Business Model Teardown

Business Model Teardown

> Explain how a company actually makes money — and how durable that is — from > nothing but its public website.

What it does

Reconstructs a company's business model using the Business Model Canvas, then adds a revenue-model and unit-economics read. Output is a one-page model plus a judgment on what makes the model work and what threatens it. This is the "economics" complement to a positioning/marketing teardown.

When to use this skill

• "How does make money?"
• "What's their business model / revenue model?"
• "Reverse-engineer this company's economics from their site."
• When the user wants the money mechanics, not the messaging.

Inputs needed

• Required: the company's website URL.
• Helpful: the industry, whether they're B2B/B2C, any known facts (funding,

pricing) the user already has.

• If the site is purely a landing page with no product/pricing detail, say what

can and cannot be inferred.

Method

1. Read for evidence — homepage, product, pricing, about, customers, careers.
2. Fill the Business Model Canvas — nine blocks:

• Customer segments — who they serve.
• Value propositions — the job done for each segment.
• Channels — how they reach and deliver to customers.
• Customer relationships — self-serve, sales-led, community, success.
• Revenue streams — how money comes in (see revenue-model patterns below).
• Key resources — what the model depends on (tech, brand, data, network).
• Key activities — what they must do well.
• Key partnerships — integrations, suppliers, channel partners.
• Cost structure — main cost drivers (people, infra, ads, content).

1. Classify the revenue model — subscription/SaaS, transactional/usage,

marketplace/take-rate, advertising, one-time/license, services, info-product/ course, freemium, or a hybrid. Note pricing metric (per seat, usage, flat).

1. Sketch unit economics qualitatively — value metric, likely ACV band,

apparent motion (PLG vs sales-led), and what drives CAC vs LTV. No invented numbers.

1. Judge durability — moats (network effects, switching costs, brand, data),

and risks (concentration, thin differentiation, platform dependence, churn signals).

Output format

# Business Model Teardown — 

## TL;DR
- What they sell, to whom, and how they charge — in 3 bullets.
- The one thing the model lives or dies on.

## Business Model Canvas
| Block | Finding |
|-------|---------|
| Customer segments | |
| Value propositions | |
| Channels | |
| Customer relationships | |
| Revenue streams | |
| Key resources | |
| Key activities | |
| Key partnerships | |
| Cost structure | |

## Revenue model
- Type:
- Pricing metric / value metric:
- Go-to-market motion (PLG / sales-led / hybrid):

## Unit-economics read (qualitative)
- CAC drivers:
- LTV / retention drivers:
- Apparent ACV band & why:

## Durability
| Moats | Risks |
|-------|-------|

## Bottom line
2–3 sentences: is this a strong model, and what would you watch?

Quality bar

• Distinguish stated revenue mechanics (visible pricing) from inferred ones.
• Never fabricate revenue, margins, CAC/LTV, or customer counts. Use bands and

reasoning ("likely mid-ACV sales-led, because pricing is gated and there's a demo CTA"), and say when something is unknown.

• The durability section must name specific moats/risks, not generic ones.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Confusing the value proposition (marketing) with the revenue model (economics).
• Asserting precise financials that the site can't support.
• Stopping at "it's a SaaS" without the pricing metric and motion.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: fjilvvi
• Source: fjilvvi/growthlens
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.