Define the problem you’re going to solve, then define the customers for which the problem will be solved. Next, identify the customer and the problem. After that, define a set of possible solutions. After, define a set of possible monetization strategies for that solution, test, and choose your business model.
Table of Contents
A business model design in seven steps
Time needed: 1 day
How to create a business model in one day and seven simple steps
Define the problem you’re going to solve
At this stage, you need to start by looking at the problem you’re going to solve. It can be a functional problem, but also an emotional problem depending on the product and business model you’re creating. Limit the choice to up to three key problems your product and service will solve.
Define the customers for which the problem will be solved for
Who are the people that are experiencing that problem? Define a set of three types of customers maximum for the problems you defined in step one. Ideally, each problem will be matched to a customer type. At the same time, the same customer type might experience multiple problems. Or one problem can be experienced by different customer types.
Define the key customer and the key problem
You need to choose one among the top three customer types identified and one or more of the top three problems identified, where you’ll focus your attention. A business model can evolve in many different ways, and narrowing down the course of action can lead to better execution and experimentation of the business model. Thus, at the end of this step, you’ll have one key customer or alternatively one key problem to focus on.
Define a set of possible solutions
List up to ten solutions that the problem can be solved with. From those ten, narrow down the three which can be implemented with ease, without too many financial resources or time resources (this is a one-day business model), and among these three, pick one!
Define a set of possible monetization strategies for that solution
For the solution you picked, and the customer type, you’ll have defined a product or service. For that product or service define the maximum of five possible monetization strategies. Keep the two that can be quickly tested.
Test and choose
Test the product and its monetization strategy and see which worked.
Based on the key customer, key problem, the solution you provide, and the monetization model defined you have your business model!
The most valuable asset any organization has is its business model.
Indeed, that is the way all the moving parts of the organization fit together to create a value chain.
The aim of the value chain is value creation for several players in that industry, market, and so on.
The business model is not static, it changes and evolves along with the scale of the organization.
The type of business model you designed for your company will not work if your company scales. You’ll need to rethink and redefine it.
This is even more evident in companies that are trying to innovate.
When those organizations create a new technology or an innovative approach to existing industries, it is critical to understand who are the players involved in that industry and how you’re creating value for them.
In this blog, we covered the business models of many organizations.
The company managed to create a balance between several players in the publishing and information industry where each of those players gets back some value (economic and not) from having a relationship with Google.
Where do you start when it comes to creating a business model?
The primary aim of a business model is to create a sustainable chain, able to unlock value for several players in a market, industry, or niche.
Therefore, this value chain will start from a value proposition, a promise you make to the key players and partners in that market, industry, or niche depending on where you start.
For instance, when PayPal started out it didn’t look to dominate the whole market. It started from a niche.
As Pether Thiel put it in his book, Zero to One:
The most successful companies make the core progression—to first dominate a specific niche and then scale to adjacent markets—a part of their founding narrative.
Indeed, PayPal began by identifying its most valuable partner, what at the time they called “power user.”
Therefore, instead of focusing on generically offering a service for everyone, PayPal focused on acquiring and attracting as many power users as possible.
Those power users were mostly on another platform that had already scaled up: eBay.
Only after PayPal had drafted, tested, and validated a clear value proposition for a small, yet critical group of power users, it could move on to take larger and larger segments of that market.
What is a value proposition?
At its most basic level, a value proposition is a promise you make as an organization to deliver something (either monetary or advantage) to a critical player you have in our industry.
For instance, when Google started it showed right away it was capable of offering 10x of search results, at a faster speed and more relevant to users.
However, had Google kept its search engine primarily focused on providing paid results, it would not have taken off.
Instead, Google focused on offering relevant paid results but also a bunch of organic results.
In short, Google managed to index and rank the web pages from blogs, journals, news sites and any other website that made those pages available to Google for its index.
In exchange for that content, Google offered back visibility as qualified traffic toward those sites.
Indeed, search engines back then (at the end of the 1990s) were not focused on offering quality traffic.
Thus, most of the audience you got back to your site might have been quite relevant to your business.
Google instead, with its dominant search engine allowed publishers, and businesses (small and large) to gain customers.
That sealed an implicit deal “Me (Google) will send you qualified traffic that helps you grow your business if you (publisher, business, or whoever publishes on the web) offer me your content to be indexed.”
We might call that an implicit contract, which is the beginning of a value chain.
In fact, from this sort of contract part of the Google business model has been built. Imagine the scenario where Google was not attractive enough to provide qualified traffic to content producers.
They would have stopped offering their content for free by blocking access to the search engine.
