On bad output, see guides/skill-recovery.md

Business-Plan Moat & Distribution Critique

Review a business-plan-shaped draft for one question: is the durable advantage real? Most
failing plans fail not on headline market opportunity but on whether the moat compounds, whether
distribution scales to the claimed market, and whether the strategy survives competitive
response. Apply five lenses scoped to that question.

Scope (and what's deferred)

Covers moat and distribution only. Two adjacent dimensions are out of scope, handled by
sibling skills:

• Unit-economics critique (CAC/LTV math, gross margin, payback period, contribution margin
  trajectories) — business-plan-critique-unit-economics skill.
• Market-sizing critique (TAM/SAM/SOM realism, segment definition, addressable customer
  count) — future business-plan-critique-market-sizing skill.

If the draft's biggest weakness is in one of those areas, name it briefly under "Out of scope"
in your Goal-Alignment Note and let the orchestrator route it. Do not attempt those critiques
here — narrowness is what lands sharp moat/distribution findings without blurring into a generic
business review.

Pre-flight: Skip Obvious Stubs

If the draft is under ~500 words AND contains TODO markers or structurally incomplete signals
(empty sections, missing thesis/intro, placeholder text), output the single line
draft incomplete; moat critique skipped and stop. Both conditions must hold — legitimately
short pitches without stub markers, and longer drafts with stray TODOs, still get the full
critique.

Using the Fact-Check Report

If provided a fact-check report alongside the draft, treat it as your factual foundation. You do
not need to independently verify market sizes, named competitors, claimed traction figures, or
named partnerships the report already assessed.

Instead:

• Reference the fact-check findings where they bear on moat or distribution. A claimed
  exclusive partnership rated Unverified directly affects the distribution lens.
• Build on the fact-check where it surfaces ambiguity. A "Mostly Accurate" finding on
  competitor counts can still affect the competitive-response lens.
• Focus energy on the lenses below — what this skill uniquely provides is the structural
  assessment of whether the named advantage compounds.

If no fact-check report is provided, emit the following warning at the top of your output
before the critique begins:

⚠️ No fact-check report provided. This critique does not include independent factual
verification. Checkable claims in the draft (market sizes, named partnerships, traction
figures, competitor counts) have not been assessed. For full verification, run the
fact-check skill first or use the draft-review orchestrator.

Then proceed, focusing on structural argument. Do NOT attempt your own fact-checking — an ad-hoc
spot-check without proper sourcing creates a false sense of verification. When discussing
checkable claims you cannot verify, flag your actual confidence: "this partnership claim is doing
a lot of work and I haven't verified it" beats false confidence or vague hedging.

The Five Lenses

1. Moat type

Identify what moat the draft actually claims, and check whether it structurally compounds. Most
plans name something that sounds like a moat but isn't.

Durable moat archetypes: scale economies (cost-per-unit falls with volume), network effects
(value rises with users), switching costs (customers can't leave cheaply), brand (customers pay
an unjustifiable premium), regulatory or licensing (law restricts entry), proprietary technology
with secrecy or patents (genuinely hard to replicate). "First-mover advantage," "best-in-class
team," "AI-powered," "proprietary algorithm," and "data flywheel" are claims about a moat, not
archetypes — reduce each to a durable type or mark as not-yet-a-moat.

The move: name the moat type the draft claims (or implies), then ask whether the structural
mechanism is present. If the moat is "data flywheel," is there a feedback loop where more users →
more data → measurably better product → more users? Or just "we collect data"? If "network
effects," see lens #4 — most claimed network effects aren't.

If the durable moat is genuinely absent, say so. "There is no moat yet, but there's a window to
build one" beats pretending the moat exists.

2. Distribution channel

Many businesses lose not because the product is wrong but because they can't acquire customers at
viable cost. Distribution is a moat itself — the company that owns the channel often beats the
company with the better product.

For each named channel (paid acquisition, content/SEO, sales-led, PLG, partnerships, marketplace
placement, viral loop, channel partners), check four things:

• Who owns the demand surface? Google, Apple App Store, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn — if a
  platform mediates the channel, it can change rules, raise prices, or compete directly. Plans
  built on cheap platform CAC underwrite stability they don't control.
• CAC trajectory at scale. Channels cheap when small almost always get more expensive at
  scale — auctions crowd, long-tail keywords saturate, outbound lists exhaust. Does the plan
  assume channel CAC stays flat as volume grows?
• Channel concentration. If 70% of growth is one channel, what breaks when it breaks? Plans
  naming three channels but depending on one are common.
• Channel/deal-size match. A $200 ARR product cannot afford an outbound SDR; a $200K ACV deal
  cannot be sold by content marketing alone. Misalignment is a frequent silent killer.

Overlaps with unit-economics (CAC math) but is distinct: the question is channel viability and
ownership, not whether the math works at a given CAC. Leave the math to the unit-economics skill.

3. Switching cost

How sticky is the product after adoption? Stated stickiness ("our customers love us") is not
switching cost. Structural switching cost makes leaving expensive even when a competitor is
cheaper or better.

Structural sources: data gravity (their data is in your system, migration is painful),
integration depth (wired into their workflow or other systems), retraining cost (their team
needs weeks to learn an alternative), contractual lock-in (multi-year deals or volume
commitments), network ties (their counterparties are also in your system), procedural inertia
(compliance-approved vendor, audit trail).

The move: imagine a customer one year in offered a 30%-cheaper or 20%-better-on-headline-feature
competitor. What concretely stops them switching? If the honest answer is "nothing structural,
they just haven't gotten around to it" — that's not switching cost, that's a pre-churn cohort
that hasn't churned. Many "95% retention" SaaS products are revealed-preference of customers who
haven't seen the alternative pitched hard.

Also check: does the first-year product create lock-in, or is it promised in a future roadmap?
If lock-in only kicks in after the integrations module ships in v3, the moat is hypothetical
until then.

4. Network effect

When the plan invokes network effects, separate strong forms from weak ones. Strong network
effects are among the most durable moats; weak ones often aren't moats.

Strong forms: direct same-side (each new user makes the product more valuable to other users
— telephones, messaging), two-sided/marketplace (each side makes the other more valuable —
rideshare, dating, B2B marketplaces), data network effect (more users → more data → measurably
better product, where users feel the improvement).

Weak forms (often miscategorized): "more users = more brand recognition" (brand-building),
"more users = lower unit costs" (scale economies, a different moat incumbents replicate by buying
volume), "more users = better word-of-mouth" (a virality loop, useful for growth but not a
structural moat).

For each claimed network effect, ask: what's the cold-start path (two-sided networks have a
chicken-and-egg problem — does the plan address it via single-side seeding, geographic
concentration, vertical wedge)? Is there a density requirement (many network effects are local —
rideshare needs density per city, not globally — and global networks with local value are weaker
than they look)? Can a competitor with distribution seed a parallel network in a few months?

If the network effect is real, name which form. If it's a weak form marketed as strong, say so.

5. Competitive response

Assume the plan succeeds — the wedge product reaches whatever traction milestone makes incumbents
notice. Now what?

Default failure modes: "incumbents won't notice" (they will; the question is what they do),
"incumbents are too slow" (slow rarely means "won't ship in 12-18 months"), "incumbents have
other priorities" (true at 0.3% of revenue, false at 3%).

The move: pick the 2-3 best-positioned competitors (incumbent platforms, well-funded direct
competitors, adjacent players who could move in) and write the 1-paragraph version of their
response strategy. Then ask whether the plan's moat survives. Common patterns:

• Bundling: incumbent ships your feature free alongside their existing product.
• Price compression: incumbent prices their version at half yours.
• Distribution preemption: incumbent uses a channel you can't access (default placement,
  contractual exclusivity, regulatory relationship) to reach the buyer first.
• Acquisition of an alternative: incumbent buys your second-most-likely competitor.
• Deliberate ignore: rare but real — the category is uninteresting to incumbents on margin,
  distraction, or reputation grounds. If betting on this, state why.

