What Business Model (BM) Should You Choose For A Startup? 🤑
First off, I wanna start with different business models and then explain why some of them might perform worse than others.
Obviously, while coming up with your startup idea (there is gonna be a separate post about it) you shouldn't be guided only by what kind of BM to choose. However, there are certain patterns that had developed over the years which you should be aware of IMO.
So, according to
YC's slides, almost every billion-dollar company can fit into one of these 9 BMs:
1.
Saas - cloud-based subscription software
2.
Transactional - facilitate transactions and take a cut (certain percentage)
3.
Marketplaces - facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers
4.
Hard-tech - lots of technical risk and long time horizons
5.
Usage-based - pay-as-you-go based on consumption
6.
Enterprise - sell large contracts to huge companies (5k+ employees)
7.
Advertising - sell ads to monetize free users
8.
E-commerce - sell products online
9.
Bio - science-based tech companies
It is a good sign if your startup's BM is one of these not only because YC says so, but also since there are a lot more companies to use as an example, a lot more materials and content available for helping these businesses grow (they are eventually the most profitable as the history shows).
Take a look at the picture (in the presentation, 10th slide) -
SaaS, 31% (Slack, Zoom),
Transactional, 22% (Stripe), and
Marketplace, 14% (Airbnb, Opensea) companies are the most popular AND profitable within YC.
Why is that? Let's try to find that out. A huge advantage and premise to the growth of all of the aforementioned BMs are that after a certain point they can hyperscale almost effortlessly. For Saas you "only" have to build a software and sell it properly - they gonna have recurring monthly benefits. Transactional ones are taking a small percentage from gigantic amounts of transactions made through the platform thereby having permanent cash flow. And lastly, for Marketplaces (the toughest one to be honest) it is hard to get the critical mass of users. But once they do it - the snowball effect kicks in and user acquisition costs decrease drastically.
Choose wisely 😉
#YCombinatorAgain