🚀 Lean Startup Canvas

One-page business model for your startup or innovation project

🎯 Problem

Top 1-3 problems your customers face

💡 Solution

How you solve each problem

📊 Key Metrics

Numbers that tell you how your business is doing

⭐ Unique Value Proposition

What makes you different and worth buying

🛡️ Unfair Advantage

Something that cannot be easily copied

📢 Channels

How you reach your customers

👥 Customer Segments

Who are your target customers

💰 Cost Structure

The most important costs in your business

💵 Revenue Streams

How you make money from customer segments

🔄 Build-Measure-Learn Cycle

🏗️

BUILD

  • • Create Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
  • • Build smallest testable version
  • • Focus on core value proposition
  • • Rapid prototyping and development
📏

MEASURE

  • • Track key metrics and KPIs
  • • Gather customer feedback
  • • Run experiments and A/B tests
  • • Collect quantitative and qualitative data
🎓

LEARN

  • • Analyze data and feedback
  • • Validate or invalidate hypotheses
  • • Decide to pivot or persevere
  • • Plan next iteration cycle

📋 Lean Startup Principles

🎯 Core Principles

  • •
    Validated Learning: Learn what customers really want through experiments
  • •
    Minimum Viable Product: Build the smallest version that enables learning
  • •
    Innovation Accounting: Measure progress in uncertain environments

🔄 Key Decisions

  • •
    Persevere: Continue with current strategy based on positive validation
  • •
    Pivot: Change strategy while keeping vision based on learning
  • •
    Stop: End the project if market validation fails consistently

📖 How to Use the Lean Startup Canvas

🎯 Getting Started

  1. Start with the Problem - identify real customer pain points
  2. Define your Customer Segments - who has these problems?
  3. Craft your Value Proposition - why you're different
  4. Outline your Solution - how you solve the problem
  5. Plan your Channels - how to reach customers
  6. Identify Key Metrics - what success looks like
  7. Consider Revenue Streams and Cost Structure
  8. Define your Unfair Advantage - what's hard to copy

💡 Best Practices

  • • Keep it simple - one line per idea initially
  • • Focus on assumptions that need testing
  • • Use customer language, not internal jargon
  • • Update regularly based on learning
  • • Share with team for alignment
  • • Use as input for experiment planning
  • • Validate assumptions before building
  • • Be prepared to pivot based on evidence
The canvas forces you to think through your business model assumptions systematically. Most startups fail not because they can't build a product, but because they build something nobody wants. Use this to test demand first.

— Steve Blank, Lean Startup Pioneer

I use this canvas weekly with startup teams. The key is treating it as a living document - update it constantly as you learn. The real value comes from the conversations it sparks about assumptions and experiments.

— Ash Maurya, Lean Canvas Creator