Futureworks Incubator’s Business Models for Product Startups Workshop at Craftsman Ave from SecondMuse on Vimeo.

Futureworks Incubator’s recent workshop at Craftsman Ave in Gowanus focused on building business models for product startups. Facilitated by Business Models Inc’s Maaike Doyer and Carley Jacobson as well as Dog Parker CEO Chelsea Brownridge, the evening led attendees through the core considerations of driving revenue. Check out the video of the workshop above as well as important takeaways and links below.

A big thank you to our facilitators and to Craftsman Ave Founder Taras Kravtchouck. Craftsman is a member of the Futureworks Shops network and Taras leads one-on-one branding drop-in sessions each Monday. Futureworks Incubator is an NYCEDC initiative that’s designed and run by collaboration agency SecondMuse. Sign up for future workshops here, and join Futureworks on Instagram and Twitter.

4 lessons on building business models

1. Business as usual is dead. Business plans are so 1980! Stop writing them. There are many different tools for that have been created for designing your business. Business Model Canvas is one of those tools which is great for thinking through various aspects of your business.  
2. A Business Model is a dynamic thing that can take on a life of its own. It’s not meant to be created and put on the shelf. It is used to help assess, innovate, validate and implement your design. And then repeat: do it all over again as you learn and evolve with each iteration.
3. When you are innovating on your business model design, there are many tools to help you think outside of the box. The one rule is that no idea should be too big, expensive or ridiculous to execute on. The more ideas the better at this point. Some methods to help keep your brainstorms juices flowing:
   1. Freshwashing – Consider how an iconic company like Lego or Nespresso would run your business.
   2. Apply popular business models to your idea – How would you integrate your framework into Bait and Hook, Freemium or Multi-sided models?
4. Run your brainstorming ideas through the Business Model Canvas (below). You will find that some ideas take you to a dead end or fall apart when you start look at a specific area of the canvas. With others you might just find some new experiments to try that would help inform the continual evolution of your business design.

FAVORITE RESOURCES
Building Business Models
The Business Model Canvas to describe, design, challenge and pivot your business model
Business Model Generation for practical tools to understand, design and implement business models
Design a Better Business for an end-to-end business-design bootcamp and more than 50 case studies