Business models for the people students ask first.
MLCIC professional development · Friday, October 16, 2026 · Andesite Room · David Marek, DropDev
Hosted by the Mike Loya Center for Innovation and Commerce, UTEP
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Five seconds. What box is empty?
Nobody said who pays. Nobody said what it costs.
"An app."
"It's Uber, but for puppies."
"TikTok does the marketing."
"Everyone. Literally everyone with a dog."
You are going to hear that pitch a lot.
Built from my Know Your Business class and the Studio G idea workshop, tuned for the person students ask first. If you were at Studio G in September, some of this will look familiar.
Part 1 · Learn the board
What a business model includes, in plain words.
Part 2 · Use it with a student
What to listen for when a student walks in. Then you practice it.
You leave with a toolkit on your phone you can use Monday.
Business acumen
You can have customers and still go broke.
Having users is not the same as having a business.
From Know Your Business, Week 3
A business model is how you create, deliver, and capture value.
Create
What you make.
Deliver
How it gets to them.
Capture
How some of that value comes back as money.
Students fall in love with the first one. Ideas die on the third.
From Know Your Business, Week 3
The product is one box. The business is the whole board.
A great product with no way to capture value is a hobby.
What a basic business plan includes
Six sections. Each one maps to the canvas you're about to see.
Executive summary
= the napkin pitch
Problem and solution
= Value Propositions
Market and customer
= Customer Segments
Marketing and sales
= Channels + Customer Relationships
Operations and team
= Key Activities, Resources, Partners
Financials
= Revenue Streams + Cost Structure
Same questions, two formats. A plan writes them long for a judge or a bank. A model fits on one page you fix with an eraser.
Six ways to get paid.
Amazon's store
You pay once, a box shows up. Money comes in per item sold.
Consulting
You pay for time and expertise. When the work stops, the money stops.
Netflix
You pay every month. The business lives on whether you stay.
Uber, Airbnb
Connect two sides. Keep a cut of every transaction.
Dropbox
Free to start. The people who outgrow the free plan pay for everyone.
YouTube
Viewers watch free. Advertisers pay for their attention. Only works with a huge audience.
Six different answers to one box: Revenue Streams.
Airbnb doesn't own the homes. So how does it get paid?
·
answers
A monthly subscription
A cut of each booking
Selling ads
Renting out homes it owns
Hands up instead.
A monthly subscription
A cut of each booking
Selling ads
Renting out homes it owns
Marketplace. It earns by connecting two sides, not by owning anything.
Front stage: what the customer sees.
"Business Model Theatre": Strategyzer (Benson Garner, 2015). Canvas by Osterwalder and Pigneur.
What problem goes away, in the customer's words, and why you instead of the next option.
How you get them, keep them, and grow them.
How they find out, and how it gets to them.
Who is it for? Picture one real person (a persona). Buyer and user can differ.
Back stage: what it takes to put on the show.
Price for the value, not the cost. Cost-plus asks what it cost me. Value-based asks what it is worth to them.
MoviePass charged $9.95 a month for a movie a day and paid full price for every ticket. The more people used it, the more it lost.
Who else has to say yes, and who takes risk off your plate.
What you have to do every week to deliver.
People, money, tools, and IP nobody else can copy.
The biggest bills. Fixed ones you pay no matter what, and variable ones that grow with every sale.
Who pays, how much, how often.
Uber, in nine boxes. You say it, I click it.
Payment, maps, and insurance providers.
Matching riders with drivers. Setting prices.
The app, plus drivers and their cars.
Riders get a ride when they want one. Drivers get paid work on their own schedule.
Self-service in the app. Ratings both ways.
The app. Word of mouth.
Riders and drivers. Two customers, one app.
Building the app, support, insurance, marketing.
A share of every fare.
Napkin-stage idea? Use the Lean Canvas.
Lean Canvas by Ash Maurya, adapted from the Business Model Canvas.
What hurts, and what they do about it today.
In one plain sentence.
The one number you watch.
What can't a friend copy next week?
Just an idea: Lean. A real product and a team: the full canvas.
A student with an idea has no partners yet. They can always name a problem.
A student walks in with just an idea. Which canvas?
·
answers
Lean Canvas
Business Model Canvas
Neither, just talk
Hands up instead.
Lean Canvas
Business Model Canvas
Neither, just talk
Start by talking. Sketch it Lean while they do.
You just learned the board. Now you read somebody else's.
Stand up. Grab your stuff. Sit next to someone new.
1:00
From here on, nobody says "good idea" or "bad idea." Only a question, or "that goes in this box."
The consultant lens
Creator vs consultant
Creator asks
"How do I make my idea work?"
Consultant asks
"What would have to be true for this to work?"
Companies like Ericsson and SAP sketch their customers' business models to understand them. That's your job now, for a student.
