Back to Skills

Startup Canvas

Generate a Startup Canvas combining Product Strategy (9 sections) and Business Model (costs + revenue) for a new product. An alternative to BMC and Lean Canvas that separates strategy from business model. Use when launching a new product or evaluating a startup concept.

By phuryn
25k2.6kUpdated 1 month agoMIT

Skill Content

# Startup Canvas

## Metadata
- **Name**: startup-canvas
- **Description**: Generate a Startup Canvas for a new product. Combines the 9-section Product Strategy Canvas with a Business Model (Cost Structure + Revenue Streams). Designed specifically for startups and new products.
- **Triggers**: startup canvas, new product canvas, startup strategy, startup business model

## Domain Context

### Startup Canvas vs Business Model Canvas vs Lean Canvas

Popular approaches like Business Model Canvas (Strategyzer) and Lean Canvas (Ash Maurya) mix strategy and business model into one artifact. The **Startup Canvas** (Paweł Huryn) separates them: 9 strategy sections from the Product Strategy Canvas + Cost Structure & Revenue Streams.

**Why not Business Model Canvas?**
- No vision — why should your team wake up every day?
- No Can't/Won't test — what stops competitors from copying you?
- No trade-offs — what you choose NOT to do creates focus
- No key metrics — how do you know the strategy is working?
- Key Partnerships and Key Resources are rarely useful for early-stage products

**Why not Lean Canvas?**
- Introduces redundancy: "Problem" overlaps with Market Segments (markets are defined by problems), "Solution" overlaps with Value Proposition (which by definition includes features)
- No vision, no trade-offs, no relative costs
- "Unfair Advantage" is too narrow — the entire strategy should be hard to copy, not just one element
- Doesn't address the holistic fit of strategic choices reinforcing each other

**When to use which:**
- **Business Model Canvas**: Established businesses, corporate strategy, investor materials
- **Lean Canvas**: Quick hypothesis testing when you just need speed
- **Startup Canvas**: New products where you need both strategic clarity AND a business model — the recommended approach

## Instructions

You are a product strategist and startup advisor designing a Startup Canvas for $ARGUMENTS.

Your task is to create a comprehensive Startup Canvas that covers both the strategic choices and the business model for a new product.

## Input Requirements
- Product or startup idea
- Target market and customer insights
- Competitive landscape
- Founder/team constraints and resources

## Startup Canvas Template

### Part 1: Product Strategy (9 Sections)

**1. Vision**
- How can we inspire people? What are we aspiring to achieve? What values do we uphold?
- Start simple. Your vision will evolve alongside the strategy.

**2. Market Segments**
- The market is defined by the problems people have (not demographics).
- Jobs to Be Done (JTBD), desired outcomes, constraints.
- What will be your first customer segment? Why this one first?

**3. Relative Costs**
- Do you optimize for low cost (like Southwest Airlines) or unique value (like Starbucks)?
- Low costs don't necessarily mean low prices.

**4. Value Proposition**
For each market segment:
- **What before**: Existing, problematic state
- **How**: Features and capabilities that change the situation
- **What after**: The benefits and outcomes
- **Alternatives**: Your unique value vs. competitors and substitutes (consider a Value Curve)

**5. Trade-offs**
- What will you NOT do? Trade-offs create focus and amplify value.
- Especially important for startups where it's tempting to chase every opportunity.

**6. Key Metrics**
- A few key metrics to measure if the product and strategy are working.
- North Star Metric and One Metric That Matters (OMTM) for this quarter.

**7. Growth**
- Product-Led Growth or Sales-Led Growth?
- Preferred channels: Social Media, SEO, Influencers, Resellers?

**8. Capabilities**
- What competencies and resources do you need to acquire?
- What do you build vs. partner for?

**9. Can't/Won't**
- What makes you think competitors can't or won't copy your strategy?
- The entire strategy should be difficult to copy — not just one element.
- Do all elements fit together and reinforce each other?

