Business model canvas
The business model canvas, nine blocks, drawn in the shape people recognise and filled from what you know about the product. Then the part that earns it: which blocks do not add up — a revenue stream no channel reaches, a key activity nobody is resourced to do.
- Asks for
- What the product is and who pays for it
- How you reach customers today, or expect to
- What you know about costs and pricing
- Gives back
- All nine blocks filled, in the standard layout
- Where blocks contradict each other, named specifically
- The blocks resting on nothing, marked as assumptions
- What you would have to find out to fill the weakest one
- Plan
- Free
- Use next
- Value proposition canvas, Market size, Vision board
What it gives you
Customer segments — PMs working alone, at companies of 20–200. Channels — SEO, an AI-assistant presence, word of mouth. Revenue streams — individual subscription, $19/month. Does not add up: Key activities lists "enterprise onboarding", which no segment needs and no channel reaches. Either a segment is missing or the activity is. Cost structure has no acquisition cost. SEO is not free; it is a person.
How it works
The nine blocks are a checklist for a business, and their value is in the relationships rather than the boxes. Customer segments have to be reachable by the channels you listed. The cost structure has to include the key activities. A revenue stream has to come from a segment that appears on the left. Fill them independently and you get nine plausible boxes describing no business.
So it fills them from one description, which keeps them consistent to start with, and then reads them back against each other. The findings are usually specific and slightly embarrassing: a value proposition aimed at enterprises, a channel that is content marketing, and a cost structure with no sales cost in it.
It is drawn in the standard layout, which matters more than it sounds. A canvas that does not look like a canvas has to be explained before it can be read, and the whole point of the frame is that anybody who has seen one before knows where to look.
Who it is for
A founder or PM working out whether the business around the product holds together, or preparing to explain it to somebody who will poke at it.
Where it stops
The canvas is a description, not a validation: nine coherent blocks can describe a business nobody wants, and the only cure is customers. It also cannot size the market for you — that is what Market size is for, and a canvas with a made-up market behind it is the most confident wrong document there is.
Questions people ask
What are the nine blocks of a business model canvas?
Customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partners and cost structure. Osterwalder’s frame puts the customer-facing blocks on the right, the delivery-side blocks on the left, and value in the middle, which is why the standard layout is worth keeping: anybody who has seen one knows where to look without being told.
How is this different from filling the blocks in myself?
Filling them in by hand tends to produce nine independently reasonable boxes, because each one is written on its own. The useful work is the cross-checking: whether the channels reach the segments, whether the cost structure pays for the key activities, whether every revenue stream comes from somebody on the canvas. That is what this reports, and it is the part people skip when there is a blank template in front of them.
Should I do a business model canvas or a value proposition canvas first?
The value proposition canvas, if you are unsure whether the product fits anybody. It zooms into two of the nine blocks — the segment and the value proposition — and that is where a business most often fails. The business model canvas is the right frame once you believe the fit exists and need to work out whether a business can be built around it.
Run it on your own work
Business model canvas needs an account, because it writes against what you give it and remembers what you have told it before. It runs on the Free plan. Or see what the plans cost first.