The lean canvas is a powerful tool for defining and operating your startup. This deck presents a brief history and overview of the lean canvas and then describes how you can use the tool to "map and drive" your startup.

1. Using the Lean Canvas to
Map + Drive Your Startup
Presented at to
Oct 1, 2015
Kingston, Ontario

2. Agenda
● What is the lean canvas?
● The lean canvas as map
● Driving with the lean canvas

3. Caveats + Clarifications
● Frame of reference = tech
● Goal = a real tool for you to use!
● One size does not fit all + YMMV
● Academic context is specific
● Questions any time!

4. 1. What is the lean
canvas?

5. Let’s start with a definition
“Lean Canvas is an adaptation of Business Model
Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder which Ash Maurya
created in the Lean Startup spirit. Lean Canvas promises
an actionable and entrepreneur-focused business plan. It
focuses on problems, solutions, key metrics and
competitive advantages.”
https://canvanizer.com/new/lean-canvas

6. Business Model Canvas (2008)
http://www.freemium.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Blank-Business-Model-Canvas.jpg

7. Lean Canvas (2009)
https://milanpevec.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/lean-canvas_blank.png

8. The “canvas” movement is part of
larger trends in the business world
● Agile
● Lean startup
● Decreasing cost of entry
● Seed investment explosion
● Startup “hacking”

9. These trends are equally relevant to
startups and big companies
http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/book

10. The Business Model Canvas is a
work of “practical business theory”
● Arose out of PhD work - “The Business
Model Ontology. . .”
● As such, it’s a distillation of specific
theories about value creation
● But it’s also a (very popular) strategic
planning tool for business practitioners

11. The Lean Canvas offers a similar
tool focused more on risk and action
My main objective with Lean Canvas was making it as actionable as
possible while staying entrepreneur-focused. The metaphor I had in
mind was that of a grounds-up tactical plan or blueprint that guided the
entrepreneur as they navigated their way from ideation to building a
successful startup.
My approach to making the canvas actionable was capturing that which
was most uncertain, or more accurately, that which was most risky.
I had found the initial Business Model Canvases I created back in
August 2009 missing on things I’d consider very high risk while
other things on the canvas didn’t register as high enough risk.
http://leanstack.com/why-lean-canvas/

12. Here’s what Ash removed

13. Here’s what he added
https://milanpevec.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/lean-canvas_blank.png

14. 2. The lean canvas as
a map

15. Now that we’re situated, let’s have a
closer look

16. Now that we’re situated, let’s have a
closer look
PRODUCT/COMPANY MARKET/CUSTOMER

17. 1. Problem
● be specific!
● start small
● multiple problems
● nested problems
● is it falsifiable?

18. 2. Customer
● be super specific!
● can you find them?
● multiple customers?
● consider personas

19. 3. UVP
● Not your product!
● Marriage of problem
and customer
● Value creation!
● Differentiation
● Tag line?

20. 4. Solution
● Your product!
● Key features
● Platform?
● Core use case?

21. 5. Channels
● Be specific!
● Multiple channels
● Now vs. later
● Cost matters

22. 6. Metrics
● Measuring success
● KPIs
● Vanity vs. Actionable
● Unit economics
● OMTM
● Data availability?

23. 7. Revenue
● Be specific!
● Back of envelope
● LTV
● Gross margin
● Revenue vs. users
● Future streams?

24. 8. Costs
● Salaries!
● Channels?
● CAC
● Operations
● Unit economics

25. 9. Unfair Advantage
● Not my favorite box
● Often doesn’t exist
● Often must be
developed/earned

26. 3. Driving with the
lean canvas

27. But What Does a Business Model Have to Do With My Startup?
Your startup is essentially an organization built to search for a repeatable and
scalable business model. As a founder you start out with:
1) a vision of a product with a set of features,
2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who
are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel. How do we price
and position the product? How do we create end user demand? Who are our
partners? Where/how do we build the product? How do we finance the
company, etc.”
http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/
“Your startup is a series of
hypotheses. . .”

28. Your job is to fill the Canvas
with hypotheses. . .

29. Then prove or pivot them.

30. Every startup is at a
different stage of
proving hypotheses!

31. Entrepreneurship Class

32. Problem/Solution Fit

33. Product/Market Fit

34. Know your stage,
know your riskiest
hypothesis, and
start testing!

35. isouweine@gmail.com | @sonofsarah