Value proposition canvas: a guide with example

A value proposition is the reason a customer picks your product over the alternatives. The canvas breaks that reason into parts you can test. Strategyzer describes it in The Value Proposition Canvas as two connected shapes:

• a customer profile on the right, a circle that describes one customer segment
• a value map on the left, a square that describes what you offer that segment

You have a good value proposition when the square fits the circle, which Strategyzer calls fit.

It sits inside the larger Business Model Canvas, where it covers two of the nine blocks: customer segments and value propositions.

Fill in the circle first. It is about the customer, not your product.

Customer jobs are what the person is trying to get done. They can be functional (send invoices), social (look professional to clients) or emotional (stop worrying about cash flow). The idea comes from jobs-to-be-done theory; the Christensen Institute has a clear summary, and Clayton Christensen's Harvard Business Review article Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done shows why customers "hire" products for a job rather than buying features.

Pains are what annoys the customer before, during or after the job: risks, costs, wasted time, obstacles. Write them concretely. "Chasing late payments takes three hours a week" is better than "invoicing is hard".

Gains are the outcomes the customer wants, including ones they would be pleasantly surprised by. "Getting paid within a week" or "never writing a reminder email again".

Rank each list. The top two or three pains and gains matter more than the full list.

Now fill in the square, item by item against the circle.

Products and services lists what you offer: the app, the features, any support or service around it.

Pain relievers describe exactly how your product removes the ranked pains. Each pain reliever should point to one pain on the right.

Gain creators describe how your product produces the ranked gains.

If a feature does not relieve a top pain or create a top gain, question whether it belongs in your first version.

Here is a canvas for a hypothetical invoicing tool for freelance designers.

Read it row by row: every top pain has a reliever, and every top gain has a creator. That is a first sign of fit. It is still a hypothesis until customers confirm it.

A canvas filled in from your own head is a list of guesses. Use it to organize evidence instead:

1. Pick one segment. One canvas per customer type. "Small businesses" is too broad; "freelance designers billing five to twenty clients a month" is usable.
2. Interview five to ten people from that segment before you write anything in the circle. Ask about the last time they did the job, what went wrong and what they tried. Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test explains how to ask questions that get honest answers instead of polite compliments.
3. Write each pain and gain in their words, with a note of how many people mentioned it.
4. Map your product only after the circle is filled and ranked.
5. Test the fit with a landing page, a waitlist or a paid pilot. Our guide to idea validation covers cheap tests you can run in a week.

Update the canvas after each round of interviews. It is a working document, not a poster.

The canvas also writes your first landing page:

• your headline comes from the top gain
• your subheadline names the top pain and how you remove it
• your feature list comes from the pain relievers, written as outcomes

If you struggle to write a short line from the canvas, look at our tagline examples for patterns that work.

• Starting with the value map. Founders love their features. Fill in the customer side first or you will just describe your product twice.
• Several segments on one canvas. Different customers have different pains. Use one canvas each.
• Vague entries. "Saves time" fits every product. Say how much time, on which task.
• Never testing it. The canvas is a list of hypotheses until real customers act on it by signing up or paying.

Copy this structure into a doc, a whiteboard or a spreadsheet:

• Segment:
• Jobs (functional, social, emotional):
• Pains, ranked:
• Gains, ranked:
• Products and services:
• Pain relievers (one per top pain):
• Gain creators (one per top gain):
• Evidence for each item (interview count, test result):

When your canvas holds up in interviews, the next step is to put the product in front of strangers. A launch on MegaLaunch is a quick way to see whether your value proposition makes sense to people who have never heard of you.