The strongest plans don't claim incumbents won't respond — they claim the response makes the
startup more valuable (validates the category, forces an acquisition premium, runs into the
startup's switching-cost moat). Look for that shape; if it's missing, the plan implicitly bets on
incumbent inaction.

How to Structure the Critique

Output as a Markdown document. The title MUST contain "Moat" (e.g.,
# Business-Plan Moat & Distribution Critique).

Each of the five lens-assessment sections MUST include a **Verdict:** line valued one of
Durable, Plausible, Weak, Absent, or Not Claimed (use Not Claimed only for the
Network Effect lens when no network effect is claimed). Each lens-assessment section MUST also
include a **Confidence:** line valued High, Medium, or Low, reflecting how confidently
you can land the verdict given the evidence in the draft (and fact-check report, if provided).
Place both fields at the top of the section, before prose.

Moat Type Assessment

Name the moat the plan claims (or implies). Map it to a durable moat archetype, or call out that
no archetype fits. State what would need to be true for the claimed moat to compound.

Distribution Channel Assessment

For each named channel: who owns the demand, CAC trajectory at scale, concentration risk, whether
the channel matches deal size. Identify the single distribution weakness most likely to cap growth.

Switching Cost Assessment

What concretely stops a one-year customer leaving for a 30%-cheaper competitor? Separate
structural lock-in from un-tested retention. Note whether lock-in exists today or depends on
roadmap.

Network Effect Assessment

If network effects are claimed, classify as strong or weak forms. Address cold-start, density
requirements, and replicability by an incumbent with distribution. If no network effect is
claimed, skip this section — don't manufacture one.

Competitive Response Assessment

Pick 2-3 best-positioned competitors. Write the 1-paragraph version of their response strategy.
Assess whether the plan's moat survives. Identify which response pattern (bundling, price
compression, distribution preemption, acquisition, ignore) is most likely.

Factual Foundation

If a fact-check report was provided, summarize findings bearing on moat or distribution —
especially Unverified or Inaccurate findings about partnerships, traction, or competitor counts.
If no fact-check report was provided, identify the 2-3 claims that would most benefit from
fact-checking.

Overall Assessment

Of the five lenses, which surfaces the strongest moat and which the weakest? End with the single
most important revision the author should make. End constructively — the goal is a more
defensible plan, not a takedown.

Output Location

When run standalone (not via the draft-review orchestrator), save your critique as
docs/reviews/business-plan-critique-moat.md in the project root. Create docs/reviews/ if it
doesn't exist.

When run via the orchestrator, the orchestrator specifies the output path — follow its
instructions.

Goal-Alignment Note

When dispatched by an orchestrator, append a Goal-Alignment Note at the end of your critique
using the canonical form from
`patterns/orchestrated-review.md`:

## Goal-Alignment Note
- Answered: [yes / partial / no — one phrase]
- Out of scope: [what was set aside and why, or "none"]
- Escalate: [what the orchestrator should action separately, or "nothing"]
- Questions I would have asked: [1-3 short questions, only if scope was unclear; otherwise omit this bullet]

Use the Out of scope line to flag market-sizing or unit-economics weaknesses you noticed but
did not critique (those belong to sibling skills). The Escalate line is where to surface a
finding crossing into another critic's territory — e.g., a competitive-response argument
depending on a fact-check claim the orchestrator should re-examine.

Tone

Direct but constructive. The spirit is "let's see whether the moat actually holds," not "let me
show you why this won't work." Founders have already heard generic skepticism; they need
structural diagnosis they can act on. Be specific about what would have to change for the moat to
compound, not just what's missing today.

Comfort with uncertainty matters. Many moat questions lack a clean early-stage answer — "this
could become a real network effect if X happens, but it isn't one yet" beats either "no moat" or
"great moat." Calibrate confidence explicitly.