How do you validate your problem-solution fit using lean canvas?

1 What is the lean canvas?

The lean canvas, created by Ash Maurya, a lean startup expert and author of Running Lean, is a simplified version of the business model canvas. It focuses on the problem, solution, and customer segments of your product, and helps you identify the most critical risks and assumptions that you need to test. The lean canvas consists of nine blocks, such as the top three problems that your customer segment faces, the specific group of customers that you are targeting, the single, clear, and compelling message that states why your product is different, the minimum viable product (MVP) that you can build to test your problem and value proposition hypotheses, the ways that you can reach your customer segment and deliver your value proposition, the ways that you can generate income from your product and how much you can charge, the main costs that you will incur to build and deliver your product, the indicators that you will use to measure your progress and success, and the aspect of your product or business that cannot be easily copied or bought by your competitors.

2 How to use the lean canvas?

The lean canvas is not a document to be filled out once and forgotten. It is a dynamic tool that should be updated and refined as you learn more about your customers, their problems, and your solution. To use the lean canvas, start with the problem and customer segments blocks, as these are the most important and uncertain parts of your product. Validate that you have a clear and specific problem that affects a large and reachable customer segment with existing data, customer interviews, surveys, or other methods. Then, move on to the unique value proposition and solution blocks, which are the core of your product and what you offer to your customers. Validate that you have a solution that matches your problem and that your customers find valuable and desirable with prototyping, landing pages, demos, or other methods. Fill out the rest of the blocks based on your best guesses and assumptions, and use experiments, tests, or other methods to validate that you have a viable and sustainable way to reach your customers, generate revenue, and cover your costs. Lastly, iterate and pivot based on your learnings. Measure your results, compare them to your hypotheses, and learn from your feedback. If something is not working, you should either change your hypotheses or your solution, or both. This is called pivoting, and it is a key skill for product managers.

3 How to measure your problem-solution fit?

Problem-solution fit is the stage where you have validated that you have a problem worth solving and a solution that solves it. It is the first step towards product-market fit, where you have validated that you have a product that people want and are willing to pay for. But how do you know when you have achieved problem-solution fit? There is no definitive answer, however, customer feedback, key metrics, and experiment results can all be used as indicators. Customer feedback can be collected through surveys, interviews, or other methods to measure satisfaction, loyalty, and willingness to refer your product. Key metrics should be defined based on your goals and hypotheses, and tracked regularly to look for trends, patterns, and correlations. Experiment results should be compared to your hypotheses to see how well they match, and to look for insights, learnings, and surprises that can help you improve your product.

4 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?