What is the Most Successful Business Model?

 My friend and colleagues have released their new book:  

Software Profit Streams(TM): A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business

And it has me thinking about what it means to be a sustainable business.  My best definition of a sustainable business would be to look at the lifetime longevity of the business.  My guess is that a family business would be the most sustainable model.  One could include a monarchy in that class of business model (looking at the House of Windsor).

I recently saw Andrew Kelley's conference talk on ZiG (a new language) - his section on "predicting the future" (20 minutes into the talk) discusses some interesting aspects of sustainable business models.

Then a friend of mine asked me a question - Does a solopreneur care about profit? 

My answer: Yes - of course.  But on pondering a bit more... it is not at all about profit - that is only a happy accident if it occurs at all.

So if your business depends upon another business - you better care about their model.  Profit - might be a poor indicator of sustainability.

March 2024 - Had a great conversation with Alex G. of OptionsAI.com they have a *NEW* vision of Stock Market Options Trading Platforms.  They are executing very well.  I have a bit of an issue with the marketing - they have really MISSED the value proposition with their static screenshots of the very beginning of the trade.  The great value of this platform is NOT the trade execution moment - but the series of moments - in REAL-Time of the evolution of the trade.  With my first trade on the platform, I was floored by the continued visualization of the trade.  It is unbelievable - no AI is required.  Just reframing the problem domain.  Building a trading platform for humans,  not training people to use the existing infrastructure from the last century.

Alex recommended Read Write Own - a book by Chris Dixon.

I've not read Chris Dixon's theses ... just the small excerpt here.  I don't think I'm buying the BlockChain Internet Era - however.

Alex, was suggesting that one needed to OWN the complete TECH Stack of their platform.  Maybe that's true.  But, Andrew Kelly, makes a great point in his talk,  that the consumer has different needs than the business.  And the Open Source model meets that consumer need in the long-term much better than the corporate model.