Canvases for Startups! Yay or Nay?
... Many moons later, I finally cracked how I should think about canvases and how I should use them and ended up coming up with my own version that I called “business control panel”.
As a young and naive founder one of the first things I was told was to put together a lean (or other variations “business model”, “AI”, “growth”, …) canvas. It felt overwhelming at first but once I learned the trick of “filling in the blanks” it was a breeze to fill them out. It felt great: “I’m a real founder now! I can fill this up so quickly.” But the reality was it felt pretty much like the high school geometry that I did once and never encountered again. It became a source of anxiety once in a while that I remembered it and reminded myself that “mhmm, I guess I’m doing this startup thing wrong since I’m not using that canvas I filled 6 months ago.”
Many moons later, I finally cracked how I should think about canvases and how I should use them and ended up coming up with my own version that I called “business control panel”.
What are canvases good for?
Structured Brainstorming / Thinking:
Canvases break down complex ideas into manageable blocks, fostering focused brainstorming and problem-solving.
They provide a visual framework for collaboration, ensuring everyone is on the same page and key points are not missed.
Clearer Communication:
Canvases act as a shared language, simplifying communication of complex strategies and plans to team members and stakeholders.
They create a tangible reference point for discussions and presentations, fostering alignment and buy-in.
Agility and Iteration:
Canvases are designed for rapid iteration and adaptation. They encourage testing, learning from mistakes, and quickly pivoting based on new information.
They prevent getting bogged down in lengthy documents and allow for flexible adjustments as the startup evolves.
Why do canvases suck?
Oversimplification:
Canvases do oversimplify complex problems, neglecting important nuances and details.
It is easy to be distracted by their simplicity and ignore that they are meant to be catalysts for deeper exploration, not replacements for thorough analysis.
Misinterpretation and Misuse:
Every startup has some level of nuances. Rigidly adhering to a specific framework without thinking can stifle creativity and limit options.
Canvases can be misinterpreted if not applied thoughtfully and create misalignment.
Tool Dependence:
Canvases can stifle independent thinking and critical analysis by giving a false sense of accomplishment.
It is easy to think about them as the end target rather than an executive summary or a planning sheet for experimentation.
So, yay or nay?
Yes, but conditionally…
First pick the right canvas (lean, business model, ai, a combination of all) that suits your purpose. If the goal is starting a business, then deeply think about and understand why the canvas has those boxes and how those parameters impact your target business.
Remind yourself that the canvas is just an artifact, a thinking tool, a coordination mechanism and treat it as such. I have deconstructed the lean canvas, for example, in Miro and explicitly added directed links to show my workflow of thinking through different parts of the canvas and explicitly wrote down how they impact each other. I have also connected the right boxes to other relevant frameworks like “jobs to be done”, “value stream mapping”, etc.
I have then linked those boxes to other documents that capture the strategic planning like financial model, cost and resource planning, product strategy etc. This way the enriched canvas acts like a control panel where I can quickly facilitate all my strategic thinking and corresponding artifacts.
