Everyone's building apps. Almost nobody's designing a business or thinking about how their great app ideas can scale into real companies, or even what it takes to start and run one.
I've been re-reading Design A Better Business by Patrick van der Pijl, Justin Lokitz, and Lisa Kay Solomon, and it's hitting different this time around. The world has changed since this book came out, and the core thesis has gone from "good advice" to "survival skill."
Here's what I mean. 92% of developers are using AI coding tools daily. 63% of users on platforms like Lovable have never written a line of code. The AI app builder market is projected to nearly triple from $4.7 billion to $12.3 billion by next year. Vibe coding is real. Anyone can build an app now.
And that's exactly why most of these apps will die.
The Product Idea Trap
We've been conditioned to think in products. Build the MVP. Ship fast. Get users. Iterate. The entire startup playbook is optimized for product velocity, and AI just put that on steroids with a heavy focus on writing code and being very good at it.
But here's the thing nobody's saying: building the product was never the hard part. Yes, it used to cost more, but it was always the business requirements and the business design that made things work.
Look at the data. CB Insights studied 431 failed VC-backed startups. 43% failed because of poor product-market fit. 70% "ran out of capital" but the median failed startup had raised $11 million. They didn't fail because they couldn't build. They failed because they never designed a business that worked.
That's the gap. And it's getting wider.
Business Design Is a Skill, Not a Phase
This is where Design A Better Business gets interesting. The book introduces a framework called the Double Loop a design process specifically for businesses, not products.
Most founders I know go linear: idea → build → launch → pray. The Double Loop works differently. It's a figure-eight that cycles through seven phases: Prepare, Point of View, Understand, Ideate, Prototype, Validate, Scale. The upper loop is about developing a deep understanding of your customers and your business model. The lower loop is about testing and validating your assumptions before you bet everything on them.
The key insight? You always return to your Point of View. Your north star. The reason this business should exist in the first place. Not what the product does but why the business matters.
This sounds simple. It's not. Most founders skip straight to building because that's the fun part. Especially now, when building is basically free and at your fingertips.
The Tools That Actually Matter
The book gives you 20+ tools, but the ones that hit hardest for founders are:
The Business Model Canvas — you probably know this one, but when was the last time you actually used it? Not as a pitch deck exercise as a design tool. Mapping how your business creates, delivers, and captures value. Most founders can describe their product in detail but stumble when you ask them to articulate their business model.
The Value Proposition Canvas — this one connects your customer's jobs, pains, and gains to what you're actually offering. It forces you to answer: are you solving a real problem, or are you in love with your solution?
The Riskiest Assumption Canvas — this is the one I wish every founder would use before writing a single line of code. What's the one thing that, if wrong, kills your entire business? Not your product. Your business.
Maybe it's that customers will pay $50/month. Maybe it's that you can acquire users for under $10. Maybe it's that your market is actually big enough. Identify it. Test it. Before you build anything.
The Context Canvas — maps the broader environment: technology trends, competition, regulations, cultural factors. Most founders are heads-down building and miss the shifts happening around them.
You can explore all the tools from the book at designabetterbusiness.tools.
Why This Matters More Now Than Ever
Here's the paradox of the vibe coding era: the easier it gets to build products, the harder it gets to build businesses.
When everyone can ship an app in a weekend, the product is no longer your differentiator. Your business design is. How you capture value. How you distribute. How you create defensibility. How your unit economics actually work. How you build something that compounds over time instead of just existing.
The founders who win aren't the best builders anymore. They're the best business designers. They think about pricing models before they think about features. They map their value chain before they map their user journey. They prototype their business model with the same rigor they prototype their product.
The Shift Founders Need to Make
If you're building a startup right now, here's what I'd challenge you to do:
Stop thinking of yourself as a product builder. You're a business designer who happens to use products as one tool in your arsenal. The product is a vehicle. The business is the destination.
Run the Double Loop on your business, not just your product. Take a week. Map your Business Model Canvashonestly. Fill out the Value Proposition Canvas. Identify your riskiest assumption the one about your business, not your tech. Design an experiment to test it that costs you nothing but time.
Prototype your business model before you prototype your product. Can you sell the thing before you build it? Can you validate the pricing before you write the code? Can you test the distribution channel before you have anything to distribute?
This is the real skill gap in startups right now. Not coding. Not design. Not even fundraising. It's business design the ability to architect a company that actually works as a business, not just as an app.
Design A Better Business is a decade old, but its thesis has never been more relevant. In a world where AI builds the product for you, the founders who win will be the ones who designed the business first.