Choose the business model
before the customers do.
Before its first invoice a young company decides who pays, for what, how often and at what price. Those choices set its margin and its multiple long before revenue arrives to multiply them. The Venture Read makes them on purpose, with the founders, in five days.
Before revenue · five working days · findings on day five
The first ten customers will choose the model if the founders do not.
The Venture Read works the revenue line first, for a company that does not yet earn: who pays, for what, how often and at what price, what the company owns, and which assumption could end it. The founders answer the charter’s six questions, draw the company on one page, choose a model from the library of sixty patterns and refuse the rest out loud, trace the first payment from the customer’s decision to the cash, and write the riskiest assumption as a proof card before anything is spent on it. The partner who backed the company can read every decision, and the line that releases money is written before the proof runs.
Venture investors rank selection as the largest source of their value, 49 per cent of firms against 27 per cent for the help given after investing, and the business model as a deciding factor for 83 per cent (Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev, Journal of Financial Economics, 2020). The Venture Read closes with one page a partner can file beside the decision.
At the end, in your hands.
- The venture charter, signed: who the company serves, what that customer spends today, what the company charges and who pays, what the technology has to do for that price to hold, and who owns the record.
- The company on one page: the Makers Canvas, drawn by the founders themselves.
- The model chosen from the library of sixty patterns, named by its number, with the patterns refused and the reason for each.
- The first payment traced end to end, from the customer’s decision to the cash, and the price it implies.
- A proof card for the riskiest assumption: the claim, the cheapest proof, the line that releases money and the line that stops the move, all written before the proof runs.
Five days, the findings on the fifth.
Partners do the work, and answer for it.
With both founders every day of the five, in person. The same partner from the first day to the findings.
Ted Tanase
John Lazar reads what the technology has to do for the price to hold. Ted Tanase reads who owns the record and the data, and the regulatory file where the market is supervised.
The build: a pilot run against the proof card, each tranche of money released on its result and never on a date. Then the run: the quarterly close with predicted beside landed, the file for the next round, and the Room once the company earns. For a fund that leads early, the Venture Read goes to the company its partners are least sure about. The fee for the read is credited against the build.
Four answers, before you ask.
Five working days, with the findings on day five. The date is fixed when the founders say yes.
The founders for about six hours across the week, the deck they raised on, every price they have quoted and every customer conversation they have written down.
Every decision is written as a claim with a line that releases money and a line that stops the move, before anything runs. The partner who backed the company reads a result against a line written in advance.
The founders keep the charter, the canvas and the proof card. Either side may stop when the read closes.
Five days to a model the founders chose.
Start a conversation → See every product →A fixed fee for every read · the Programme and the Room can also run on a lower fee plus a capped share of the value your team signs as realised · agreed in writing before work starts