### Part 2: Business Model

**10. Cost Structure**
- Rent, hardware, licenses, technology, marketing, subscriptions, salaries.
- Which are recurring? How will they scale?

**11. Revenue Streams**
- How much money from each channel?
- Pricing approach: penetration, value-based, competitive, usage-based, SaaS?
- Is the revenue model scalable? What are the biggest uncertainties?

## Output Process
1. Define the vision and aspirational impact
2. Identify 2–3 target market segments with JTBD
3. Establish cost positioning (low cost vs premium)
4. Develop value propositions for each segment
5. List explicit trade-offs
6. Set North Star and quarterly OMTM
7. Outline growth strategy and channels
8. Document required capabilities
9. Explain defensibility (Can't/Won't test)
10. Estimate cost structure and revenue streams
11. Validate strategy coherence: do all elements reinforce each other?
12. Surface hypotheses that must be true for success
13. Suggest low-effort experiments to test key assumptions

## Notes
- The Startup Canvas separates strategy from business model — keep them distinct but connected
- Strategy should pass the Can't/Won't test: your competitors can't or won't copy the integrated set of choices
- After drafting the first version, identify and start testing hypotheses
- Mix and adapt approaches to suit your specific needs rather than following any canvas rigidly

---

### Templates

- [Startup Canvas (PPTX)](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lA0SPflj5JT6jFV_jIDsqZJAYYperTFx/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=111307342557889008106&rtpof=true&sd=true)

---

### Further Reading

- [Startup Canvas: Product Strategy and a Business Model for a New Product](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/startup-canvas)
- [Product Strategy Canvas](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/product-strategy-canvas)
- [How to Design a Value Proposition Customers Can't Resist?](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/how-to-design-value-proposition-template)
- [Business Model Canvas Examples: Google Maps, Airbnb, Uber](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/business-model-canvas-examples)

How to use

  1. Copy the skill content above
  2. Create a .claude/skills directory in your project
  3. Save as .claude/skills/pm-skills-startup-canvas.md
  4. Use /pm-skills-startup-canvas in Claude Code to invoke this skill

README

View on GitHub

GitHub stars License: MIT PRs Welcome Tests Companion: pm-skills Companion: burnstop Companion: claude-usage

PM Skills Marketplace: The AI Operating System for Better Product Decisions

68 PM skills and 42 chained workflows across 9 plugins. Claude Code, Cowork, and more. From discovery to strategy, execution, launch, growth, and shipping AI-built code.

PM Skills marketplace: skills, commands, and all 9 plugins at a glance

Designed for Claude Code and Cowork. Skills compatible with other AI assistants.

Start Here

New idea? → /discover
Need strategic clarity? → /strategy
Writing a PRD? → /write-prd
Planning a launch? → /plan-launch
Defining metrics? → /north-star

If this project helps you, ⭐ the repo.

Why PM Skills Marketplace?

Generic AI gives you text. PM Skills Marketplace gives you structure.

Each skill encodes a proven PM framework — discovery, assumption mapping, prioritization, strategy — and walks you through it step by step. You get the rigor of Teresa Torres, Marty Cagan, and Alberto Savoia built into your daily workflow, not sitting on a bookshelf.

The result: better product decisions, not just faster documents.

How It Works (Skills, Commands, Plugins)

Example prompts: a skill and two commands (/write-prd, /ship-check) in action

Skills are the building blocks of the marketplace. Each skill gives Claude domain knowledge, analytical frameworks, or a guided workflow for a specific PM task. Some skills also work as reusable foundations that multiple commands share.

Skills are loaded automatically when relevant to the conversation — no explicit invocation needed. If needed (e.g., prioritizing skills over general knowledge), you can force loading skills with /plugin-name:skill-name or /skill-name (Claude will add the prefix).

Commands are user-triggered workflows invoked with /command-name. They chain one or more skills into an end-to-end process. For example, /discover chains four skills together: brainstorm-ideas → identify-assumptions → prioritize-assumptions → brainstorm-experiments.

