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"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth for the first time". That quote from boxer, Mike Tyson, applies in life as well as in the world of entrepreneurship.

It is true that when starting a business you cannot predict all the obstacles that will appear along the way or establish a perfect plan that will guarantee success, but you can rely on resources to help you organize your ideas and gather valuable information.

The lean canvas is a business model visualization tool designed for startups. It focuses on the lean startup methodology, focused on generating new ideas and taking them to prototyping to verify if the market is looking for the solutions you are proposing.

It is useful because:

  1. Identify the three biggest problems that a certain market segment has and how these people are solving the problem.
  2. Clarify the concept or phrase that communicates why your product is different and why it deserves customers' attention, that will be your unique value proposition.
  3. It establishes the solutions that your idea provides to the detected problems.
  4. Distinguish an advantage in your product or service that is difficult to copy.
  5. It outlines the channels through which you will reach your customer and how you will integrate the various channels to manage costs efficiently.
  6. Define the key metrics, those relevant indicators that will let you know if the business is doing well.
  7. Describes the cost structure, i.e., those costs that must be taken into account.
  8. It points to income; how consumers are making their payments, whether they prefer to pay cash or credit, whether they are inclined to a subscription fee, fixed price, etc.

With this tool you start generating experiments with which you can gain knowledge quickly, at a low cost and receive feedback from your customers instead of believing only in your intuition.

You can then test your minimum viable product (MVP), which is a prototype or mockup that is created for user testing. This helps you validate your business idea before launching the final version.

If your company is at an early stage, don't be afraid to test functional products that, even if they are in beta, can provide you with valuable information. Be clear that, many times, launching a test product and experimenting will bring you learnings that you had not even contemplated at the beginning.

If you would like to learn more about lean canvas and learn how to implement it through practical examples, we recommend you watch the mini virtual workshop "Lean and Business Model Canvas", led by expert José Pablo Valverde. This article was originally published in Mercados y Tendencias Magazine.