ldphuong-vn Business Model (Stage 5)
Do the economics work? Read dossier-schema.md if needed. Write only into the Dossier. Do not render.
This is not a legal/financial recommendation — it surfaces the numbers for the decider.
Procedure
- Pricing — what will the beachhead actually pay, anchored to the value/pain from stages 2–3.
- CAC / LTV — cost to acquire vs lifetime value; LTV:CAC and the direction of the ratio matter more than precise figures early on.
- Margin — gross margin per unit/seat, including hidden costs (support, infra, hardware).
- Payback — months to recover CAC. Long payback + long sales cycle = cash risk; flag it loudly.
State every number as an estimate with its assumption; thin/unknown economics must lower the score, not be optimistically filled.
Profit First check (Mike Michalowicz)
Beyond measuring economics, check whether profit is designed in. See ../../lenses/profit-first.md.
Apply by default for owner-operated / bootstrapped / cash-tight businesses (the VN SMB context);
flag — don't blindly penalize — when a scale-first ("grow now, profit later") path is a deliberate bet.
Ask: reverse formula (profit-first vs profit-as-leftover?), profitable at the smallest viable scale
(not only "at scale"?), does it pay the owner real cash, and do the target allocation percentages
(Profit / Owner's Pay / Tax / OpEx) actually work for this revenue band?
Gate
G5.1 — Do the unit economics close (or have a credible path to closing)? Score 0..1.
threshold: 0.6. Thin margin / unproven CAC → REVIEW_NEEDED or low score.
G5.2 — Profit First: is profit designed in (profitable at small scale, owner paid, allocations
realistic) rather than deferred to future scale? Score 0..1. threshold: 0.6. "Profitable once we're
big" → low score, unless a scale-first bet is explicitly chosen (then flag the cash-flow tradeoff).
G5.3 — Pricing strategy (run when the decision touches price; see ../../lenses/pricing.md):
is price anchored to value (not just cost/competitor), is the price metric/packaging right (does it
scale with the customer's success?), and is willingness-to-pay evidenced rather than guessed? Score
0..1. threshold: 0.6. For an existing product (e.g. repricing), this is mostly an audit of whether
the tier structure maps to value delivered. Untested WTP → ASSUMED, capped.
G5.4 — Paid economics (run ONLY when paid digital ads are a real part of acquisition; see
../../lenses/digital-ads.md; otherwise SKIP — do not create this gate for non-ads cases): is LTV:CAC
healthy and payback acceptable at the real budget level, accounting for funnel math (CPM/CTR/CVR→CPA)
and marginal-CAC saturation? Score 0..1. threshold: 0.6. No campaign data yet → ASSUMED, capped.
Writes
stages[] record (stage_id: 5, gates G5.1 + G5.2 (+ G5.3 nếu chạm giá, + G5.4 nếu chạy quảng cáo trả tiền), status, score, assumptions in notes).
Console
[Tầng 5 · Mô hình KD] (status) (score) — <điểm yếu/mạnh kinh tế chính>