Business Model

Who this is for

Founders who know what they're building and haven't yet worked out how it makes money in a way that survives contact with arithmetic.

What you'll actually decide

How value gets created, delivered and captured: who pays, for what, how often, and what it costs you to serve them.

What first-time founders get wrong here

Deferring pricing until later. Pricing isn't a number you add at the end — it determines who your customer is, what your sales motion has to be, and whether the model works at all, so a model built without it is a description rather than a plan.

The first 10 questions

This is where the conversation starts. Each answer shapes what gets asked next.

1. 01What does your company do, and what's the core product or service you're building around?
2. 02How are you planning to make money — what does a customer pay, how often, and for what?
3. 03Who are your key customers and partners — who does the business depend on to function?
4. 04What stage are you at — is the model hypothetical, or do you have early signals it works?
5. 05Why would a customer pay you rather than build this themselves or use a free alternative?
6. 06What does your cost structure look like — the biggest things you'll spend money on to deliver value?
7. 07What are the key activities and resources the business requires to operate at any reasonable scale?
8. 08Where are the economics most fragile — the assumption that, if wrong, makes the numbers stop working?
9. 09What's the long-run competitive moat — what makes it harder to displace you over time?
10. 10Value propositions: what specific value do you create for which customer segments?

+ 8 more questions across discovery, validation, and the creative brief — each one adapting to what you've already said.

Related business planning project types

• Which Idea Do I Pursue?Choose which of your ideas deserves the next year of your life — founder fit, reachable customers, and honest excitement, compared side by side.
• Quit Your Job or Nights-and-Weekends?Decide whether to go all-in on your startup or build it nights-and-weekends — what the leap actually costs, what staying actually costs, and what would have to be true either way.
• Solo or Cofounder?Decide whether to build alone or bring on a cofounder — what you actually need, what half your company costs, and what the right plan looks like either way.