Instead, they allowed Google to index their pages because the visibility they got was too attractive.
A business model is also about how you make money but how you make money isn’t your business model
One of the biggest misconceptions of the business model is to confuse it with the monetization strategy or the revenue model of the company.
While this is an essential piece of the puzzle, it is just one of the components of a successful business model.
In this blog, we’ve discussed at great length how companies make money as a way to start the discussion of a business model.
However, a business model implies the understanding of
operations, customer acquisition and retention, supply chain management, and the cost above and revenue aspects
According to the business model you designed over the years for your organization there will be a piece that plays a more critical role compared to others.
Each company will develop a unique model among the many types of business models which is what makes it thick in the long run!
What principles should I follow to create and design a business model?
Developing a deep understanding of your business model implies asking a few critical questions. For instance, some of those questions might be:
What value do I offer my potential customers? Or what problem do I solve with my product/service?
How do I charge my customers?
What does my acquisition cost look like?
What channels can I tap into to find my ideal customer?
Did I create a predictable revenue stream? If not what can I do to generate that?
Your business model will be based on a few critical assumptions about who your customers are, how your product or service should look like, what are the favorite channels to reach them, and a few others.
Those assumptions will be tested as soon as you start kicking off your operations.
Your main concern should be just that. You need to check those assumptions as quickly as possible.
Success Begins with Buy-In from Investors and Co-Founders
No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers
Not All Startups Are Alike
Startup Metrics are Different from Existing Companies
Agree on Market Type – It Changes Everything
Fast, Fearless Decision-Making, Cycle Time, Speed and Tempo
If it’s not About Passion, You’re Dead the Day You Opened your Doors
Startup Titles and Functions Are Very Different from a Company’s
Preserve Cash While Searching. After It’s Found, Spend
Communicate and Share Learning
Startups Demand Comfort with Chaos and Uncertainty
I suggest you read this manifesto over and over again. This should be the first step!
What tools can you use to design and create your business model?
One of the most used tools to design and create a business model has revolved around the customer development manifesto above.
However, it is essential to keep in mind that this manifesto was the fruit of an era where venture capital had become scarce compared to the dot-com bubble at the end of the 1990s.
Those tools for business modeling have been developed in that context. Thus, those are not a one-size-fits-all toolbox but rather work better in a context where capital is scarce, and you need to test your business model assumptions as quickly as possible. In that context three primary tools are:
The result will be an incremental development of a product that will reach a minimally viable version.
The better the product, based on customer feedback, the larger the audience it will reach.
Lean makes sense when capital is scarce and when you need to keep burn rates low.
Lean was designed toinform the founders’ vision while they operated frugally at speed. It was not built as a focus group for consensus for those without deep convictions.
I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital.
In other words, the more risk capital that is available on the market the least the lean startup model might work.
The reason is, that if you have massive risk capital, you won’t need to test all your assumptions.
Quite the opposite, you’ll need to execute them fast.
Also, one of the primary logic of the lean startup is to burn cash at the slowest rate possible, while evolving (so-called pivoting) your business model.
If money is not an issue, then why go for the lean startup?
Steve Blank went further:
Rather than the“first mover advantage”of the last bubble, today’s theory is that “massive capital infusion owns the entire market.”
Therefore, if you secured a massive injection of money, then your aim might be primarily toward growth, rather than profits.
The Blitzscaling business model canvas is a model based on the concept of Blitzscaling, which is a particular process of massive growth under uncertainty, and that prioritizes speed over efficiency and focuses on market domination to create a first-scaler advantage in a scenario of uncertainty.
When a company or startup has a substantial capital allocate for growth, that is when this injection can become a short-term competitive advantage.
However, as companies finance growth through artificial injection of capital, those also become extremely risky, because many of the assumptions underlying the business model can’t be tested organically, thus leaving the company’s foundations weak.
An example of this excess of use of capital as a competitive moat has been WeWork, which has proved one of the most disastrous business endeavors of the last decade.
Thus, capital moats and technological moats need to be balanced with careful business model testing and organic validation in the marketplace!
Key Highlights
Define the Problem:
This step is the foundation of your business model. It involves identifying a specific problem that your product or service aims to solve.
Problems can be functional (solving a practical need) or emotional (addressing a psychological desire or pain point).
Defining the problem clearly helps you focus on delivering value to your target audience.
Define Target Customers:
Once the problem is defined, it’s important to identify the individuals or groups who are facing this problem. These are your potential customers.
Group your potential customers into categories, keeping it to a maximum of three types. Each type may have distinct characteristics and needs.
Identify Key Customer and Problem:
From the categories of potential customers and the identified problems, narrow your focus to one key customer type and one specific problem.
