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The Lean Canvas Business Model is a tool that guides you in an easy and intuitive way to write the first version of your business plan. It is very useful to summarise your assumptions, track your development and present your ideas when creating a venture. It is easy to change and adapt to the market circumstances or the development phase of the company.

This model was developed by Ash Maurya and it aggregates the concepts explained in two books: Business Model Generation (Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur) and the Lean Startup (Eric Ries). The result is a new canvas where the building blocks differ from the Business Model Canvas. The focus is on the customers’ problem and the solution that we want to give.

What are the concepts included in these canvas?

Like the Business Model Generation Canvas, this new canvas has 9 main building blocks. As Ash Maurya sais in this article, there is no write way to start filling up the canvas, but here we are proposing one.

  • Lean Canvas Business Model Template

1. Problem and Customer Segments

For these building blocks, you must answer to four questions:

  1. What are the top problems?
  2. How are these problems solved today?
  3. Who is the customer?
  4. Who are the early adopters?

I especially like the focus on Early Adopters. Identifying them at the first stages of a venture, sets your focus on trying to engage with those people that are going to be ambassadors of your product or idea and help you spread it faster.

Describing the Existing Alternatives at the beginning is also very useful. It makes you think about how your customers are solving their problem at the moment and identify the things that you must do better in order to generate your unique value proposition.

2. Unique Value Proposition

The Unique Value Proposition describes the unique way in which you plan to solve the problems that the people on your customer segments have. It should be clear and easy to communicate.

3. Solution

The solution describes the features that your product has for each problem that you have identified for your customer.

4. Channels

How a company communicates with and reaches its Customers to deliver a Value Proposition. Different channel types are: Sales force, Web sales, Own stores, Partner stores, etc.

5. Cost Structure and Revenue Streams

The Revenue Streams are the sources of revenue and the pricing model that the company has.

In the Cost Structure describes all cost incurred to operate the business model: fixed and variable costs.

6. Key Metrics

The Key Metrics are the Metrics that you are going to set to validate if your business is on the right track.

7. Unfair Advantage

The Unfair Advantage is something that you have or offer that makes it difficult to copy and can maintain your advantage for a longer term.

Know what?

Once you have filled in your Lean Business Model canvas it is time to test it. Try your model in the market as soon as possible. Your product doesn’t have to be the perfect version with all the extras. It is better to test your assumptions in the market as soon as possible and adapt your canvas with the feedback that you get from the market.

If you want to know more about this subject you can: