Canvases
Three familiar canvases, drawn from one Founding Hypothesis.
The lean canvas, the Story and the job a customer hires for are views of the Founding Hypothesis, never documents beside it. Each renders from the slots, and an edit writes back to the slot it came from.
One record, three views
Every canvas asks the same questions in a different order. Kept as separate documents, they drift apart within a week. Rendered from one record, they cannot disagree.
Each view shows the grade of the slot behind every box. A box with no outside Evidence reads ungraded, however well it is written.
The lean canvas
The canvas is read-only. Each box renders from a slot or a record, and an edit to a box is a Change to its source.
| Box | Renders from |
|---|---|
| Customer segments | the customer slot and its ICP |
| Problem | the problem slot and the record it points at |
| Existing alternatives | the switch slot: what the ICP hires today |
| Solution | the approach slot and its Product Template |
| Unique value proposition | the differentiation slot's two axes |
| Channels | the customer slot's reach: Prospects who reply |
| Revenue and cost | the Minimum Success Criteria and its reachability check |
| Key metrics | the Lifecycle state's one Metric that matters, never typed |
| Unfair advantage | the advantages the sentence names, each pointing at a real asset or person |
The Story
The Story is compiled from the Founding Hypothesis and the words customers used in Interviews. Each ICP gets one Story. Its plan names three steps, and each step names an Event, so the plan compiles to the activation funnel.
The Story writes the words: the Site home and reserve page, the Sequences, the ad copy and the sales script. Every sentence carries its lineage back to a Story field and a slot.
The job
The job is four fields on the Problem, not a record of its own:
address: the opportunity map cell it sits on.moment: when the job starts, with the trigger that marks it.progress: what the ICP wants to move from, and to.hiredToday: what the ICP hires for it now, and what that costs.
The moment's trigger starts the demand Plays. What the ICP hires today anchors the Price.