W4-023 · Across all four conditions

Four-condition diligence

Four-condition diligence is the assessment of a convergence company by establishing, for each condition, whether it is supplied, borrowed or absent — and what the company does when the borrowed ones are withdrawn.

Published 2026-08-25UnrevisedAlso: convergence diligence

The question is not what they built. It is what happens when a supplier changes its mind.

Standard technology diligence asks about team, market, product and moat. All necessary, none of it surfaces the specific fragility of a convergence company: silent dependency on a condition somebody else operates.

The additional questions are mechanical. Which conditions are borrowed? From whom, on what terms, and with what notice? What is the migration cost? Which of them, if withdrawn, ends the company rather than inconveniences it?

A founder who has answered these has a supplier strategy. One who has not has a single point of failure they have not priced — and in this category the supplier is usually a larger company with no obligation to them.

Related entries

Condition auditA condition audit is the examination of a company against the four conditions of Web 4 — establishing which it supplies itself, which it obtains from elsewhere, and which it is silently missing.Layer borrowingLayer borrowing is obtaining a Web 4 condition from an existing operator instead of building it — the practice that makes a convergence company buildable by a founding team rather than a consortium.Convergence premiumThe convergence premium is the durability advantage held by a company supplying all four conditions over one supplying fewer — the claim that completeness, not capability, determines which survive a cycle.