Plugins group related skills and commands into installable packages. Each plugin covers a PM domain — discovery, strategy, execution, and so on. Installing the marketplace gives you all 9 plugins at once.

Commands use skills. Some skills serve multiple commands. Some skills (like prioritization-frameworks or opportunity-solution-tree) are standalone references that Claude draws on whenever relevant — no command needed.

Commands are designed to flow into each other, matching the PM workflow. After any command completes, it suggests relevant next commands — just follow the prompts.

Installation

Claude Cowork (recommended for non-developers)

  1. Open Customize (bottom-left)
  2. Go to Browse plugins → Personal → +
  3. Select Add marketplace from GitHub
  4. Enter: phuryn/pm-skills

All 9 plugins install automatically. You get both commands (/discover, /strategy, etc.) and skills.

Installing PM Skills in Claude Cowork

Claude Code (CLI)

# Step 1: Add the marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add phuryn/pm-skills

# Step 2: Install individual plugins
claude plugin install pm-toolkit@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-product-strategy@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-product-discovery@pm-skills 
claude plugin install pm-market-research@pm-skills 
claude plugin install pm-data-analytics@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-marketing-growth@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-go-to-market@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-execution@pm-skills
claude plugin install pm-ai-shipping@pm-skills

Codex CLI (OpenAI)

Codex reads the same plugin marketplace file as Claude Code, so you can install PM Skills natively — no conversion or file-copying needed:

# Step 1: Add the marketplace
codex plugin marketplace add phuryn/pm-skills

# Step 2: Install the plugins you want
codex plugin add pm-toolkit@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-product-strategy@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-product-discovery@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-market-research@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-data-analytics@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-marketing-growth@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-go-to-market@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-execution@pm-skills
codex plugin add pm-ai-shipping@pm-skills

What you get: every skill (the PM frameworks), available to Codex and invocable by name. Install whole plugins rather than cherry-picking individual skills — a workflow usually relies on several skills that ship together.

What's different from Claude Code: the /slash commands (/discover, /write-prd, …) install but don't run as Codex slash commands — Codex plugins don't expose commands. To run a workflow, just describe the steps in plain language, for example:

Run product discovery on [your idea]: brainstorm options, map assumptions, prioritize the risky ones, then design experiments — pause between each step.

Optional — let Codex turn the workflows into skills. Because the command files ship inside each installed plugin, you can ask Codex to convert the ones you use most:

Read the command files in the pm-execution plugin and create equivalent Codex skills for the workflows I use most often.

This is a best-effort, model-driven conversion (some Claude-specific command syntax won't translate), but it's a quick way to get the guided workflows on Codex without leaving the CLI.

Other AI assistants (skills only)

The skills/*/SKILL.md files follow the universal skill format and work with any tool that reads it. Commands (/slash-commands) are Claude-specific.

ToolHow to useWhat works
Gemini CLICopy skill folders to .gemini/skills/Skills only
OpenCodeCopy skill folders to .opencode/skills/Skills only
CursorCopy skill folders to .cursor/skills/Skills only
KiroCopy skill folders to .kiro/skills/Skills only
# Example: copy all skills for OpenCode (project-level)
for plugin in pm-*/; do
  mkdir -p .opencode/skills/
  cp -r "$plugin/skills/"* .opencode/skills/ 2>/dev/null
done

# Example: copy all skills for Gemini CLI (global)
for plugin in pm-*/; do
  cp -r "$plugin/skills/"* ~/.gemini/skills/ 2>/dev/null
done

Available Plugins

<details> <summary><strong>1. pm-product-discovery</strong> — Ideation, experiments, assumption testing, OSTs, interviews (13 skills, 5 commands)</summary>

Skills (13):