Strategyzer, 14 ways to apply the Business Model Canvas (Benson Garner, 2015).
Active listening: hear it, then map it.
ParkPal (fictional) · Round 1 of 4
A fictional student pitch, one line at a time. Tap the box you hear.
"It's for commuter students who park in Lot C and circle for twenty minutes before class."
"ParkPal pings you when someone is about to leave their spot."
"Students pay three dollars a week."
"And it'll go viral on TikTok."
Hands up. Which box?
1 Customer
2 Value
3 Channels
4 Revenue
5 Cost
6 Red flag
·
taps
Red flag, not a plan
They described a feature. The value is twenty minutes of their morning back.
Going viral is an outcome. It isn't a channel, and it isn't revenue.
Idea Detangling
Ask it like a friend, not a textbook.
"What's your value proposition?"
→
"What problem does your friend have that this solves?"
"Who's your target segment?"
→
"If you could only sell to one person on Monday, who walks in?"
"What's your monetization strategy?"
→
"Who hands you money, how much, and how often?"
Ask about the past, not the future. If you were at Studio G, you've seen this. Now you're the one asking.
The Big 3. You'll meet all of them this semester.
Everyone is my customer
"Honestly, anyone with a phone."
Everyone is my customer
Fix: narrow to a beachhead.
Ask"Who's the first person who'd pay for this next week?"
Aim for: sophomore commuter students who park in Lot C.
Feature obsession
"Wait, I haven't told you about the dark mode."
Feature obsession
Fix: turn features into outcomes.
Ask"If I took that feature away, what could they no longer do?"
The magic revenue stream
"We'll make money from ads. It'll go viral on TikTok."
The magic revenue stream
Fix: make the money concrete.
Ask"How many people, paying what, how often?"
Spot the Big 3.
Round 1 of 3
Fictional student lines. Tap which one you hear.
"Honestly, anyone with a phone could use this."
"We'll keep it free and make money from ads once it blows up."
"Commuter students who park in Lot C pay three dollars a week, and twelve of them already prepaid."
·
answers
Everyone is my customer
Feature obsession
Magic revenue
Looks solid
Hands up instead.
Everyone is my customer
Feature obsession
Magic revenue
Looks solid
Not every pitch is broken. Don't diagnose what isn't there.
The Back of the Napkin pitch. Three sentences.
Specific customer struggles with problem, and today they what they do instead.
We give them simple solution, and they pay amounthow often.
We reach the first number through specific place, and the one thing we have to prove is riskiest guess.
ParkPal (fictional)
Commuter students who park in Lot C struggle to find a spot before 9 AM classes, and today they circle or show up an hour early.
We ping them when a spot is about to open, and they pay three dollars a week.
We reach the first twenty through the commuter student lounge, and the one thing we have to prove is that people will pay three dollars a week to get that time back.
Can't finish a sentence? That's the box your next conversation is about.
Five minutes. Stretch, refill, come back.
When you're back: the worst business canvas I could write.
5:00
The Peer Coaching Lab
45 minutes. You learn this by doing it.
9 minFind what doesn't fit
5 minWatch me get it wrong, then right
27 minThree rounds, groups of three
3 minWhat the room found
At the Sept 23 pitch prep session, teams scored weakest on Proof and Solution. That is what students will bring you.
Find what doesn't fit.
Crown and Stitch (fictional)
Hands up: which box breaks first?
1 Revenue
2 Channels
3 Cost
·answered
5:00
None. We just need a famous influencer to post about us.
Hand-stitched, 6 hours each. Goal: 10,000 sold this semester.
A $15 craft kit and my dorm room.
Luxury. Full-grain leather, hand-stitched. White-glove personal service.
Automated emails only.
A self-serve website, plus a vending machine in the Union.
All college students, especially ones on a tight budget.
Leather and labor come to about $150 a sleeve. We'll make it up in volume.
$120 per sleeve. Plus ads on our website. Plus going viral on TikTok.
Every problem is two boxes that disagree.
Crown and Stitch (fictional)
1Tight-budget students vs a $120 sleeve
2White-glove luxury vs a vending machine and automated emails
3Six hours a sleeve, by hand, vs 10,000 in a semester
4Costs $150, sells for $120. Loses $30 on every sale
5A $15 craft kit and a dorm room vs full-grain luxury
6Ads and "going viral" listed as revenue, with no audience
None. We just need a famous influencer to post about us.
Hand-stitched, 6 hours each. Goal: 10,000 sold this semester.
3
A $15 craft kit and my dorm room.
5
Luxury. Full-grain leather, hand-stitched. White-glove personal service.
25
Automated emails only.
2
A self-serve website, plus a vending machine in the Union.
2
All college students, especially ones on a tight budget.
13
Leather and labor come to about $150 a sleeve. We'll make it up in volume.
