What Exactly is a Business Model?

Everyone in the tech world talks about business models. But I?ll bet that if you quizzed a random sample of these people, you?d find that they really don?t know what a business model is. I did just that with my students at UC-Berkeley. Most raised their hands, and�MBA student Blake Brundidge's attempt to answer the question was a valiant one?but none of them really had a clue. �The only one who got the answer right was Lionel Vital, a Stanford student gatecrashing my iSchool class.

The reality is that discussions of business models are like discussions of teenage sex: everyone talks about it all the time; everyone boasts about how well he or she is doing it; everyone thinks everyone else is doing it; almost no one really is; and the few who are are fumbling their way through it incompetently.

I?ll tell you what a business model is, in case you are quizzed by your investors.

But first, let me answer the big question that is surely on your mind: what is a Stanford student doing at Berkeley?

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