Strategy · Searching to Organising
The Lean Canvas: your plan on one sheet, as assumptions
You put a new product or a new market on one sheet in twenty minutes, and know which assumption to test first.
Worth reading first: The five growth phases
Does this sound familiar?
- You've got an idea for a new product and the team is excited. Nobody has spoken to a customer yet.
- Your business plan runs to thirty pages. It's been out of date since your first three customer conversations.
- You know exactly what your product can do, but not really whose problem it solves.
- You've been building something for months, and the customers you tell about it say 'interesting' and don't buy.
Who it's for, and when
For founders who are still looking for the fit with their market, and for companies that later want to try a new product or a new market. It belongs to Searching and Proving. In Organising, you use it for what's new alongside your existing business.
The model
“Love the problem, not your solution.”
The Lean Canvas puts a new product or a new market on one sheet, in nine boxes. Every box is an assumption: you think it's true, but you don't know yet. You fill it in in twenty minutes, with what you think now, and then you go and test it with customers.
The order matters. You start with the customer and their problem, not with your solution. If you start with the solution, you build something nice that nobody's waiting for. Only once you know the problem do the solution, the channels and the money come in.
Then you look for the assumption with the biggest risk: if it's wrong, the rest falls over. Usually it's 'this customer really has this problem, and will pay to solve it'. You test that one first, with conversations and a small trial, before you build any further. What you learn goes back on the canvas. So a Lean Canvas changes every few weeks.
It looks like your strategy canvas, but it's something else. The strategy canvas sets out the choices for your whole company. A Lean Canvas is about one product or market you still have to prove. What you prove moves on to your strategy: the customer segment becomes your core customer, the unique value proposition your brand promise, the unfair advantage your core competence.
Ash Maurya, Running Lean (2010, third edition 2022). He built it on Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas (2008) and adapted it for people still looking for the fit with their market.
1. Customer segments
Who it's for, and who your early adopters are: the first customers who feel the problem so much right now that they'll take half a solution. The more specific, the better.
Your core customer2. Problem
That customer's three biggest problems. Also write down how they solve them now: with Excel, with an agency, or not at all. That's your real competitor.
3. Unique value proposition
One sentence that says why you're different and why it's worth paying attention to. Written in the customer's words, about their problem.
A brand promise with a guarantee4. Solution
For each problem, the smallest solution that works. Not a list of everything your product can do.
5. Channels
How you reach that customer. At the start, often by hand: your network, calling, a trade association. That's fine, as long as you know how it can grow later.
6. Revenue streams
How you earn money and what it costs the customer. Put a price on it, even if it's a guess. A price is itself an assumption you test.
7. Cost structure
What it costs to find customers, serve them and make the product. How many customers do you need to break even?
8. Key metrics
The few numbers that show whether it's working. Don't measure everything: choose what tells you whether customers use it and come back.
Result KPIs and driver KPIs9. Unfair advantage
Something others can't quickly copy or buy: know-how, a network, data, a community. It's fine to leave it empty. It only comes once you're further along.
What you do better than anyonePitfalls
The canvas as a plan instead of a test
If you fill in the canvas, save it and start building, you've made a one-page business plan. It only works when you test the riskiest assumption and update the sheet with what you learned.
A segment that's everyone
'SMEs' isn't a customer segment. You can't call them and ask whether they recognise the problem. Choose a group you can name.
Watch and read
The creator himself, in four minutes: why he replaced boxes of the Business Model Canvas with problem, solution, key metrics and unfair advantage.
Watch on YouTubeIn Dutch, in four minutes: what the canvas looks like and how you use it as a founder to test an idea.
Watch on YouTubeTo go further
A long conversation with Maurya about the mistake he sees most: falling in love with your solution, and how the canvas keeps you on the problem.
Watch on YouTubeRead
Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
Ash Maurya · 2022 · ISBN 9781098108779
The book behind the canvas, in its third edition: from the first sheet to the tests with customers, following one founder through the whole book. Around 300 pages; there's no Dutch translation.
View the bookApply it
- 1
Fill it in in twenty minutes
One canvas per product or market. Work in the order of the boxes: customer, problem, unique value proposition, solution, channels, revenue, costs, key metrics, unfair advantage. Leave what you don't know empty, or put it in as a guess. Don't research it, not yet.
- 2
Point out the riskiest assumption
Go through the boxes asking: if this is wrong, what falls over? Usually it's the problem or the price. Choose one.
- 3
Test it within two weeks
Talk to ten customers in your segment about their problem, not about your solution. Ask how they solve it now and what that costs. If you want to test the price, ask for a signature or a deposit. A compliment doesn't count.
- 4
Update the canvas
Put in what you learned, with the date. If the assumption was wrong, change the segment or the problem and start again at step 2. If it was right, move on to the next riskiest.
Examples
An accountancy firm with a new service
The idea: a monthly dashboard service for clients. Segment: founders with ten to fifty people who now see their figures once a year. Riskiest assumption: that they'll pay €250 a month for it. After ten conversations, the problem turned out to be real, but they wanted a conversation with it, not a dashboard. The canvas changed: the solution became a quarterly conversation with the figures, at €400 a quarter. Four of the ten signed.
An installation company trying a new market
The company wanted to install charging points for private customers. On the canvas, the existing alternative was 'the car dealer's installer'. The conversations showed that one came with the car, free of charge. The segment shifted to companies with a vehicle fleet, where nobody was sorting it out. That's where the problem was.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- Go to the Lean Canvas. Under Blueprints you'll find the Lean Canvas with its nine boxes. Fill it in yourself or go through the boxes with the Wizard, and save it. Once you've proved a product or market, put it on your strategy canvas.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
6 situations. You need 5 of 6 right. You can try again at any time.
1.You're filling in a Lean Canvas for a new product. Which box do you start with?
2.Your canvas is done. What's the next step?
3.Which customer segment works best on a Lean Canvas?
4.You want to test whether customers will pay €250 a month. What tells you the most?
5.What's the difference between the Lean Canvas and your strategy canvas?
6.Why do you also write down how the customer solves the problem now?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
- Your core customer · You test who your company is for in conversations with customers, and describe them as one person once the market confirms it.
Not sure where to start? Take the growth scan