An Ode to Counter-Positioning
An Ode to Counter-Positioning
Not Boring, September 10, 2026, by Packy McCormick. Second essay of a series arguing strategy is important again.
The framework
McCormick is riffing on Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers framework, which identifies the seven durable competitive advantages a business can possess. His focus: Counter Positioning — Helmer’s argument that counter-positioning is uniquely powerful during the take-off phase of a new entrant’s lifecycle.
Counter-positioning works when a new business adopts a business model or technology that an incumbent could copy but won’t — because doing so would cannibalize their existing business or destroy the economics they depend on. The new entrant wins not because they are better at doing the same thing, but because the incumbent is structurally prevented from responding.
Ben Thompson’s distillation:
“Being better is not counter positioning.”
Hamilton Helmer on the Acquired podcast:
“Counter-positioning is usually a take-off phase power.”
Canonical examples
- Ramp vs. corporate card incumbents — corporate cards make money on interchange and float. Ramp’s model is to reduce spend, which the incumbents cannot replicate without destroying their revenue model.
- Zach Dell / Base Power Company — BTM (behind-the-meter) power for data centers: incumbents (utilities, generators) have regulatory and infrastructure reasons not to fully pursue this market.
- Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble — online retail cannibalized physical retail margins; B&N couldn’t respond without destroying the in-store experience they were built around.
- Microsoft vs. IBM — software licensing vs. hardware bundling.
- Facebook vs. MySpace — real-identity social graph vs. customizable pseudonymous profiles.
- Somos Internet vs. incumbents — Brazilian ISP going into favelas that large telcos avoided.
The Meta Muse case
McCormick analyzes Meta’s Muse (the personal AI agent announced September 2026) vs. Instinct — arguing that incumbents with massive distribution (Meta) are capable of counter-positioning against startups by distributing AI features into existing products at zero marginal cost to users.