<p>Digital technology has spurred the rapid growth of platform-based start-ups. Many studies have focused on the outcomes of platform start-ups’ business models, some have examined how entrepreneurs’ characteristics and cognitive factors affect the business model design (BMD). However, we have insufficient understanding of how platform start-ups’ embedded institutional environments affect the formation of their business model.This study centers on a typical agricultural e-commerce platform start-up to explore how enterprises gradually complete the process of BMD under the influence of institutional factors. The study found that with the growth of start-ups, institutional logic&#xa0;(IL) presents a trend of transformation, and promotes start-ups from the stage of value proposition design through value activity creation, then to the value network through different institutional work (IW) adopted by entrepreneurs so as to gradually form a business model. The study makes theoretical contributions to revealing the diversity of IL as a core driver of BMD, identifying IW as a mediating mechanism between IL and BMD, and presenting a dynamic institutional perspective on BMD evolution</p>