Learn the fundamentals of business—without the jargon

A short, practical course in how business actually works—without the MBA price tag.

Get the full course—$49→ View the curriculum

What is Business? from indie.biz on Vimeo

The promise

Understand the system. See your opportunities.

You can’t navigate a system you can’t see. What is Business? gives you the literacy and frameworks to understand how business actually works—so you can spot opportunities and make smart decisions in an unpredictable world.

Customers

How marketing works

The art of creating a customer—how businesses get them, keep them, and the difference between a sale and a relationship.

Team

Who builds businesses—and how

The Business Model Canvas, legal structures, and the people, activities, and assets that make a business run.

Money

How profit is measured

Revenue, costs, margin, and the income statement—the language every business uses to keep score.

Offering

What companies really sell

Products, services, and the meaning of value—the most important idea in business.

What we’ll cover

Learn the basics in hours, not semesters

Each lesson is a concise video plus a short assignment, so you can apply what you learn the same day.

00Orientation

Set the table

Frame your relationship to business before we dig in.

• 0.0 Introduction Free
• 0.1 What is business to you? Free

01The Big Picture

Look down from space

How business is sized, sliced, and structured across the whole landscape.

• 1.1 Sizes and Shapes
• 1.2 Industries and Sectors
• 1.3 Legal Structures

02How Businesses Work

The mechanical core

Models, marketing, value creation, and the measure of profit. The longest section—and the one that reorganizes how you think.

• 2.1 Business Model Basics Free
• 2.2 Creating a Customer
• 2.3 The Meaning of Value
• 2.4 The Measure of Profit

03The Purpose of Business

Why is business?

The bigger question, asked at the end. A new view of these tools opens doors you couldn't see before.

• 3.1 Why is Business?

Meet your instructor

Learning to think like a businessperson is a superpower.

Michael Megalli has spent twenty-five years working across the full range of business, from the biggest companies to the smallest. That arc left him with a deep conviction that independent work is the economic future—and an obsession with making it more accessible.

He launched indie.biz to build that infrastructure, teaches Entrepreneurial Marketing at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, and is the author of Unfinished Business: A New Story for a New Era of Human Flourishing.

Two ways in

Try it free or commit for $49

Lifetime access. No subscription, no upsell.

Starter
See if it’s for you.
Free
Three lessons from the start of the course. No card. No expiry.

• ✓3 starter classes
• ✓Practice prompts for each lesson
• ✓indie.biz announcements & new content

Full course · one-time
The know-how, in hours.
$49
Lifetime access to the full 10-class course, all worksheets, and everything we ship next.

• ✓Full What is Business? course
• ✓Practice exercises & supplemental worksheets
• ✓Strategic worksheets and frameworks
• ✓Access to upcoming workshops
• ✓indie.biz book group
• ✓First access to new course content

Independent—not alone

See the world more clearly. Find new possibilities in it.

Three classes free. Full course for $49. The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself.