Maaike Doyer, strategy designer and CFO at Business Models Inc, argues that startups and corporates should ditch traditional business plans for agile, customer-focused exploration using the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Design. She previews the forthcoming book Design Better Business with examples from Dutch companies.
Chapters
So, Maike, right? Typical Dutch, Maike, Mikey. And I'm from Business Models Inc. And this is our team, the headquarters team. The head office is still in Amsterdam right now in the Netherlands. This is our team over there. Can you see where I am in this picture? The money bag, right? Yeah, that's me, that's me. It still has a euro sign, should change it into a dollar sign actually. Because I'm indeed a strategy designer within Business Models Inc., but I'm also the CFO of our company. And because I like numbers, I actually do. I know a lot of people don't like numbers, but I actually do like it, right? And in the end, whatever the ideas that you have or the great business model that you have, it's about show me the money, right? It's about whether you're not-for-profit, even in that case, it's show me the money, right? Because you need to cover your costs somehow. So I always like to have a look at some financials as well. Not going through Excel spreadsheets, I think that's past age. There are other ways to look at numbers than Excel spreadsheets, but it's, it's about the numbers, show me the money, so that's also my role. From the Netherlands, right? I think there's one in here from the Netherlands as well, there, yeah. Very good. From Leiden, right? I saw, yeah, yeah, I saw all your details, Anit, so I was like, yeah, that's Should have seen it on a t-shirt, by the way. Yeah, could have could have known myself. Yeah, yeah. So do you guys know any Dutch companies? Shell. Philip Shell. I know I know a Dutch digital notary called Bitwriter. Called what? Bitwriter. It's an online notary. Don't even know that one, but they're ing yes. Ah, that's yours. That's why. Very good. KLM. Yeah, very good. So it's good to see. Good to see. And here are some of the logos. Heineken, right? How could you miss Heineken? I mean, everybody knows Heineken. Chesto, Armin van Buren. You know, there are some big brands. They're big brands, right? Yeah. And so WeTransfer. Do you know WeTransfer as well? Like a huge data transfer. Adyen, anyone knows Adyen? No. No? They're actually, their head office is right now in San Francisco. It's a Dutch company, but it's about payments made easy. They're huge. They're pretty off the record. Not a lot of people know them, but it's insane the funding that they've been getting the recent years. And they do payments. If you pay through Facebook, for example, they're doing the back engine of the whole payment transaction. Probably if you look on a couple of your bank statements, you'll see their name on there as well. From now on, you will recognize them. And so they're, they're having this huge customer. If you, if you, especially if you're in B2C business and you want to go global, they will set it all up for you. So don't, you don't need to have your own bank account. You don't need to go through all that hassle. They'll take care of that for you. So interesting company to, to watch and to, to follow. Rem Koolhaas is a Well-known designer also globally, so you might have run into him as well, especially if we're some people here with the design mindset and really looking into that. Might have been a name that you know as well. So some of the Dutch companies, but right now live here in San Francisco. I moved October 1st last year, so through the first half year and still so excited to be here. And in our company, we're the producer of this book. You all know this book? Yes. Yes? Good. And so when we produced this book quite a couple of years ago, right now over 1 million copies are being sold, 32 translations already out there of the book. So we're really excited to see that so many people are using the Business Model Canvas every day, and they use it in startups, they use it in large corporates, they really use it everywhere. And so we're excited about that. Do you also know this book, Value Proposition Design? A few yeses? Yeah. Okay. Some of the things that I have with me is about this book as well. It's about how to understand, how to get to know your customer and how to know your customer better. What kind of tools can you use for that as well? The value proposition canvas is in it, which I will give to you later on as well. And pretty exciting about the launch of the new book, You're actually the first ones to see these slides. Really? It's actually prepared last night. So we are currently in the final stages of finalizing our book, How to Design a Better Business. So it has everything to do with design thinking, with a lot of tools that are out there. So this will be an amazing book to use when you're doing your strategy, when you're doing your innovation. Will be published this fall. But if you go to the website designabetterbusiness.com, you can already put in your name and you'll get some early warnings and some pre-information and so on. And I will share these slides as well, so, so you'll get all the information later on yourself. So how to design a better business? And that's actually what we do. I mean, since the beginning of Business Models Inc., our mission has always been design better business, right? So that's also how we came up with the title of the book, Design Better Business, because that's what we are all about. And we do that for startups, right? So like startup bootcamp, what we've been doing a lot, usually when a new cohort came in in Amsterdam, the first 2 days of the program, they had me in front of them. So for 2 days, I went through all the tools, everything that's out there, how can you think differently? And then we helped them and coached them further down the road. And for many other startups as well. But also we do that within corporates. We see that as sort of engine within corporates, and how can we have corporates think like startups, right? Because I think there's a lot to learn. On the other side, there's also a lot to learn from corporates for the startups. And so we really like to be in that space between the big international large companies and the startups with great ideas and a lot of passion and energy. I think that mix is amazing. We have offices all over the world, from Australia up to here, San Francisco. That's what's covering it and the headquarters being in Amsterdam. So what we see in practice every day is we see so many people with a great idea, just like you all. You all have great ideas, right? And I guess everybody here is saying like, yes, this is the new next big thing, right? I'm gonna be rich, it's worth a fortune, correct? Yeah. Yeah? However, what we see in practice is this, right? We see so many ideas not being realized or not turning into the value that everybody was expecting it would be, right? And it's— we also see that business as usual is dead, right? It's just gone. And writing business plans, please stop doing it. I don't know whether you have to do it here. Hope not. No, great, like that. But don't ever do it. Because it takes an awful lot of time. I've done my share of business plans. I really have done it. It takes so much time. By the time you're done, the world changed again, right? Plus, how can you communicate this huge stack of paper with someone else? How will they really understand what's in there? Even though it's in English, it's not a common language. People don't really get it, all the blah blah, all the words out there. And so also the other, the last thing about the business plan, why it does not work is you can only put a single right solution in a business plan. Try to come up with options in a business plan, it doesn't work, right? All the different scenarios and everybody gets confused and no one gets it anymore. While in real life today, it's about exploring your options. And what are the options? You need to be flexible, you need to be agile to move along with what's happening in the context, how your consumer, how your customer is actually changing. So don't write business plans anymore and get out of thoughtlands. That's, that's the thing that we see, especially with startups, quite a lot. Like, there are sometimes too many people in la-la land, right? Like, yeah, it will all be the best, but, you know, it's stop the blah blah. That's what we say. So how can we really stop the blah blah and how can we move forward?
