How to Fill In a Business Model Canvas
Nine blocks, but where do you start? The order matters more than most guides will tell you.
The Business Model Canvas has nine blocks. Sounds manageable, and it is. But in practice, people still get stuck. Not because the model is complicated, but because they start in the wrong place.
Don't start with Key Partners
Most templates show the canvas in a way that nudges you to begin on the left. Makes sense visually. But Key Partners is the last block you want to fill in when you're thinking about your business model for the first time.
Start with your customer.
The question is: who is this for? That's Customer Segments. Once you answer that, everything else has context. Who are your customers? What problem are you solving? How do you reach them? None of those questions make sense until you know who you're building for.
The order that works
- Customer Segments — who is your customer, exactly? Not "anyone who..." — one specific group.
- Value Propositions — what do you offer that others don't?
- Channels — how do customers find you and how do you deliver your product?
- Customer Relationships — do customers need personal contact, or is it fully self-service?
- Revenue Streams — how does the customer pay? One-time, subscription, or something else?
- Key Resources — what do you absolutely need to make this work?
- Key Activities — what do you do every day to deliver your proposition?
- Key Partners — who handles what you don't need to do yourself?
- Cost Structure — what does all of this cost?
Following this order means you're building the model from the customer outward. Each choice follows logically from the one before it.
Common mistakes
Starting too broad. "Our customers are SMEs" is not a segment. SMEs are millions of businesses. Pick a specific group. The sharper the segment, the more useful your canvas.
Trying to write everything down. The canvas is not a business plan. Two to five points per block is enough. Write more and you lose the overview, and the overview is the whole point.
Filling everything in at the same time. You see this in workshops: everyone writes everything simultaneously, nobody discusses anything. You end up with nine full blocks and still no shared picture. Work block by block, discuss, revise.
How long does it take?
On your own? Twenty minutes for a first version. With a team, including discussion? Expect one and a half to two hours.
A canvas is never "finished". It's a living document. After every customer conversation, every assumption you test, you update it. The value isn't in one perfect version. It's in the sequence of versions.
Digital or on paper?
Paper works well for a first session. You can move things around quickly, change your mind, cross things out. But saving, sharing and tracking changes is a pain. We prefer working digitally, mainly because you can update the canvas easily and share it with your team. No photo of a whiteboard turning up in your camera roll three weeks later.
With mybmctool you can fill in, adjust and export your canvas directly. Free to try.