Lean Canvas

Alongside your Cash Flow Forecast, the Canvas Model is a useful resource to show investors so they can find out what your company does, how it does it and why you can do it well.

Lean Canvas promises an actionable and entrepreneur-focused business plan. It focuses on problems, solutions, key metrics and competitive advantages. The structure is similar to the well-known Business Model Canvas, but some sections have been exchanged.

The key fundamental to Lean methodology is the elimination of waste – this includes time, processes, inventory and more. So as a lean start-up, you need a quicker way to get ideas out of your head, you need to stay lean and avoid waste – so, it’s time to introduce Lean Canvas.

As a business owner, it’s your duty to get ideas out of your head onto paper so that others can see and help build the problem solution.

Traditional business plans are not relevant in the ideation stage – they take too much time and are usually created without any validated learning. They are more suited to businesses that are already operating with an established supply chain, so that improvements can be applied to an existing network. Instead, we can take a fresh look at the potential ins and outs of your idea, and this will help us with ideation, too. Next, we can test your hypothesis by getting out of the building.

We call these ‘canvas models’ because you are meant to print them out big, and keep adding and changing them as you go. Use the information in the video below, and the further reading links to start yours.

Let us know in the comments which sections you are most confident about.