Business Model Analysis — Revenue Engine for Bootstrappers

How the business makes money, keeps money, and compounds money. Calibrated to bootstrapped reality where revenue funds everything and the model must work at low volume before it works at scale.

Philosophy

Revenue model is not an afterthought — it's the engine. Most founders obsess over product and treat the business model as a dropdown menu (SaaS? Marketplace? Agency?). But how you charge, what you charge for, and how cash flows through the business determines whether you eat or starve. The revenue model IS the business.

Read .claude/skills/_shared/philosophy.md for the full bottleneck shift and bootstrapper framework. For business model analysis specifically:

AI-native reality — COGS collapses but CAC dominates. When dev cost is near zero, software COGS approaches hosting + API calls. Gross margins look incredible on paper. But the money you saved on development moves to customer acquisition. A model that looks profitable in a spreadsheet but requires expensive distribution is not a good model for a bootstrapper. The question isn't "what's the gross margin?" — it's "can you acquire customers profitably with YOUR resources?"

The cash-flow timing trap. Revenue ≠ cash. A model with 80% gross margins but 12-month sales cycles and annual billing in arrears will kill a bootstrapper before the margins matter. Cash flow timing is more important than margin percentage for self-funded businesses. Money in the bank today beats money on the invoice net-60.