By Dhosjan Greenaway-Dalini

Welcome to the September edition of Finance Tech AI. This newsletter is dedicated to exploring the evolving intersection of finance and technology, with a special focus on how Artificial Intelligence is shaping the future.

Whether you’re a founder, finance professional, SME leader, or someone curious about how these changes are impacting businesses, this newsletter will provide practical insights and takeaways to help you navigate the rapidly changing landscape.

In today’s newsletter:

• Designing Your Startup Business Model

• In case You Missed It

• The Dhosjan Show Podcast

• On the Horizon

Designing Your Startup Business Model

While many factors cause startup failure, a flawed business model is a major one, implicated in up to 30% of cases. This makes getting it right a critical foundation for success.

Forget the textbook definitions. Your business model is the engine of your startup. In a highly competitive environment, a robust and defensible business model is what gets you funded and enables you to scale long after launch.

Simply put, it's the plan for how your startup makes money by delivering value to customers, while managing costs to achieve sustainable growth.

It forces you to answer some critical questions:

✅How will our business actually make money?

✅Have we spent enough time validating the problem?

✅What makes our product and services so special?

✅What should we charge, and how will we get paid?

This isn't just a slide in your pitch deck; it's the framework you use to run your business every day and the DNA of your financial model (more on that in future newsletters).

To structure this, we use a framework called the One-Page Business Model. It's built on ten key blocks, each with a core question to answer, including:

1. Value Proposition: What unique experience or problem does your product solve?

2. Channels: How will you reach your customers?

3. Competition: What does the market and competitive landscape look like?

Your next step: Carve out 1 hour of uninterrupted time to map out your own business model using this framework. This simple exercise will give you incredible clarity on your strategy, strengths, and weaknesses.

To dive deeper and map out your full one-page plan, we've created a guide and simple template covering all ten blocks.

👉🏾 Interested in the full template?

We are also available to support you with a review of your business model.

In Case You Missed It

September was a whirlwind! In between advising startups and scaleups on fundraising, financial models and go-to-market tactics, we had the pleasure of participating in some incredible events.

• World Afro Day®: A New Guinness World Record! We were honoured to support the World Afro Day team as they achieved a new Guinness World Record for 'Most users to take an online cultural awareness lesson in 24 hours!' The campaign, backed by influential figures like Beverley Knight, was about spreading a global message of Afro hair acceptance and fostering a more inclusive future in schools and in the workplace.

• World Finance Forum: It was a pleasure to be back on stage in London, and joined by Steve Legg for a deep dive into "Unlocking the Power of AI & ML.” We explored how AI is transforming finance from a reactive to a strategic function, emphasising its role as a partner that augments human expertise.

• Female x Finance: Career Crossroads Panel: In collaboration with Imperial College London, our founder Dhojsan, joined an inspiring panel with Melvina Metochi and Nithya Sridharan, where they shared real stories and frameworks with ambitious women in finance, discussing the pivotal moments that define a career. The energy in the room was phenomenal!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: We’ve been busy behind the scenes levelling up our educational offerings, and Q4 promises to deliver some real gems! Take a first look at our new knowledge hub - Upskill with Bia Innovate. Lot's more to come!

The Dhosjan Show Podcast

Season 3 of The Dhosjan Show is back in October! Highlights from Season 2 included deep dives into AI in Finance, R&D tax credits, and tips for creating a culture of entrepreneurship.

All season 1 and 2 episodes are available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. On our @BiaInnovateFinance channel on YouTube, we’ll share full episodes from Season 2 onwards, plus we’ll be adding video highlights from Season 1 as well!

The podcast dives into Finance, Technology, and AI with an emphasis on the human at the heart of innovation. We’ll cover business basics, founder stories and include practical tips for aspiring entrepreneurs, business owners, or anyone curious to learn. Plus, we’ll feature expert guest speakers to inspire and inform.

Tune into future episodes for more founder stories, business fundamentals, discussions on AI governance in practice, as well as explorations on more real business use cases for AI.

👉🏾 Don’t miss an episode. 🎧📺

On the Horizon

Some exciting speaking engagements are coming up!

• FAB Festival: 11 - 12 March 2026 - Birmingham (In-person conference)

The Finance, Accounting, and Bookkeeping Show’s mission is to give attendees the insights, tools, and connections to grow faster, work smarter, and stay ahead of change.

🤝If you’re attending this event, send me a message and let’s catch up in person.

In Summary

This month is about strengthening our foundations. By refining your business model, you set a powerful course for the rest of the year and beyond. Let's focus on embracing the innovation that will drive our success.

👉🏾Reach out to us at Bia Innovate to learn how we can support you in your business transformation journey!

Who We Are

Bia Innovate is a Fractional CFO and Startup Consultancy. We provide hands-on support to founders, finance and business leaders to turn strategy into action, finance into growth levers, systems into scalability, and AI integration into impact.

👉🏾 If you’re curious, stuck, or ready to explore your growth strategy with us, get in touch.

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