Business Case 101: How Entrepreneurs Can Guide Decisions of Customers and Investors

Many tech founders are passionate about their product, which is great. But in B2B, enthusiasm alone doesn’t close deals. Customers and investors don’t buy technology or a product. they buy a business case.

A business case answers a simple but critical question: “If we invest time, money, or attention in this — what do we get in return?”

The best way to answer that question is with numbers that quantify the improvements: less cost, more speed, better outcomes.

Let’s look at how that logic works for three groups: Customers, Investors, and the startup itself.

🧑💼 1. The Business Case for B2B Customers

When selling to individuals (like in consumer apps), decisions are often emotional or impulsive. But in B2B, people are accountable to teams, budgets, and KPIs. They need to justify their decisions: to their boss, to procurement, or to a committee.

So, a successful B2B startup doesn’t just say “this is a great product”, but it proves that buying the product generates value for the customer.

Here’s how.

There are three kinds of improvements you can offer to a business customer:

✅ Operational Benefits – The Simple, Fast Yes

Operational benefits are about improving daily work of your customer. You help them do the same thing, but cheaper or with fewer resources.

Key traits of operational benefits:

• Improve cost efficiency
• Affect high-frequency, routine processes
• Benefits are often immediate and easy to measure

Examples:

• “Reduce invoice processing time from 10 to 5 minutes” → saves FTE time
• “Replace legacy software, cutting license cost by CHF 20K/year”
• “Automate data entry, reducing manual work by 80%”

🟢 Good metric types: cost per unit, hours saved, number of tasks automated, error rates.

📈 Tactical Benefits – Harder to Measure, Still Valuable

Tactical benefits are about doing the work better - increasing speed, consistency, accuracy, or resilience. They improve outputs or outcomes, even if input stays constant.

Key traits:

• Improve process output quality or decision quality
• Reduce variability, delay, or risk
• Often affect project success, service quality, or responsiveness

Examples:

• “Reduce delivery variance from ±3 days to ±1 day” → improves reliability
• “Cut proposal approval cycles from 10 days to 4 days” → improves agility
• “Increase forecast accuracy from 70% to 85%” → supports better decisions

The difference to operational benefits is that tactical benefits cannot just be plugged into the existing process, but require changes in the subsequent steps. For example, if your innovation increases the service quality of a process, the actual benefit for the company will be realized once they translate this higher service quality into lower cost for returns of complaints management.

Tactical benefits often affect middle managers and process owners. They may be harder to quantify in CHF or hours, but still lead to big performance gains.

🟡 Good metric types: throughput time, rework rate, customer complaint ratio, SLA compliance.

Note: Tactical improvements often indirectly lead to cost or revenue gains, but you may need to help the buyer connect the dots.

🚀 Strategic Benefits – Big Impact, Long Decision Time

Strategic benefits change what the company is capable of. You’re enabling something new - a revenue stream, a market entry, a better business model.

Key traits:

• Business model level → improves market positioning or performance
• High-level impact → Often tied to long-term growth, positioning, or structural change

Examples:

• “We help you launch a subscription offering.”
• “You can enter a new customer segment profitably.”
• “You get a first-mover advantage in a new market.”

🔴 Good metric types: new customer acquisition cost, new revenue share, margin from new model, market share

Also interesting: some customers may prefer to invest in your startupinstead of just buying the product - if the strategic benefit is that big. Even though this looks like a great opportunity, it can change everything: If your customer is also a shareholder, they might not want you to sell your technology to their competitors.

💸 2. The Business Case for Investors

Investors ask a similar question: “If I put in X, what do I get back?”

But their expectations vary depending on why they’re investing.

Types of returns investors may expect:

• Financial: Multiply their money. These are classical Venture Capital Companies.
• Strategic: Gain insight, tech, or market access. For example, some Corporate Venturing companies do this.
• Impact: Drive social or environmental change. Most of these investors are non-profit or government-related and provide non-dilutive funding.
• Personal: Boost reputation, learn, support founders. Mostly individuals ("business angels").

As a startup, you should be clear about which value(s) you offer, and support them with metrics.

Examples:

• “We project a 25x return over 4 years.”
• “With us, you get early access to this growing market.”
• “Every CHF 10K invested impacts 500 learners.”
• “You’ll be associated with a leading innovation initiative.”

The more of these you offer, the stronger your investor case. In fact, in the non-dilutive investment space, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between investors and customers: Both give you money so you can help them achieve an important goal.

And if one of your investors is also a customer, that's usually even better (well, mostly, since things can become complicated in these situations).

Many startups put more effort into attracting investors than winning customers — even though, in many cases, it’s actually easier to sell the product than to raise capital.

Why? Because for a B2B customer, a product that delivers strong operational benefits -  like cost savings or process efficiency - can generate a return that far exceeds what they’d gain from investing in the startup itself.

💡 Advice to founders: If your product creates measurable value, prioritize proving that value to customers. A satisfied customer not only pays, but they validate your business case, create traction, and may even open the door to future investment under better terms.

📊 3. The Business Case for the Startup Itself

Finally, don’t forget: your business needs to make sense for you. In the long run, you must generate more money than you spend - that’s what makes the difference between a startup and a side project.

This means:

• You know how much it costs to win and serve a customer (CAC, COGS)
• You know how much value you get from each customer (CLV, gross margin)
• You know when you'll break even, and how growth improves margins

Even if you’re not profitable yet, show that the unit economics are solid.

🎯 Final Rule: No Quantifiable Benefit = No Business Case

In all three directions - customer, investor, startup - the logic is the same:

• You’re asking someone to invest(money, time, trust)
• → So you must show what they get in return
• → And you must express it in their language: KPIs, metrics, measurable outcomes

Cost savings are the easiest. But even if you’re improving speed, quality, or strategic capability, you must connect that to business results.

Help them see:

• What will change?
• By how much?
• Why that change matters?

Because at the end of the day, a startup only becomes real when it can explain its value in numbers.