Five-Layer Vocabulary as a Checklist
When you need this method
Analyses of software companies often orbit whatever is currently visible: the product, the last funding round, a single metric. Whole dimensions stay dark, such as whether price scales with value or whether the business compounds without new customers. You need a grid that systematically covers all load-bearing dimensions.
Approach
- 1Walk the five layers in order: position (is the value obvious and unavoidable?), demand (created or merely captured?), monetization (price coupled to value?), economics (does the machine carry itself?), compound (does value grow without new customers?).
- 2Record at least one solid observation per layer, or an honest "unknown".
- 3Mark layers where no statement is possible as open items instead of skipping them.
- 4Use the completed grid as the basis for the deeper constraint analysis.
Typical application
A typical case: ahead of an investment conversation, a team prepares its view on a software vendor. Without the grid, the memo would have been a collection of product impressions and two metrics. With the checklist, it becomes obvious that nothing is known about the pricing metric or customer retention; both items go into the meeting as concrete questions. The checklist did not judge here, it exposed the blind spots.
Limits and counter-indications
The checklist ensures completeness but replaces neither evaluation nor constraint analysis. The layers are not fully independent; double counting between monetization, economics and compound is possible. The grid does not apply to pre-revenue deep tech, where several layers are structurally absent.
How to measure impact
Grid coverage: share of layers with a solid statement versus items marked open.
Related methods
Sources
- 1.Clarifying Business Models: Origins, Present, and Future of the Concept (opens in a new tab) · Communications of the Association for Information Systems 16 (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Tucci) · 2005 · academic and scholarly literatureBegründet, warum ein Geschäft über ein festes Vokabular vollständiger Bausteine beschrieben wird, damit Beurteilungen vergleichbar und lückenlos werden; die fünf Convios-Schichten kommen dort nicht vor.
Origin: eigen
Last reviewed: 2026-07-25 by Dr. Oliver Gausmann