6 Underrated Business Models the Market Still Can’t Price Properly

Just structures that hide alpha in plain sight.

Me trying to figure out the business model

🎙️You want to find mispriced opportunities?

Forget sectors, ratios, financials, sub-signals, or other exotics criteria you might have encountered. Today we will look at something a bit different. Business model; yeah I know at first glance it might not be the first you’ll be looking at, and you even might be telling yourself: if the business model is not easy to understand, the business is crap. In an another discussion you are right, but here we try to give credit to this approach.

So, look at how a business is built. As we said, some models are hated because they’re weird and others are misunderstood because they’re in between categories. In both cases it interesting to look at it closer. Because a few… are so good, people assume they must be fragile. Or crap lol.

Let’s look at 6 of them. 6 is good, it’s not too much, it’s not too lite. (And to be honest I don’t many exotic business model); lets get into it!

1. Reverse Network Effects 📶

You’ve heard of network effects: more users = more value.

But some businesses work better when they don’t scale the same way — or when they slowly increase density.

Example:

• Chrono24 (luxury watches): if you have 800 Rolex listings, that’s too much.

• Vinted: if the platform is too big, discovery collapses. Cognitive overload: less sales.

These businesses thrive with curated liquidity so they win by avoiding noise — not embracing it. The market hates them because they don’t “scale efficiently.”

But that’s not the point….and that’s the ‘edge’.

2. Logistics-first Retailers

Amazon made logistics sexy.

But for most other retailers, ops = cost center.

Except when it isn’t.

Some brands win not on product, but on distribution detail.

• Owning last-mile = control of NPS

• Local micro-warehousing = unbeatable speed

• Logistics as UX

Example:

• Thrive Market in the US: logistics is the brand.

• Picnic in the Netherlands: grocery delivery with milkman routes + optimized baskets.

Margins look ugly at first.

But when scale hits → pricing power emerges.