We can't find the internet
Attempting to reconnect
Something went wrong!
Hang in there while we get back on track
The clearest pick: 7 Powers
Resource:7 Powers — book by Hamilton Helmer.
Recommended by: Packy (Not Boring). Packy says that, if he had to choose one of the book’s seven powers, he would choose counter-positioning.
Key takeaway: Counter-positioning means designing a business model that gives incumbents conflicting incentives, making effective competition difficult. Packy’s reason for elevating it is practical: a young startup can use an incumbent’s size and existing economics against it before the startup has built the other six powers.
Why it matters: Ramp is the concrete example. Corporate-card incumbents benefit when customers spend more; Ramp built around helping customers spend less, so copying its model would also damage the incumbent’s own revenue economics. The useful founder-level test is not only “Can we build a better product?” but “Would matching our business model force the incumbent to hurt its existing business?”
The qualification is as important as the recommendation: counter-positioning buys time rather than permanent protection. Packy uses Base Power as the operating example—sell electricity and install a battery rather than sell the battery outright, reducing the customer’s upfront cost by roughly 20–40x and forcing incumbents to change their business model. The startup then needs to use that window to build more durable advantages such as scale economies, switching costs, brand, or network effects.
Two companion listens
Zach Dell’s conversation with David Senra — podcast/video conversation; pointed to by Packy. The relevant segment is a founder’s explanation of counter-positioning in practice: Base Power avoids competing on battery quality or price and instead changes what it sells.
Acquired, especially “7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer” — podcast/episode; highlighted by Packy as a recurring source of counter-positioning examples. The useful caveat from the linked discussion is that counter-positioning is usually a take-off-phase power and only a partial source of durability; another moat has to follow.
Best candidate (with an attribution caveat): The post gives an explicit cross-industry learning recommendation—“Look outside your industry too”—and reports that Mark Rampolla built Zico Coconut Water with a team of eight by studying Vitaminwater, Red Bull, and Starbucks. His quoted rationale, “We became students of success,” followed by “Excellence leaves clues,” gives a meaningful reason to use these companies as external case studies.
Caveat: This is an indirect endorsement: the recommendation is narrated by the post, while Rampolla is quoted describing his team’s learning practice rather than directly telling readers to study those companies.
Excluded promotional material: The same document explicitly labels Leadership Intelligence as a sponsor and Upwork as a sponsor, so those placements do not qualify.
Direct answer: The transcript contains one clear external-resource recommendation: an “open router report” and an “index of token pricing.”
- Resources / title and creator: The transcript gives only those descriptive labels; it does not provide a fuller title or creator for either resource. The wording is compressed, so it is also uncertain whether the token-pricing index is separate from the report.
- Who recommends them: An unlabeled panelist speaking after Jason; the speaker says the resources are what “you look at,” but the supplied transcript does not securely identify that speaker by name.
- Rationale: Use them instead of relying mainly on benchmarks, to judge which model generates the most economic value efficiently; the speaker also suggests checking what companies are using and how they evaluate the models.
Borderline references, not counted as confirmed recommendations: A speaker says they occasionally read Ben Thomson and praises a phrase, but names no specific work. Another speaker calls an untitled piece by “Jacob,” identified only as OpenAI’s chief scientist, “a great piece” and says they read it that morning; this is positive endorsement but not a direct audience-facing recommendation.
One qualifying external-resource endorsement appears, though the transcript does not give an exact episode title:
- Resource: an untitled Joe Rogan podcast/interview appearance featuring Daniel from AI 2027; creator/host identified in the transcript: Joe Rogan. The hosts call it “an interesting listen,” say Daniel “makes a lot of good points,” and praise his ability to explain AI-risk issues to a broad audience.
- Recommender and context: the show’s hosts, while discussing AI 2027 and public awareness of existential risk, give this positive endorsement; it is an implicit recommendation rather than a direct “listen to this” imperative.
- Takeaway: the appearance is presented as an accessible explanation of AI risk, but the hosts caution that Joe Rogan’s UFO and remote-viewing tangents could blur the distinction between concrete X-risk claims and more speculative topics.
- Candidate lines: L16–L18. The exact episode title and Daniel’s full creator/guest identity are not supplied, so they should not be filled in from outside the transcript.
Other media references do not qualify: Mountain Head is explicitly criticized as not a good film, while the Luca Ferrari episode is forthcoming self-promotion; the Wall Street Journal article and other films are merely discussed or quoted.
- Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers (book). Packy McCormick calls counter-positioning his favorite of the book’s seven powers: designing a business model so incumbents face conflicting incentives that prevent them from competing effectively.
- Zach Dell’s conversation on David Senra (podcast/video, around 16:18). Base Power CEO Zach Dell explains that challengers should avoid merely offering a better product at a lower price; instead, they should change the business model—for example, sell electricity rather than home batteries at roughly one-twentieth to one-fortieth of the outright purchase cost, forcing incumbents to fundamentally change how they operate.
- Acquired, especially “7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer” (podcast/episode). The recurring discussion is recommended as a source of counter-positioning examples; its key caveat is that counter-positioning is usually a take-off-phase power and only a partial source of durability, so companies must build another moat.
- Jacob’s AI-safety letter — The 20VC discussion called it a “great piece”; it argues that no lab, including OpenAI, has solved alignment enough to keep scaling at full speed, and calls for mandatory externally enforced safety bars plus voluntary slowing until those safeguards exist.
- Ben Thomson’s writing — The discussion highlighted Thomson’s description of LLMs as “the most scaled artifacts humans have ever developed” and said the framing “stirred the imagination.”
- OpenRouter report and token-pricing index — These were pointed to as practical references for evaluating models by real-world usage, economic value, and efficiency rather than relying on benchmark claims alone.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommended Walter Russell Mead’s books Special Providence and God and Gold, calling them “two of the best books on American power.”
- Special Providence and God and Gold — books by Walter Russell Mead. Investor Patrick O’Shaughnessy calls them “two of the best books on American power,” in the context of Mead’s decades-long study of how America achieved global dominance and whether it can sustain that position amid AI, robotics, and “personal politics.”
