Business models in an afternoon

An afternoon of stand-walking, questions asked like an auditor, and the notebook fills with business-model specimens.

License the invention, don’t run the factory. The cold-distillation company holds a patent (30% more efficient than heat, nutrients preserved), develops products, an electric-blue rum, an award-winning cigarette paper, and licenses them out; the Vegas licensee wins the competitions ▸ 28:00. Same shape at the scraping stand: license the bot, then upsell the data processing ▸ 32:09. And a 20-years-in-the-making spectroscopy machine from a lonely Javeriana professor, malaria detection, adulterated-liquor checks for police, brilliance waiting for a commercial wrapper ▸ 43:14.

Sell it, then build it. The Tryard founder’s saga: a two-man shop asked for a ten-developer VR team says “de una, yo le hago”, then assembles the talent pool after signing ▸ 35:04. The same story carries the cautionary half: a cofounder drift into silence, ~200 million burned on one event, bankruptcy, and a comeback where a single VR client at 15M+ floors the business ▸ 35:41.

Pivot up the value chain. The insect farmers stopped selling larvae and started selling premium dog treats made from them, because the pet market is outgrowing the children market and the larvae eat compost ▸ 44:39. Thor the cat will render final judgment.

preguntar como auditor convierte una feria en un MBA de una tarde →

The meta-lesson is the method: at every stand, ask what’s behind the demo, who owns what, who pays whom, what’s licensed versus operated. Most visitors collected stickers (Julia’s got wiped anyway); the notebook collected structures. Same six, from Julia: the event as a venue rated 10, the extractable information rated 6, and the six is what these three entries are…