4
$120 per sleeve. Plus ads on our website. Plus going viral on TikTok.
146
Groups of three. Everyone plays every role.
Founder
Pick a card on your phone. Stay in character. Resist twice, then give in to a great question.
Consultant
Phone down. Eyes up. Questions only. Talk less than the founder. End with one Next Step.
Mapper
Draw the canvas on paper or the whiteboard. Write the founder's words, not yours. Read it back at the end.
Rotate every round. Two of you? The consultant maps too. On Teams: a breakout room, or a private Teams call with one other person. Same card, same clock.
Watch me get it wrong.
One volunteer founder. Sixty seconds. Call out what I mess up. Then I do it right.
MissSaid "great idea" before asking anything.
MissGave advice in the first ten seconds.
MissUsed jargon.
MissNever asked who pays.
Now do it right: the 15-minute walk-in
0 to 2
Let them pitch. Say it back in one sentence.
2 to 8
Plain questions. Map it into boxes (Lean Canvas if it is just an idea).
8 to 10
Big 3 check.
10 to 13
Read back the napkin, name the reddest box.
13 to 15
One Next Step with a due date. Log the intake with G, O, R.
Before we meet again, go talk to [number][people who fit your customer] and ask [one question about the past]. Bring back [one piece of proof].
The Monday test: free, done in a week, nobody's permission needed, and the answer changes what they build.
Round 1 of 3
Questions only.
No advice until 1:00 is left. Get to one specific person.
Last minute: read the napkin back, give one Next Step.
Time. Tap your phone. Mapper: log the three reddest boxes and the Next Step on /toolkit. Then rotate. · taps
5:00
Round 2 of 3
The stubborn founder.
Name the pitfall, kindly. Find what the founder isn't telling you.
Last minute: read the napkin back, give one Next Step.
Time. Tap your phone. Mapper: log the three reddest boxes and the Next Step on /toolkit. Then rotate. · taps
5:00
Round 3 of 3
The walk-in, start to finish.
Six minutes here. Fifteen on Monday.
Last minute: read the napkin back, give one Next Step.
Time. Last taps. Mapper: log the three reddest boxes and the Next Step on /toolkit. · taps
6:00
What the room found.
Which box stayed the reddest? This is where students will need you most.
Hands up: which box stayed reddest?
1 Customer
2 Value
3 Revenue
4 Channels
Founders: hands up if you felt pushed. Heard? Both?
Consultants: hands up if you ended with one Next Step.
Founders: how did that feel?
Pushed
Heard
Both
Neither
Consultants: ended with one Next Step?
Yes
Sort of
No
One word: the hardest part of being the consultant.
Shout one word: the hardest part of being the consultant.
Every conversation ends with homework.
You saw the formula on the walk-in. Here it is filled in, one for each red box.
Customer red
Talk to five Lot C commuters. Ask what they did the last time they couldn't find a spot.
Revenue red
Ask five people for three dollars today, in person. Count who actually pays.
Value red
Write the three-sentence napkin and read it to a stranger. Note where they get confused.
The best Next Step is boring. Talk to five people. Not text. Talk.
ParkPal (fictional), as a dashboard.
Canvas as a dashboard: Strategyzer, 14 ways to apply the Business Model Canvas (Benson Garner, 2015).
·ratings in
GGreen: tested with real peopleOOrange: a guessRRed: missing, or fights another box
Hands up. Green, orange, or red: Customer, Revenue, Channels.
My take: Customer orange, Revenue orange, Channels red.
"It'll go viral on TikTok"
"Commuter students who park in Lot C"
"$3 a week"
Your toolkit lives here.
mlcic.dropdev.co/toolkit
The 15-minute walk-in, start to finish
Plain questions for every box, and the Big 3 spotter
Napkin builder, Next Steps, and a Miner Pitch check-in
An intake record to copy into the center's consult log
When will you use this with a student?
This week
Next week
At the Miner Pitch Competition
Not sure yet
Two minutes. Tell me what to fix.
mlcic.dropdev.co/survey
·
done
2:00
Your phone already has the button. Anonymous.
Same pitch. Now you know what to ask.
"Who else has to say yes?"
"What do you have to do every single day?"
"An app."
"It's Uber, but for puppies."
"After the first walk, why would they book again?"
"TikTok does the marketing."
"Everyone. Literally everyone with a dog."
"What's the biggest bill before you earn a dollar?"
"Who hands you money, how much, how often?"
You don't need the answers. You need the question that sends them to go find out.
Toolkit: mlcic.dropdev.co/toolkit · David Marek, DropDev, dropdev.co
Hosted by the Mike Loya Center for Innovation and Commerce, UTEP
DropDev
Hosted by the Mike Loya Center for Innovation and Commerce, UTEP
