Platform Business Model Canvas
Find the revenue your business already creates, but doesn't collect yet.
One day with your leadership team to map the customers, partners, suppliers and communities creating value you haven't captured, priced or grown on purpose. You leave with a strategy built for action, not a report that sits in a drawer.
What it is
Platform BMC maps every group that gets value from your business and shows which ones you haven't captured yet.
Most strategy work skips this step because it looks like admin. In fact, it's the step that makes everything after it actionable.
The method
Four relationships. Click to see what most companies miss.
Customers
The side everyone can name. Usually the only one with a P&L line, an owner and a roadmap, which is exactly why it's not where the missed value is hiding.
Partners
Distributors, channels, resellers, integrators. Partners extending your reach, usually treated as an inconvenience rather than a side of the business with its own economics.
Suppliers
Vendors, contractors, content or inventory providers. Almost never asked what they'd pay for, and they very often would pay for something you already produce as a by-product.
User communities
The people creating value for other users without being part of your organisation: contributors, reviewers, your customers' own employees training each other on your product.
How it works
One day. Two cycles.
Cycle 0 · the diagnostic
Platform BMC session
A short pre-session questionnaire, one working day with your leadership team, a structured insight report with three to four prioritised directions.
What the day covers
- 01The value each side actually gets, not just the customers.
- 02Who's creating that value right now, unpaid.
- 03What you already produce that has a market price nobody's charging for.
- 04Which relationships are already priced and which are just being managed.
- 05Where the platform is leaking, participants going around you to deal direct.
- 06What "it worked" looks like, in numbers, with clear owners.
Cycle 1 · the strategy
Digital transformation strategy
From diagnostic to an approved strategy document, with an implementation plan and defined roles.
Case study
A media business that stopped selling only impressions.
1revenue stream, before
20+commercial partnerships, after
One revenue stream: advertising, priced by impressions. The Platform BMC method found three more stages of the same audience's decision journey that nobody was pricing, and identifying them turned into over twenty commercial partnerships.
Read the full case
A digital media business with a loyal, professionally engaged audience in one sector. Revenue was almost entirely advertising, direct sales plus programmatic, both under pressure. The map on the wall had two boxes: audience on one side, advertisers on the other, everything measured in impressions.
The canvas found the business was serving at least four groups and charging one. The audience came for information, but also for career moves, peer contact and industry events. Advertisers were buying attention, but only at the very top of the funnel. Employers were already trying to reach that audience informally, paying nothing. The community itself was contributing content and reach for free.
The question changed from how to sell more inventory to which stage of the audience's own decision journey each partner wanted to reach, and what that stage was worth. Laid against attention, interest, desire and action, the business already owned all four.
-
01
Attention
Editorial reach
The classic ad product, repriced as an entry point.
-
02
Interest
Communities
Where the audience compares options.
-
03
Desire
Events
Where they meet partners directly.
-
04
Action
Recruitment
Highest value, closest to the decision.
Over twenty commercial partnerships came out of it, in place of a limited advertising line. Advertising didn't disappear, it became the first link in a chain instead of the only one.
Revenues grew 20x in a couple of years.
Before you ask
Frequently asked questions
Isn't this just another workshop?
Only if you let it be. The session ends with one decision made or explicitly killed, not a document. If a session is delegated to deputies, it produces a nice map and no consequence. The people who can actually decide have to be in the room.
We already have a strategy deck.
Most do. The problem usually isn't the deck, it's that nobody drew the business as it actually operates before writing it. A canvas that survives being pulled apart is worth more than a narrative that only works read in order.
What if we're not really a platform?
Some businesses really are one line to one customer, and their problem is operational, not structural. This won't help, and I'll tell you that honestly in the first 30 minutes rather than after you've been here all day.
Will the Platform BMC diagnostic fix execution, not just strategy?
No. If you know exactly what to do and can't do it, that's a capability and accountability problem, and a canvas won't touch it. This produces the map and the decision.
What do we actually walk away with?
A structured insight report with three to four prioritised directions, not a workshop memory. If you want it turned into an approved strategy document, that's Cycle 1, the strategy engagement.
Is this a one-off engagement?
Cycle 0 stands on its own. You leave with a report and a decision either way and for some clients that's the whole engagement. Others use it as the foundation for Cycle 1. Nothing past Cycle 0 is assumed or billed without a separate yes from you.
How soon will we see results?
Clarity, immediately: you leave the room with a decision, not a maybe. Actual business results depend on how fast your team moves on it after, typically somewhere in six to twelve months.
What does this cost?
Cycle 0 itself is fixed scope and fixed price. What it leads to, if anything, depends on what Cycle 0 finds and your specific situation, not a rate card. That's the first thing we cover on the 30-minute introduction call.
Who this is for
Investors
Need to know what's next for a portfolio company.
Scale-up CEOs
Facing a monetisation or market question.
Corporate teams
Need a plan all executives can sign off.
Let's discuss
If your business has more sides than revenue lines
That's worth a conversation. I'll tell you honestly whether Platform BMC would help you, or whether it wouldn't.
Book 30 minutes