Funding rounds A funding round is a discrete round of investment by which a business or other enterprise raises money to fund operations, expansion, capital projects, [33] acquisitions, or some other business purpose. (See Figure 4-15.) Again, the obvious places to find this information are Crunchbase and/or the competitor’s website. This information is important because competitors with funding have a competitive advantage. Figure 4-15. Funding Rounds result sample Revenue streams A revenue stream is how the product brings in money. As Figure 4-16 depicts, it could be via a transaction fee, advertising, monthly fees, or Software as a Service (SaaS), or by selling user data and trends to other companies. OkCupid is a dating site that’s free for users. The company makes money through premium features and advertising. Facebook uses data mining as its first revenue model, selling competitive intelligence to third parties from unsuspecting users. eBay’s success hinges completely on users being able to easily buy from and sell to one another. Adobe charges a monthly SaaS fee for its cloud-based service. How a product is potentially monetized should be directly tied to the UX strategy because that’s what will make the product valuable to the user and the stakeholder. A successful competitor’s revenue model will probably reflect that. If you’re not sure how a certain competitor is monetizing its product, spend more time using its website. If the competitor wants to survive in the long run, it needs to eventually charge someone for something. Is there advertising on the website?