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Business Model

Generate a Business Model Canvas with all 9 building blocks. Use when creating a business model, documenting how a business creates value, or analyzing an existing business model.

By phuryn
26k2.7kUpdated 1 month agoMIT

Skill Content

# Business Model Canvas

## Metadata
- **Name**: business-model
- **Description**: Generate a Business Model Canvas with all 9 building blocks. Use when creating a business model, documenting how a business creates value, or analyzing an existing business model.
- **Triggers**: business model canvas, BMC, business model, how we make money

## Instructions

You are a business model strategist designing a Business Model Canvas for $ARGUMENTS.

Your task is to create a comprehensive Business Model Canvas that outlines how the business creates, delivers, and captures value.

## Input Requirements
- Product or service description
- Target customer(s) and market
- Current business operations or assumptions
- Competitive context or industry dynamics

## Business Model Canvas Template

### Left Side: Creating Value

**1. Key Partners**
- Who are the key strategic partners and suppliers?
- What partnerships enable our business model?
- Which activities do partners handle?
- Are there joint ventures or co-creation opportunities?

**2. Key Activities**
- What key activities does the business perform?
- What processes are critical to delivering value?
- Are these activities in-house or outsourced?
- Production, problem-solving, platform/network activities?

**3. Key Resources**
- What resources are necessary to create value?
- Physical assets, intellectual property, human capital, financial
- What resources enable key activities and partnerships?
- What's the minimum viable resource set?

### Center: The Value Proposition

**4. Value Propositions**
- What value do we deliver to customers?
- Which customer problems do we solve?
- What needs are satisfied?
- What products/services address each segment?
- Quantitative (price, speed, quality) vs. qualitative (design, status)

### Right Side: Delivering Value

**5. Customer Relationships**
- How do we establish and maintain customer relationships?
- Personal assistance, self-service, automated, community, co-creation
- Cost of customer acquisition and retention
- How do we keep customers engaged?

**6. Channels**
- How do customers discover and access the value?
- Awareness: How do customers learn about us?
- Purchase: How do they buy?
- Delivery: How is value delivered?
- After-sales: How do we support customers?
- Direct vs. indirect, owned vs. partner channels

**7. Customer Segments**
- Who are the key customer segments?
- Mass market, niche market, segmented, multi-sided platform
- What are their defining characteristics?
- Distinct needs, channels, relationships, or profitability

### Bottom: Financial Viability

**8. Cost Structure**
- What are the most important costs?
- Fixed vs. variable costs
- Cost drivers (scale, automation, labor, infrastructure)
- Is this a cost-driven or value-driven business?

**9. Revenue Streams**
- How does the business make money?
- Per customer, per transaction, subscription, licensing, rents
- Pricing mechanisms (fixed, dynamic, value-based)
- Customer lifetime value and unit economics

## Output Process
1. Identify and profile customer segments
2. Define the core value proposition(s)
3. Map customer relationships and channels
4. List key activities and resources
5. Identify key partners
6. Outline cost structure
7. Define revenue streams
8. Ensure all 9 blocks align and support each other
9. Test economic viability (LTV > 3x CAC)
10. Identify key assumptions and risks

### Domain Context

**Business Model Canvas vs Lean Canvas vs Startup Canvas**:

Business Model Canvas (Strategyzer, Alexander Osterwalder) is the most widely used canvas framework. It provides a balanced, holistic view of how value flows through the organization. However, it has known limitations for product strategy:

- **No vision**: Why should your team wake up every day? BMC doesn't address motivation or aspiration.
- **No Can't/Won't test**: What stops competitors from copying you? BMC lacks a defensibility section that goes beyond listing resources.
- **No trade-offs**: What you choose NOT to do creates focus and amplifies value — BMC doesn't address this.
- **No key metrics**: How do you know the strategy is working? BMC has no metrics section.
- **Low-value sections for startups**: Key Partnerships and Key Resources are rarely useful for early-stage products.

**When to use BMC**: Established businesses, corporate strategy, investor materials where you need to articulate how all operational pieces connect.

**Alternatives**:
- **Lean Canvas** (Ash Maurya): Startup-focused, faster, replaces Partners/Activities/Resources with Problem/Solution/Unfair Advantage. Better for hypothesis testing but still mixes strategy and business model.
- **Startup Canvas** (Paweł Huryn): Separates strategy (9 sections from the Product Strategy Canvas) from business model (Cost Structure + Revenue Streams). Recommended for new products where you need strategic clarity alongside the business model.