This step helps prevent spreading your resources too thin and allows you to concentrate on understanding your primary audience and addressing their primary need.
Propose Solutions:
Brainstorm a range of solutions that could address the key problem for your chosen customer type.
List up to ten solutions. Then, evaluate these solutions based on feasibility, cost, time, and resources required.
Narrow down the list to three solutions that are viable given your constraints.
Monetization Strategies:
For the solution you’ve chosen, consider how you’ll monetize it. Determine how your business will generate revenue from providing the solution to your target customers.
Brainstorm up to five potential monetization strategies. These could include subscription models, one-time purchases, freemium offerings, etc.
Focus on the two strategies that can be tested quickly and efficiently.
Test and Choose:
This step involves practical validation of your selected solution and monetization strategies.
Test your product or service with real customers to gather feedback. Evaluate how well your monetization strategies perform in real-world scenarios.
Based on the feedback and data collected, choose the most effective solution and monetization strategy combination.
Finalize Business Model:
With a validated solution, monetization strategy, and a clear understanding of your target audience, you have the foundation of your business model.
Your business model is the blueprint that outlines how your company will create, deliver, and capture value in the market.
Continuously monitor and refine your business model as you gather more insights from customers and adapt to changing market conditions.
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A Blockchain Business Model according to the FourWeekMBA framework is made of four main components: Value Model (Core Philosophy, Core Values and Value Propositions for the key stakeholders), Blockchain Model (Protocol Rules, Network Shape and Applications Layer/Ecosystem), Distribution Model (the key channels amplifying the protocol and its communities), and the Economic Model (the dynamics/incentives through which protocol players make money). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build and analyze a solid Blockchain Business Model.
In an asymmetric business model, the organization doesn’t monetize the user directly, but it leverages the data users provide coupled with technology, thus have a key customer pay to sustain the core asset. For example, Google makes money by leveraging users’ data, combined with its algorithms sold to advertisers for visibility.
In a business world driven by technology and digitalization, competition is much more fluid, as innovation becomes a bottom-up approach that can come from anywhere. Thus, making it much harder to define the boundaries of existing markets. Therefore, a proper business competition analysis looks at customer, technology, distribution, and financial model overlaps. While at the same time looking at future potential intersections among industries that in the short-term seem unrelated.
Technological modeling is a discipline to provide the basis for companies to sustain innovation, thus developing incremental products. While also looking at breakthrough innovative products that can pave the way for long-term success. In a sort of Barbell Strategy, technological modeling suggests having a two-sided approach, on the one hand, to keep sustaining continuous innovation as a core part of the business model. On the other hand, it places bets on future developments that have the potential to break through and take a leap forward.
A transitional business model is used by companies to enter a market (usually a niche) to gain initial traction and prove the idea is sound. The transitional business model helps the company secure the needed capital while having a reality check. It helps shape the long-term vision and a scalable business model.
The minimum viable audience (MVA) represents the smallest possible audience that can sustain your business as you get it started from a microniche (the smallest subset of a market). The main aspect of the MVA is to zoom into existing markets to find those people which needs are unmet by existing players.
Business scaling is the process of transformation of a business as the product is validated by wider and wider market segments. Business scaling is about creating traction for a product that fits a small market segment. As the product is validated it becomes critical to build a viable business model. And as the product is offered at wider and wider market segments, it’s important to align product, business model, and organizational design, to enable wider and wider scale.
The market expansion consists in providing a product or service to a broader portion of an existing market or perhaps expanding that market. Or yet, market expansions can be about creating a whole new market. At each step, as a result, a company scales together with the market covered.
In the FourWeekMBA growth matrix, you can apply growth for existing customers by tackling the same problems (gain mode). Or by tackling existing problems, for new customers (expand mode). Or by tackling new problems for existing customers (extend mode). Or perhaps by tackling whole new problems for new customers (reinvent mode).
In the FourWeekMBA Revenue Streams Matrix, revenue streams are classified according to the kind of interactions the business has with its key customers. The first dimension is the “Frequency” of interaction with the key customer. As the second dimension, there is the “Ownership” of the interaction with the key customer.
Revenue model patterns are a way for companies to monetize their business models. A revenue model pattern is a crucial building block of a business model because it informs how the company will generate short-term financial resources to invest back into the business. Thus, the way a company makes money will also influence its overall business model.
A pricing strategy or model helps companies find the pricing formula in fit with their business models. Thus aligning the customer needs with the product type while trying to enable profitability for the company. A good pricing strategy aligns the customer with the company’s long term financial sustainability to build a solid business model.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
