Lean Canvas — Capture your idea in 20 minutes versus 20 weeks

This is an awesome tool that every startup should use. Not just once, but regularly update your assumptions, as you gain traction. Highly recommended. Thanks @ashmaurya for not just building this, but working tirelessly on getting companies to reach product/market fits.

Whenever I get an idea for a business, this is what I start with.

Pros:

Keeps me focused on the right areas

Cons:

Missing a community

Lean Canvas on Leanstack is probably the easiest way to capture your business/product strategy and to share with your team!

Ash Maurya is an excellent teacher and provides thought leadership. Anyone trying to build a product or service will benefit from learning about the Lean Canvas.

Pros:

A useful adaptation of the Business Model Canvas to bootstrapping startups.

Cons:

The time is on 'product-market' fit and I think it needs a shorter process of validating the problem.

I started to use it a long time ago and it is still the most effective and simple tool out there for your Lean Canvas creation

Pros:

Easy to create and to share with all stackholders

Cons:

Nothing so far

Been using Lean Canvas for a couple of years now, and it's the best platform to test business ideas or to reframe existing ideas. I've recommended this to several friends when they're trying to figure out their idea but haven't fully thought through their whole business model.

Been using the app for my classes for some time. It's great!

Pros:

Great interface for lean and nice improved flow through building beyond the canvas.

Cons:

Could use a little UX upgrade

Our thoughts are biased in themselves. When we have an idea churning and digesting inside the grey matter between our ears. We fall in love with it, we think of ourselves, our idea as unstoppable, it has no faults. With a tool like lean canvas, we are able to birth that idea into the world, without risking large sums of money: capital, or 3 years of grinding a business up the hockey stick curve. We can do it from the saftey of our office, or on the kitchen table. We can within 20 min unravel the lies we tell ourselves. And when faced with the truth, and various realities: Something magical happens, we can pivot and plan and expand upon over and over and over with no risk other than forgoing on our ego's. Going forward: We need more case studies, a collective hive of brains, and of their journeys and what failed and why, and of course what got traction and why. Require acess to a 3rd person to probe, and question our assumptions. Vital, we need someone to challenge our ideas, our thinking. This is a team sport, and lean canvas brings everyone together :)

Pros:

Ability to put thoughts to paper (application) and flesh out new ventures, or expand upon old ones.

Cons:

We need to ask of ourselves, and each other: Better questions, to derive better answers. And this is challenging for most, in isolation.

This is the best approach, It will help you and your team to ask important questions first. Then you can plan your sprint iteration to do experiments to get answers.

Pros:

Reduce waste by going with the essential.

Cons:

Not the canvas but librairies of previous cases can be useful.

Lean Canvas has become a universal tool for business planning. It keeps you focused and forces you to answer the hard questions early, but does so quickly without getting lost in the weeds. Keep it clean, keep it focused, keep innovating -- those are just some of the benefits of using Lean Canvas.

Pros:

Makes the process of planning a new business or project very focused.

Cons:

If I really had to pick something, as others have mentioned, could benefit from added domain-specific materials.

This is a great tool that truly helps you validate your idea and ask the hard questions.

Pros:

Super easy to use and straightforward

Cons:

Nothing!

"I don't get out of bed in the morning without a Lean Canvas to guide my efforts. It is that good. And valuable." —Jeff 'SKI' Kinsey I have used it since SATX 3DS in Spring 2012.

Pros:

This single sheet of paper is pure genius. It helps you do the mental exercises you might otherwise miss or forget to do.

Cons:

Zero. None. Zilch. There is no better tool for going from idea to execution. Period.

This is my go-to tool for business.

Pros:

Lean Canvas is like the scientific method for business. It is objective and and the best part is all in one page.

Cons:

None.

Lean Canvas requires thinking time. It will give you a considered plan for your ideas and or business. For those new to Lean Canvas on Leanstack if you are feeling frustrated as you begin then you are on the right track! If it takes you and hour and 20 minutes the first time you use it for analysis then good! Thanks Ash Maurya.

I have used the Lean Canvas since 2013 in my work with over 100+ startups and large enterprises. It is the first step in our engagement process (to understand our clients' business model and for our clients and us to establish a common language). During delivery, it is the a key part of the suite of tools we use to help founders and CxOs build, run, and grow a successful business.

Pros:

Motivates elimination of biases and continuous validation of assumptions.

Cons:

Lacks a domain-relevant knowledge database of "good questions to ask" in each part of the canvas.

Can't live without this. Provides a simple structured approach to implementing lean startup principles.

Pros:

Clarifies my thinking around any new idea.

Cons:

No. Other systems are too large and expensive.

Thanks for providing a structure for disciplined analysis of an idea. Business books can confuse with multiplicity of ideas and examples however Lean Canvas gives a structure to follow.

Pros:

It is like accountability coaching - it gives your a structure for discipline.

Cons:

There are I am sure many adaptions of this idea.

Lean Canvas is a fantastic tool for evaluating and evolving your product, especially within a product team. The model is easy to communicate, and is particularly good for testing ideas and flushing out the vagueness. I've attended several of his workshops and Ash is an excellent teacher and is a passionate advocate for applying agile/CI models to business plans.

Lean Canvas has helped me a lot to map out the business models of my startup tabtag – glowing and reusable Macbook stickers. Thank you @ashmaurya for the great work you are doing for the startup community.

This is not simply a tool for filling out out a Lean Canvas (a single page business model story), though it does that incredibly well. The Lean Canvas tool itself is excellent, allowing easy collaboration with others, as well as tools to make reading and presenting a canvas easier. However, the Lean Stack platform contains several tools -- not just the canvas -- and many resources for early-stage entrepreneurs. As a startup coach, my favourite part of Lean Stack I can oversee the work of several entrepreneurs within a single UI / workflow.

Pros:

Easy to master. An essential way for an entrepreneur to describe their business model story quickly, and succinctly.

Cons:

More examples of filled-in canvases would help to visualize the way that other businesses have used this tool.