Business Model Design
Business Model Design helps the founder or programme team create a practical plan for who pays, how value is captured and whether the model can scale. Within Business Model, Pricing & Commercial Design, it turns a broad or uncertain area of the venture into a concrete Bertie work product that can be reviewed, improved and reused. The task is intentionally discrete: it should produce a specific artefact, decision, evidence item or risk signal rather than general learning notes.
Define a practical, sequenced plan for Business Model Design. The objective is to remove ambiguity around who pays, how value is captured and whether the model can scale, give the founder a decision-ready output, and make it clear whether the venture should progress, repeat the task with stronger evidence, escalate to expert support, or move into a linked stage.
Bertie or a programme manager assigns Business Model Design when the venture needs a decision-ready output for this group. Typical triggers include group-gate reviews, evidence gaps identified by the co-pilot or founder request.
customer evidence; product scope; market assumptions; pricing or revenue hypotheses; known cost assumptions; specific context for who pays, how value is captured and whether the model can scale.
Define the precise commercial objective for this business model design exercise and establish the time horizon for testing it. Outline the strategic boundary conditions, including target timelines and the level of commercial validation required before committing capital.
ObjectiveCompleting this action establishes a clear, time-bound commercial focus for the venture's business model. It prevents strategic drift and ensures all subsequent pricing and commercial choices align directly with overall venture timelines.
What's expectedThe founder must produce a documented goal statement defining the exact commercial milestone to achieve within six to twelve months. This must explicitly detail the targeted revenue type, decision deadline, and key commercial go/no-go boundaries.
Open action arrow_forwardConsultant stress-test · 5 questions- 1.What specific commercial trigger dictates the end of this decision horizon, and why is that timeframe realistic?
- 2.How does this business model goal directly align with your upcoming fundraising or runway milestones?
- 3.Why did you choose this specific commercial target rather than a more aggressive or conservative alternative?
- 4.What evidence demonstrates that your board or investors agree with this decision timeframe?
- 5.How does setting this boundary prevent premature scaling before unit economics are validated?
- A data-room asset titled Business Model Design
- A practical plan with owners, sequencing, assumptions, dependencies, risks and next decision points
- It should update the venture DNA with specific evidence or decisions about who pays, how value is captured and whether the model can scale, create a visible milestone in the founder journey, and generate one or more recommended next tasks
Bertie co-pilot checks the commercial logic against evidence, financial assumptions and pricing signals, runs consistency checks, and recommends funding or GTM tasks. For this task, it should focus on who pays, how value is captured and whether the model can scale, prompt the founder for missing inputs, draft or improve the output, flag weak assumptions, and record the result back into the relevant data-room section.
A mentor or evaluator can review the output at the group gate. Programme managers can require an advisor checkpoint before Bertie moves the venture forward.