## Notes
- The Business Model Canvas provides a holistic view of how value flows through the organization
- Each block should reinforce and support the others
- Strong business models have clear, defensible value propositions
- Financial sustainability requires revenue to exceed costs at scale
- Use this to identify opportunities for innovation and optimization

---

### Further Reading

- [Business Model Canvas Examples: Google Maps, Airbnb, Uber](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/business-model-canvas-examples)
- [Startup Canvas: Product Strategy and a Business Model for a New Product](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/startup-canvas)

How to use

  1. Copy the skill content above
  2. Create a .claude/skills/pm-skills-business-model directory in your project (or ~/.claude/skills/pm-skills-business-model to use it in every project)
  3. Save the content as .claude/skills/pm-skills-business-model/SKILL.md
  4. Claude Code loads it automatically when the task matches, or run /pm-skills-business-model to invoke it directly

README

View on GitHub

GitHub stars License: MIT PRs Welcome Tests Companion: pm-skills Companion: burnstop Companion: claude-usage

PM Skills Marketplace: The AI Operating System for Better Product Decisions

68 PM skills and 42 chained workflows across 9 plugins. Claude Code, Cowork, and more. From discovery to strategy, execution, launch, growth, and shipping AI-built code.

PM Skills marketplace: skills, commands, and all 9 plugins at a glance

Designed for Claude Code and Cowork. Skills compatible with other AI assistants.

Start Here

New idea? → /discover
Need strategic clarity? → /strategy
Writing a PRD? → /write-prd
Planning a launch? → /plan-launch
Defining metrics? → /north-star

If this project helps you, ⭐ the repo.

Why PM Skills Marketplace?

Generic AI gives you text. PM Skills Marketplace gives you structure.

Each skill encodes a proven PM framework — discovery, assumption mapping, prioritization, strategy — and walks you through it step by step. You get the rigor of Teresa Torres, Marty Cagan, and Alberto Savoia built into your daily workflow, not sitting on a bookshelf.

The result: better product decisions, not just faster documents.

How It Works (Skills, Commands, Plugins)

Example prompts: a skill and two commands (/write-prd, /ship-check) in action

Skills are the building blocks of the marketplace. Each skill gives Claude domain knowledge, analytical frameworks, or a guided workflow for a specific PM task. Some skills also work as reusable foundations that multiple commands share.

Skills are loaded automatically when relevant to the conversation — no explicit invocation needed. If needed (e.g., prioritizing skills over general knowledge), you can force loading skills with /plugin-name:skill-name or /skill-name (Claude will add the prefix).

Commands are user-triggered workflows invoked with /command-name. They chain one or more skills into an end-to-end process. For example, /discover chains four skills together: brainstorm-ideas → identify-assumptions → prioritize-assumptions → brainstorm-experiments.

Plugins group related skills and commands into installable packages. Each plugin covers a PM domain — discovery, strategy, execution, and so on. Installing the marketplace gives you all 9 plugins at once.

Commands use skills. Some skills serve multiple commands. Some skills (like prioritization-frameworks or opportunity-solution-tree) are standalone references that Claude draws on whenever relevant — no command needed.

Commands are designed to flow into each other, matching the PM workflow. After any command completes, it suggests relevant next commands — just follow the prompts.

Installation

Claude Cowork (recommended for non-developers)

  1. Open Customize (bottom-left)
  2. Go to Browse plugins → Personal → +
  3. Select Add marketplace from GitHub
  4. Enter: phuryn/pm-skills

All 9 plugins install automatically. You get both commands (/discover, /strategy, etc.) and skills.

Installing PM Skills in Claude Cowork

Claude Code (CLI)

# Step 1: Add the marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add phuryn/pm-skills

# Step 2: Install individual plugins
claude plugin install pm-toolkit@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-product-strategy@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-product-discovery@pm-skills 
claude plugin install pm-market-research@pm-skills 
claude plugin install pm-data-analytics@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-marketing-growth@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-go-to-market@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-execution@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-ai-shipping@pm-skills

Codex CLI (OpenAI)

Codex reads the same plugin marketplace file as Claude Code, so you can install PM Skills natively — no conversion or file-copying needed:

# Step 1: Add the marketplace
codex plugin marketplace add phuryn/pm-skills

# Step 2: Install the plugins you want
codex plugin add pm-toolkit@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-product-strategy@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-product-discovery@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-market-research@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-data-analytics@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-marketing-growth@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-go-to-market@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-execution@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-ai-shipping@pm-skills

What you get: every skill (the PM frameworks), available to Codex and invocable by name. Install whole plugins rather than cherry-picking individual skills — a workflow usually relies on several skills that ship together.

What's different from Claude Code: the /slash commands (/discover, /write-prd, …) install but don't run as Codex slash commands — Codex plugins don't expose commands. To run a workflow, just describe the steps in plain language, for example:

Run product discovery on [your idea]: brainstorm options, map assumptions, prioritize the risky ones, then design experiments — pause between each step.

Optional — let Codex turn the workflows into skills. Because the command files ship inside each installed plugin, you can ask Codex to convert the ones you use most:

Read the command files in the pm-execution plugin and create equivalent Codex skills for the workflows I use most often.

This is a best-effort, model-driven conversion (some Claude-specific command syntax won't translate), but it's a quick way to get the guided workflows on Codex without leaving the CLI.

Other AI assistants (skills only)

The skills/*/SKILL.md files follow the universal skill format and work with any tool that reads it. Commands (/slash-commands) are Claude-specific.

