Business models & revenue models, explained
Two founders can both say "we're a marketplace" and mean completely different businesses once you ask how they actually make money. Business model and revenue model are separate questions — knowing both, and not confusing them, sharpens every pitch you evaluate.
Why these are two different questions
A business model describes how a company is structured to create and deliver value — who it connects, what role it plays between them. A revenue model describes the specific mechanism it uses to charge money. The same business model can pair with several different revenue models, and the same revenue model can sit inside several different business models — which is exactly why conflating the two leads to bad comparisons between deals.
Business models
Marketplace
Connects buyers and sellers who transact directly, with the company facilitating discovery, trust and payment — MercadoLibre and Airbnb-style rental platforms are classic examples.
Read the deep dive →Platform
Provides infrastructure or tools that other businesses build on top of, rather than selling a finished product straight to end users — payment rails, developer APIs, and app stores are platforms.
Read the deep dive →Aggregator
Bundles fragmented, often small independent suppliers under one consistent brand and experience, controlling the customer relationship even though it does not own the underlying supply — a food-delivery app bundling independent restaurants.
Read the deep dive →Direct-to-consumer (D2C)
Designs, produces or sources, and sells its own product straight to end customers, controlling the full value chain from product to fulfillment.
Read the deep dive →B2B2C
Sells to a business customer who then delivers value to their own end consumers — the startup’s product is embedded inside someone else’s customer relationship, as in embedded finance offered inside another company’s app.
Read the deep dive →Franchise / licensing
Licenses a proven brand, process or technology to independent local operators in exchange for fees or royalties, scaling through others’ capital and operating effort.
Read the deep dive →Revenue models
Subscription
A recurring fee (monthly or annual) for ongoing access to a product or service, independent of how much it is actually used.
Read the deep dive →Freemium
A free base tier available to everyone, with a paid tier unlocking premium features, higher capacity, or removing limits.
Read the deep dive →Advertising
The core product is free to users; revenue comes from selling their attention or data-informed targeting to advertisers.
Read the deep dive →Transaction / take-rate
A percentage cut of the value of each transaction flowing through the platform, so revenue scales directly with usage rather than being fixed.
Read the deep dive →Usage-based / consumption
Customers pay per unit consumed — API calls, compute, deliveries, transactions processed — rather than a flat fee, aligning cost with value received.
Read the deep dive →Asset-heavy build-operate
The company builds and owns physical assets (fleets, warehouses, energy infrastructure) and earns revenue operating them directly — far more capital-intensive than software-only models, but can create real barriers to entry.
Read the deep dive →Exclusive / access-based
Charges for privileged access rather than a discrete feature set — exclusive deal flow, a premium community, or licensed proprietary content or data.
Read the deep dive →Data monetization
Revenue from aggregating, anonymizing and licensing data generated through the core product — used carefully, given privacy and regulatory sensitivity around how that data was collected.
Read the deep dive →How real companies combine both
Simplified and illustrative — real companies often layer several revenue models onto one business model, and mixes shift over time.
| Company | Business model | Revenue model(s) |
|---|---|---|
| MercadoLibre | Marketplace + fintech/logistics platform | Transaction take-rate, advertising, financial-services fees |
| Rappi | Aggregator | Transaction take-rate, delivery fees, subscription (RappiPrime) |
| Nubank | Platform (digital bank) | Interchange fees, interest income, fee-based products |
| A typical B2B SaaS startup | Platform or D2C software | Subscription, sometimes usage-based add-ons |