Lean canvas template
A blank Lean Canvas with prompts for each of the 9 boxes. Print it, share it with co-founders, fill it in.
What are the nine boxes of the Lean Canvas, and in what order do you fill them?
Problem, Customer Segments, Unique Value Proposition, Solution, Channels, Revenue Streams, Cost Structure, Key Metrics, Unfair Advantage. You do not fill them left to right. Ash Maurya's order starts with Problem and Customer Segments together, because neither means anything without the other, and ends with Unfair Advantage — the one box most founders cannot answer honestly on day one, and the one they should leave blank until they can.
- Problem — the top three problems the customer has, plus the existing alternatives they use today, including doing nothing.
- Customer Segments — who specifically has those problems, and which of them are your early adopters.
- Unique Value Proposition — a single clear sentence saying why you are different and worth attention.
- Solution — the smallest thing that addresses each of the three problems. One line per problem.
- Channels — the paths to your customers, both free and paid.
- Revenue Streams — the model, the price, the gross margin.
- Cost Structure — customer acquisition cost, distribution, hosting, people.
- Key Metrics — the single number that tells you whether the business is working.
- Unfair Advantage — what cannot be easily copied or bought. Leave it blank rather than filling it with something that can.
Credit where due
The Lean Canvas was created by Ash Maurya in 2010, building on Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas. The structure below is Ash's; the prompts are our annotations. The official tool lives at leanstack.com — Ash's team built it and it's worth the support.
The 9 boxes, in fill order
Don't fill left-to-right. Fill in the order Ash recommends: Problem + Customer first, then UVP, Solution, Channels, Revenue + Costs, Key Metrics, and Unfair Advantage last.
Problem
Top 3 problems your customer faces. Be specific — "managing time" is too vague. Include their existing alternatives (workarounds, competitors, doing nothing).
Problem 1: ___ Problem 2: ___ Problem 3: ___ Existing alternatives: ___
Customer Segments
Who exactly has these problems? Name the role, the context, and the early adopters specifically — the subset that feels the pain most acutely and would adopt a half-finished solution.
Target customer: ___ Early adopters: ___
Unique Value Proposition
A single, clear, compelling message that explains why you're different and worth paying attention to. The high-level concept (X for Y) goes here too.
UVP: ___ High-level concept: ___ for ___
Solution
The top 3 features that address the top 3 problems. Don't list everything — just the features that map directly to the problems above.
Feature for Problem 1: ___ Feature for Problem 2: ___ Feature for Problem 3: ___
Channels
Path to customers — how they'll find you. Include free (SEO, content, communities) and paid channels you plan to test, plus inbound vs outbound.
Free channels: ___ Paid channels: ___ Direct outreach: ___
Revenue Streams
How you make money — pricing model, lifetime value, gross margin. If you don't know yet, write your best guess and date it.
Pricing model: ___ Price point: ___ LTV estimate: ___ Gross margin: ___
Cost Structure
Customer acquisition cost, distribution costs, hosting/infrastructure, salaries. Write fixed and variable separately.
Fixed costs: ___ Variable costs per customer: ___ CAC estimate: ___
Key Metrics
The numbers that tell you if the business is working. Pirate metrics (AARRR), retention cohorts, payback period — pick the 3–5 that would change your decisions if they moved.
Activation metric: ___ Retention metric: ___ Referral metric: ___ Revenue metric: ___
Unfair Advantage
Something that can't be easily copied or bought. Insider information, network effects, personal authority, exclusive partnerships, proprietary data. Most founders leave this blank at first — that's honest. Coming back to it later is part of the work.
Unfair advantage: ___ (or "TBD — to be earned")
How to stress-test your canvas
Once you've filled in all 9 boxes, the canvas is a hypothesis — not a plan. Stress-test it by asking three questions:
- Which box has the least evidence? That's the riskiest assumption. Test it next.
- If a competitor read this, what would they spot as weak? That weakness is real — fix the box, don't hide it.
- Which box could you remove and still have a business? If the answer is any box, you don't actually understand the business model yet.
Pressure-test the canvas in a 15-minute talk
GoNoGo runs a structured voice session that interrogates each box of your Lean Canvas — surfacing the weakest assumption, the missing customer evidence, and the box you're hand-waving. The output is a written report mapped back to the 9 boxes.
Free · No credit card · up to 20 reports
Read the source
Running Lean by Ash Maurya is the canonical Lean Canvas reference. Should you read it even after this template? Yes. The book has dozens of worked examples and the texture you can't get from a one-page summary. Buy the book →
Frequently asked questions
What are the 9 boxes of the Lean Canvas, and in what order do you fill them?+
Is this template the official Ash Maurya Lean Canvas?+
How long should it take to fill out one Lean Canvas?+
Should every founder on the team fill out their own copy first?+
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