You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. There are no “overrides” – for example, businesses don’t thrive just because they offer the latest technology, or because everyone wants to be “green, or because their goal is to reduce world hunger. I expect that should seem intuitive to all entrepreneurs, but every investor I know has many stories about startup funding requests with major business model elements missing. The most common failures are solutions looking for a problem, lack of a defined market, and giving away the product