ToolHow to useWhat works
Gemini CLICopy skill folders to .gemini/skills/Skills only
OpenCodeCopy skill folders to .opencode/skills/Skills only
CursorCopy skill folders to .cursor/skills/Skills only
KiroCopy skill folders to .kiro/skills/Skills only
# Example: copy all skills for OpenCode (project-level)
for plugin in pm-*/; do
  mkdir -p .opencode/skills/
  cp -r "$plugin/skills/"* .opencode/skills/ 2>/dev/null
done

# Example: copy all skills for Gemini CLI (global)
for plugin in pm-*/; do
  cp -r "$plugin/skills/"* ~/.gemini/skills/ 2>/dev/null
done

Available Plugins

<details> <summary><strong>1. pm-product-discovery</strong> — Ideation, experiments, assumption testing, OSTs, interviews (13 skills, 5 commands)</summary>

Skills (13):

  • brainstorm-ideas-existing — Multi-perspective ideation for existing products (PM, Designer, Engineer)
  • brainstorm-ideas-new — Ideation for new products in initial discovery
  • brainstorm-experiments-existing — Design experiments to test assumptions for existing products
  • brainstorm-experiments-new — Design lean startup pretotypes for new products (Alberto Savoia)
  • identify-assumptions-existing — Identify risky assumptions across Value, Usability, Viability, and Feasibility
  • identify-assumptions-new — Identify risky assumptions across 8 risk categories including Go-to-Market, Strategy, and Team
  • prioritize-assumptions — Prioritize assumptions using an Impact × Risk matrix with experiment suggestions
  • prioritize-features — Prioritize a feature backlog based on impact, effort, risk, and strategic alignment
  • analyze-feature-requests — Analyze and categorize customer feature requests by theme and strategic fit
  • opportunity-solution-tree — Build an Opportunity Solution Tree (Teresa Torres) — outcome → opportunities → solutions → experiments
  • interview-script — Create a structured customer interview script with JTBD probing questions
  • summarize-interview — Summarize an interview transcript into JTBD, satisfaction signals, and action items
  • metrics-dashboard — Design a product metrics dashboard with North Star, input metrics, and alert thresholds

Commands (5):

  • /discover — Full discovery cycle: ideation → assumption mapping → prioritization → experiment design
  • /brainstorm — Multi-perspective ideation (ideas|experiments × existing|new)
  • /triage-requests — Analyze and prioritize a batch of feature requests
  • /interview — Prepare an interview script or summarize a transcript (prep|summarize)
  • /setup-metrics — Design a product metrics dashboard

Examples:

Skills:

  • What are the riskiest assumptions for our AI writing assistant idea?
  • Help me build an Opportunity Solution Tree for improving user activation
  • Prioritize these 12 feature requests from our enterprise customers [attach CSV]

Commands:

  • /discover AI-powered meeting summarizer for remote teams
  • /brainstorm experiments existing — We need to reduce churn in our onboarding flow
  • /interview prep — We're interviewing enterprise buyers about their procurement workflow
</details> <details> <summary><strong>2. pm-product-strategy</strong> — Vision, business models, pricing, competitive landscape (12 skills, 5 commands)</summary>

Product strategy, vision, business models, pricing, and macro environment analysis. Covers the full strategic toolkit from vision crafting through competitive landscape scanning.

Skills (12):

  • product-strategy — Comprehensive 9-section Product Strategy Canvas (vision → defensibility)
  • startup-canvas — Startup Canvas combining Product Strategy (9 sections) + Business Model — an alternative to BMC and Lean Canvas for new products
  • product-vision — Craft an inspiring, achievable, and emotional product vision
  • value-proposition — 6-part JTBD value proposition (Who, Why, What before, How, What after, Alternatives)
  • lean-canvas — Lean Canvas business model for startups and new products
  • business-model — Business Model Canvas with all 9 building blocks
  • monetization-strategy — Brainstorm 3–5 monetization strategies with validation experiments
  • pricing-strategy — Pricing models, competitive analysis, willingness-to-pay, and price elasticity
  • swot-analysis — SWOT analysis with actionable recommendations
  • pestle-analysis — Macro environment: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental
  • porters-five-forces — Competitive forces analysis (rivalry, suppliers, buyers, substitutes, new entrants)
  • ansoff-matrix — Growth strategy mapping across markets and products

Commands (5):

  • /strategy — Create a complete 9-section Product Strategy Canvas
  • /business-model — Explore business models (lean|full|startup|value-prop|all)
  • /value-proposition — Design a value proposition using the 6-part JTBD template
  • /market-scan — Macro environment analysis combining SWOT + PESTLE + Porter's + Ansoff
  • /pricing — Design a pricing strategy with competitive analysis and experiments

Examples:

Skills:

  • Compare Lean Canvas vs Business Model Canvas vs Startup Canvas for my marketplace startup
  • Design a value proposition for our AI writing assistant targeting non-native English speakers
  • Run a Porter's Five Forces analysis for the project management SaaS market

Commands:

  • `/strategy B2B project manage

…

View source on GitHub