The Stacking Moats Playbook

• Founders fundraising or planning who need to articulate defensibility credibly to investors and operators

• Operators choosing a strategy when AI is collapsing categories that used to feel safe

• Heads of Growth and GTM building moats and loops that hold up to scrutiny, not just narrative

• Strategy and product leads doing competitive analysis on companies, archetypes, or markets

• Investors and analysts pressure-testing pitches against an explicit, repeatable framework

• Anyone who has read about moats and wants a system that turns the concept into decisions

Most founders can name their moat. Few can prove it compounds. Fewer still can name what's missing.

The result is pitches like:

"We have a data moat." "Our network effect is strong." "Switching costs lock us in."

Those answers are claims, not diagnoses. They sound durable, but they collapse under three questions: Does the asset accumulate? Does it matter? Does it reinforce itself? Most "moats" fail at least one.

Meanwhile, AI-native competitors are rebuilding entire categories around different defensibility stacks — and the businesses that don't know which legs they're standing on are the ones being routed around.

This kit gives you the diagnostic.

The framing primer. Buffett → Helmer's 7 Powers → Gokul Rajaram's 8 moats of enduring software companies (March 2026). Why brand was deliberately removed? The 5 loops that drive compounding underneath any moat. 5 pages.

Score yourself across the 8 moats using the 0–3 scale (Absent / Emerging / Established / Defining). Includes anti-flattery prompts so the audit gives you a real picture, not the picture you wanted. 7 pages.

Six business archetypes mapped to the moat combinations they actually require: AI-Native System of Work · Category-Defining Platform · Data Intelligence Layer · Regulated System of Record · Demand Aggregator · Infrastructure Backbone. Match yourself to one. 10 pages.

Once you know your archetype and your audit gaps, this worksheet walks you through what to build first, what evidence proves it's working, and how to stage the next 90 days. 5 pages.

Two complete diagnostics. Whoop (B2C, AI-Native System of Work) and Ramp (B2B, Data Intelligence Layer). Real audits, real archetype calls, real missing legs identified — using actual 2025–2026 data. 10 pages.

The engine layer beneath the moat layer. Eight worked loop examples (Notion, Strava, Shopify, TikTok, Stripe) and two failure modes (Stack Overflow, Mint) that show how loops compound — and what makes them collapse. Hand-drawn diagrams throughout. 16 pages.

A web-based reference page with 16 examples (8 moats × B2C/B2B) showing what happens when each kind of moat fails. Bookmark-able, shareable, complements the PDFs.

• Score your business across all eight moats with honest numbers, not narrative

• Identify which archetype you actually are (vs. which one you wish you were)

• Name the missing leg in your stack and the next 90 days of work to build it

• See the loops underneath your moats — and identify the trigger you don't control

• Pressure-test any company's pitch (yours, a competitor's, a portfolio company's) against an explicit framework

• Have a shared vocabulary with your team, board, and investors for what defensibility means in 2026