Founders often choose business models they prefer, like SaaS or project work, without checking what customers actually want. Seth Godin calls this a meatball sundae: the right product in the wrong package. Give customers the model they need first, then optimize later.
Is your business model the best deal for your customers? I look at a lot of companies and many of them describe their business model in terms of what they want because they want to be a SaaS because they want to not have to trade time for money because they want X. I find sometimes that's going to correlate with what's going to be best for the customer, but a lot of times it doesn't. And so they wind up creating a business, and this is what Seth Godin used to call a meatball sundae, that's out of sync with the structure of the market, out of sync with what the customer actually wants. Selling retainer work when what they want is a project, selling a subscription when what they want is a, you know, a one-time fee selling product and what they want is service. If you give the market what it wants, you give them the packaging that they want, you may later decide that's not exactly the business you want to be in, but you'll start to learn better what value they get. And then you'll be able to figure out what you can be delivering that might be in a mode that's going to be compatible for them, but also compatible for you. But the North Star always has to be what's best for the customer.
