A better product buys a challenger time. It does not buy a barrier. The mistake most founders make is treating the time as the win, and spending the whole of it on growth while the one thing that would outlast the window – an exclusive right – goes unfiled.

Packy McCormick’s essay in Not Boring makes the first half of that argument well. Drawing on Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers, he describes counter-positioning: a business model the incumbent can see is better but cannot copy without damaging the business it already has. Dell sold direct while Compaq depended on dealers. Amazon shipped from warehouses while Barnes & Noble’s capital sat in stores. The line to keep is this: “Better is a benefit; Power requires a barrier.”

The essay is equally clear that the barrier is temporary. Counter-positioning is a take-off phase power. The incumbent eventually restructures, or a second startup arrives with no legacy business to protect. In McCormick’s words, “you need to use that time to sprint like hell until you can establish your long-term moats.”

Where the durable barrier comes from

He lists the durable powers a challenger should be building toward: scale economies, network effects, switching costs, cornered resources, process power and brand. The essay does not mention patents, and that is the gap worth filling. Three of those six powers are, in practice, IP positions:

– A cornered resource is very often an exclusive right – a patent on the mechanism that makes the model work, an exclusive licence to the input nobody else can source, or a registered brand.
– Switching costs are strongest when the thing the customer would have to give up is protected – the data format, the integration, the interface that only you can lawfully supply.
– Process power is trade secret discipline by another name. It only counts as a barrier if the process is documented, kept confidential and contractually locked down.

The timing matters more than the choice. The counter-positioning window is the only period in which a challenger can file on its core mechanism before the incumbent has studied it closely and before a fast follower has published something similar. Once the window closes, the challenger’s own success is the prior art. That is the pattern in Why “Wait and See” Is Becoming the Most Expensive IP Decision You Can Make, and it is why Be prepared before you engage: Zest Labs, Walmat and $222m in damages ends the way it does: file before the incumbent gets to look inside.

The essay’s own reminder that counter-positioning does not protect you from another startup is the sharpest reason to act. A competing entrant has none of the incumbent’s conflicted incentives. The only thing that stops it copying the mechanism is a right you can enforce against it. When Anyone Can Build It in an Afternoon, What’s Left to Own? asks the same question from the AI side.

For a founder or a board, the practical test is simple. Name the mechanism the incumbent cannot copy. Then ask what stops the next startup copying it, and whether that answer is a filing date or a hope.

Read the article: An Ode to Counter-Positioning, Packy McCormick, Not Boring.