You have a short checklist on your dashboard: five modules, any order. That is the doing surface. This is the reading surface. Each chapter matches one module by name. Read it, then go back and do the thing.
Our model assumes you do not start alone or from zero. You find the people already working on your problem and you join them, partner, or invite them in as earned-equity co-owners. Two short pieces by Golda Velez set the frame before the method starts:
Before you build anything, treat your whole idea as a set of guesses, not facts. A startup is a temporary organization searching for a repeatable business model, and everything you believe right now is a hypothesis waiting to be tested.
Write those guesses down on one page. The Business Model Canvas is a shared visual language for describing and challenging a business model: it maps the nine parts of a company so you see the whole thing at once, and see which parts you are least sure of.
The three guesses that matter most at the start are the value proposition (what problem does the customer pay you to solve), the customer segment (who exactly are they), and the channel (how you reach and deliver to them). Name yours plainly.
This phase exists because of a hard rule from the method: no business plan survives first contact with customers. So you do not defend the idea, you expose it.
Part of exposing it is looking outward. Who else is already working on this problem? What standards, projects, or organizations already exist? Is the right first move to partner, reuse, or join rather than build from zero? Capture the prior art so a reader can see the landscape you are entering.
Worksheet: the Business Model Canvas, all nine blocks filled in as guesses, plus a short prior-art scan.
This phase answers one question: who is the customer, the user, and the payer, and are they the same person or three different people. You find out by getting out of the building and talking to real people, not by reasoning it out at your desk.
Build a customer profile before you fall in love with your solution. For a single segment, map their jobs, pains, and gains: the functional, social, and emotional tasks they are trying to get done; the obstacles and frustrations in the way; and the outcomes they want or would be delighted by.
Do one profile per segment. Mixing several segments onto one canvas is the most common mistake, and it produces a vague proposition that fits no one.
Watch for multi-sided markets. Some businesses have both buyers and sellers, and each side needs its own segment and its own reason to show up. The person who uses the product is often not the person who pays for it.
Expect your first guess to be wrong, and treat that as progress. Teams routinely assume one customer, then learn through interviews that the real buyer is someone else with a different problem. That discovery is the deliverable of this phase.
Worksheet: the Value Proposition Canvas, customer-profile side (jobs, pains, gains), one per segment.
Your value proposition is the plain answer to "what are you building and selling?" Keep it to one clear sentence, then treat that sentence as a hypothesis to test, not a promise to defend.
Design the offer against the customer profile you built. On the value-map side of the canvas you list your products and services, your pain relievers (how they remove the specific obstacles you found), and your gain creators (how they produce the outcomes the customer wants). You have "fit" when your map addresses the customer's most important jobs, pains, and gains, not when your feature list is longest.
Build the smallest version that can test the guess. A minimum viable product is the least you can put in front of a real user to learn whether the value proposition is true. Specify its handful of essential features, not everything you eventually want.
Then get it in front of a user and let the field correct you. Real insight shows up in conversations, demos, and use, not in desk assumptions, and sparse data from a few interviews is not enough to make a big directional call. Keep testing until the signal is real.
When customer contact invalidates a core guess, you pivot: substantively change one or more boxes on the canvas, rather than tweak wording. A pivot is a normal outcome of building the small thing, not a failure.
Worksheet: the Value Proposition Canvas, value-map side, tested for fit against the profile, plus a one-line MVP feature list.
Money is the value-capture half of the model, and it lives in three blocks of the canvas: revenue streams (how the business earns), cost structure (what the model costs to run), and channels (the paths through which you reach customers and deliver the value).
Channels are how customers find you, evaluate you, buy, and get support. Name the specific paths you will use for your segment, because a value proposition with no channel to carry it never reaches anyone.
Treat your revenue model and pricing as another hypothesis, tested the same way you tested the product. The question is not "what could we charge" in the abstract; it is whether this segment will actually pay this price for the value you deliver.
The signal that closes this phase is a first paying yes. One real customer agreeing to pay tells you more than a room full of people saying they like it, because behavior beats opinion.
Worksheet: the Business Model Canvas value-capture blocks (revenue streams, channels, cost structure), each a testable guess with a price.
This chapter is ours to write. The earned-governance layer is not Lean LaunchPad; it is the LinkedTrust method, and the team supplies it in its own words. It covers how contributors earn governance and equity through reviewed work, and how that is measured and recorded. Placeholder until the team's real content lands.
The metrics-that-matter and the pitch parts of this module adapt Lean LaunchPad's final lectures, and can be written the same way as the chapters above once the earned-governance section is in place.
This companion doc is released CC BY-SA 3.0, with attribution to:
Strategyzer AG: the Business Model Canvas and the Value
Proposition Canvas (CC BY-SA 3.0). Our worksheets derive from these and carry the
same share-alike license.
Steve Blank: the Lean LaunchPad method (customer discovery, "get out of the
building," MVP, pivot, the business-model hypotheses). His ideas and method are
adapted here in our own words with credit.
For the team, before publishing: Steve Blank's downloadable Lean LaunchPad lecture materials are licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 (non-commercial, no-derivatives), which does not permit redistributing his lecture text, and the NC term is a poor fit for a commercial accelerator. We adapted his method in our own words rather than copying, and took the reusable worksheet artifacts from Strategyzer (genuinely CC BY-SA). Confirm this call, and decide whether to seek Blank's permission for anything closer to his lecture text, before publishing.