hourly firms] | Barrier only against hourly firms until the benefit is shown; Power if the checks hold. Not a barrier against the apps [check: TallyPal and Booksy pricing] |
| 12+ months of books, they don't move | Switching costs | Churn under 1% a month after month 12 vs about 4% before | A rival must rebuild a year of categorized history and win the restaurant mid-year | Yes: churn drops by about three quarters | Power, for customers past month 12 |
| More restaurants train our model | Not network economies: one restaurant's value doesn't rise because others join. Possibly scale economies in data | [check: does categorization accuracy or cost improve with volume?] | [check: could TallyPal or Booksy reach similar accuracy with their own volume?] | [check] | Not supported yet |
| Customers love us, NPS 61 | None of the seven: satisfaction, not branding | No evidence of a price premium over TallyPal or Booksy | None found: rivals can also serve customers well | — | Benefit only (good execution) |
| Unit cost fell from $90 to $55 as volume tripled | Scale economies | Lower cost per restaurant at higher volume | Rivals with less volume have higher unit cost [check: rivals' volume] | [check: cost gap vs TallyPal and Booksy] | Benefit only [check: rivals' volume] |
Stage fit
Ledgerline is in take-off, the window when scale economies and switching costs can be secured. Counter-positioning fits its origin story, and its barrier against hourly firms holds, but its benefit is not shown yet [check: cost comparison]; whether it works against the software-only apps depends on their pricing [check]. Branding is not available at two years; the NPS is good execution.
The rest of this output, the full steps and the checks the AI runs before it answers are in your pod once you add the skill.
Use this skill in your AIShare it with your team
Add it to an AI Skill Pod and everyone on the team, contractors included, uses the same version from their own AI. Read the best ways to share AI skills with a team
Changelog
- v1.0.1 · · Example: the flat-fee claim is rated Barrier only against hourly firms until its benefit is shown, since a Power needs both benefit and barrier.
- v1.0.0 · · First release.
Sources
- Synopsis - 7 Powers (Hamilton Helmer's book site) (read 2026-11-04)
- About the Author - 7 Powers (read 2026-11-04)
- Foreword by Reed Hastings - 7 Powers (read 2026-11-04)
- 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy (2016) - Open Library (read 2026-11-04)
- 7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer - Acquired (episode and transcript) (read 2026-11-04)
- Business strategy with Hamilton Helmer (author of 7 Powers) - Lenny's Podcast (read 2026-11-04)