1st
Define who are the people that will pay to benefit from your idea, and who are the people that will use products and services related to your idea.
Sometimes customers and users differ. On social media networks, for example, the users are the members, however, the customers are the advertisers that want to reach those members.
Write down a short description of customers and users. Come back every time you learn something more about them.
A solution doesn't work if it doesn't know who it's serving.
2nd
Use three (3) sentences / bullet points for customers and three (3) for users. This will help you focus on the most important problems.
3rd
A problem that is worthwhile solving is one that exists despite existing alternatives customers and users may use today. It is, therefore, good practice to investigate existing alternatives and to reframe the problem(s) you identified to those.
4th
To be sure it is appropriate to invest time and effort to solve it, you need to ask and answer the following question: are customers willing to pay for a potential solution to this problem?
Use the data you have from researching existing alternatives.
Useful numbers:
5th
Early adopters are the customers that experience the problem you identified and validated the most.
In the early stages of any business, focusing on early adopters is invaluable to help get feedback and traction, to further validate the significance of the problem you solve and the business potential.
6th
We refrained from defining a solution earlier because it is important to create a context where you can - as objectively as possible - judge if you have found a problem worth solving.
Write 1 solution per problem you identified for customers and users.
If you defined problems using the existing alternatives as a reference, your solution will be automatically differentiated, as it will describe how you solve problems that persist despite existing alternatives.
7th
The key here is to focus on the benefits you deliver to customers and users first.
8th
It is now time to decide how you are going to sell your solution to customers.
Be mindful that these channels include both online (social media, website, advertising...) and offline (tradeshow, physical store...), these channels don't necessary meaning revenue, they are how customers encounter a brand.
9th
This canvas block is dedicated to measuring the effectiveness of their problem-solution above.
Therefore your success metrics need to be listed in three (3) categories:
10th
Money for the business (hiring, operating, development...)
It is good to get a feel of the amount of money required monthly to perform all these tasks (Burn Rate).
It is even better to determine the unit economics. That is understanding the revenue as well as the cost associated with the most basic sales object e.g. one item of a physical product, a monthly subscription fee, ..., etc. With these you can easily determine: profit per unit, the number of units to be sold to reach positive cash flow (the state where you do not eat up your company's cash reserves), the number of units to reach break-even, etc
11th
Characteristics that are hard to copy, and cannot be easily bought. E.g. exclusive agreements, acclaimed expertise, business model asymmetry, ...
Ask yourself what would prevent someone from copying your business model, even if they had access to a full copy of it, and write your answers in this block.
12th
1 sentence about the essence of your business.