Gather Commercial Models and Baseline Financial Assumptions
Compile all current pricing models, unit economics calculations, customer acquisition cost (CAC) estimates, and lifetime value (LTV) projections into a single reviewable repository. Gather supporting empirical evidence, including customer discovery data, competitor price benchmarks, and pilot transaction records. Ensure every commercial claim is mapped directly to its underlying data source or explicitly flagged as an unvalidated assumption.
Completing this action consolidates all disparate commercial hypotheses and data points into a structured, audit-ready baseline. This enables a rigorous evaluation of the commercial model's integrity and prevents critical financial assumptions from remaining hidden or unexamined.
The founder must produce an indexed commercial model repository containing explicit unit economics schedules, pricing tiers, CAC/LTV drivers, and a mapped inventory of supporting evidence. Every quantitative assumption must be clearly categorised as validated, benchmarked, or unverified.
Five questions an expert would ask when reviewing your output
Use these to challenge assumptions, pressure-test your logic, and check the quality of this action's output in the context of the parent task and wider venture development.
- 1
What primary data or market benchmarks directly substantiate the baseline conversion rates in your commercial model?
- 2
Where in this repository have you clearly separated empirically proven customer willingness-to-pay from unvalidated internal estimates?
- 3
How recently were these commercial inputs updated, and do they reflect current UK macroeconomic conditions and inflation rates?
- 4
Which specific CAC line items rely on historical campaign data versus optimistic future scale assumptions?
- 5
Have you accounted for hidden friction points, such as extended B2B procurement cycles or payment gateway fees, in your underlying cashflow model?