Business Models Guide
The guide by FourWeekMBA on business models, to get up to date with all the potential models born and evolved during the web era and rising with the digital revolution happening on the web.
A business model is a framework for finding a systematic way to unlock long-term value for an organization while delivering value to customers and capturing value through monetization strategies. A business model is a holistic framework to understand, design, and test your business assumptions in the marketplace.
In this guide, we’ll see also 53 business model types identified by the FourWeekMBA research. Ever since, this list started to be published, back in 2018, many copycats around the web have started to duplicate it without understanding the meaning of each model referenced here.
Thus, if you need our feedback, feel free to reach out.
You can jump directly to any of them below or read the guide in order:
- A mix of chain and franchise business model
- Ad-supported (subsidized) business model
- Affiliate business model
- Aggregator business model
- Agency-based business model
- Asymmetric business models
- Attention merchant business model
- Barbell business model
- Bidding multi-brand platform model
- Blitzscaler-mode business model
- Blockchain-based business models
- Bundler model
- Cash conversion cycle or cash machine model
- Discount business model focusing on high quality
- Distribution based business model
- Direct-to-consumers business model
- Direct sales business model
- E-commerce marketplace business model
- Educational niche business model
- Family-owned integrated business model
- Feeding model
- Freemium model (freemium as a growth tool)
- Free-to-play model
- Freeterprise model
- Gatekeeper model
- Heavy-franchised business model
- Humanist enterprise business model
- Enterprise business model built on complex sales
- Lock-in business model
- Instant news business model
- Management consulting business model
- Market-maker model
- Multi-brand business model
- Multi-business model
- Multi-sided platform business model
- Multimodal business model
- Multi-product (Octopus) business model
- On-demand subscription-based business model
- One-for-one business model
- Open-Source Business Model
- Peer-to-peer business model
- Platform-agnostic model
- Platform business model
- Privacy as an innovative business model
- Razor and blade revenue model
- Self-serving model
- Space-as-a-service model
- Subscription-based business model
- Surfer model: reverse-engineering the gatekeeper
- Three-sided marketplace model
- User-generated content business model
- User-generated AI-amplified model
- Unbundler model
- Vertically integrated business model
What is a business model and why is it important?
A business model is a critical element for any startup's success as it is what unlocks value in the long term. In a way, developing a business model isn’t only about monetization strategies.
Indeed, that is way more holistic. To develop a business model companies need to create value for several stakeholders. Thus, a business model is about what makes users go back to your app, service, or product. It is about how businesses can get value from your solution. It is about how suppliers grow their business through it.
A business model is all those things together. In short, when those pieces come together, that is when you can say to have a business model.