  • brainstorm-ideas-existing — Multi-perspective ideation for existing products (PM, Designer, Engineer)
  • brainstorm-ideas-new — Ideation for new products in initial discovery
  • brainstorm-experiments-existing — Design experiments to test assumptions for existing products
  • brainstorm-experiments-new — Design lean startup pretotypes for new products (Alberto Savoia)
  • identify-assumptions-existing — Identify risky assumptions across Value, Usability, Viability, and Feasibility
  • identify-assumptions-new — Identify risky assumptions across 8 risk categories including Go-to-Market, Strategy, and Team
  • prioritize-assumptions — Prioritize assumptions using an Impact × Risk matrix with experiment suggestions
  • prioritize-features — Prioritize a feature backlog based on impact, effort, risk, and strategic alignment
  • analyze-feature-requests — Analyze and categorize customer feature requests by theme and strategic fit
  • opportunity-solution-tree — Build an Opportunity Solution Tree (Teresa Torres) — outcome → opportunities → solutions → experiments
  • interview-script — Create a structured customer interview script with JTBD probing questions
  • summarize-interview — Summarize an interview transcript into JTBD, satisfaction signals, and action items
  • metrics-dashboard — Design a product metrics dashboard with North Star, input metrics, and alert thresholds

Commands (5):

  • /discover — Full discovery cycle: ideation → assumption mapping → prioritization → experiment design
  • /brainstorm — Multi-perspective ideation (ideas|experiments × existing|new)
  • /triage-requests — Analyze and prioritize a batch of feature requests
  • /interview — Prepare an interview script or summarize a transcript (prep|summarize)
  • /setup-metrics — Design a product metrics dashboard

Examples:

Skills:

  • What are the riskiest assumptions for our AI writing assistant idea?
  • Help me build an Opportunity Solution Tree for improving user activation
  • Prioritize these 12 feature requests from our enterprise customers [attach CSV]

Commands:

  • /discover AI-powered meeting summarizer for remote teams
  • /brainstorm experiments existing — We need to reduce churn in our onboarding flow
  • /interview prep — We're interviewing enterprise buyers about their procurement workflow
</details> <details> <summary><strong>2. pm-product-strategy</strong> — Vision, business models, pricing, competitive landscape (12 skills, 5 commands)</summary>

Product strategy, vision, business models, pricing, and macro environment analysis. Covers the full strategic toolkit from vision crafting through competitive landscape scanning.

Skills (12):

  • product-strategy — Comprehensive 9-section Product Strategy Canvas (vision → defensibility)
  • startup-canvas — Startup Canvas combining Product Strategy (9 sections) + Business Model — an alternative to BMC and Lean Canvas for new products
  • product-vision — Craft an inspiring, achievable, and emotional product vision
  • value-proposition — 6-part JTBD value proposition (Who, Why, What before, How, What after, Alternatives)
  • lean-canvas — Lean Canvas business model for startups and new products
  • business-model — Business Model Canvas with all 9 building blocks
  • monetization-strategy — Brainstorm 3–5 monetization strategies with validation experiments
  • pricing-strategy — Pricing models, competitive analysis, willingness-to-pay, and price elasticity
  • swot-analysis — SWOT analysis with actionable recommendations
  • pestle-analysis — Macro environment: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental
  • porters-five-forces — Competitive forces analysis (rivalry, suppliers, buyers, substitutes, new entrants)
  • ansoff-matrix — Growth strategy mapping across markets and products

Commands (5):

  • /strategy — Create a complete 9-section Product Strategy Canvas
  • /business-model — Explore business models (lean|full|startup|value-prop|all)
  • /value-proposition — Design a value proposition using the 6-part JTBD template
  • /market-scan — Macro environment analysis combining SWOT + PESTLE + Porter's + Ansoff
  • /pricing — Design a pricing strategy with competitive analysis and experiments

Examples:

Skills:

  • Compare Lean Canvas vs Business Model Canvas vs Startup Canvas for my marketplace startup
  • Design a value proposition for our AI writing assistant targeting non-native English speakers
  • Run a Porter's Five Forces analysis for the project management SaaS market

Commands:

  • `/strategy B2B project manage

…

View source on GitHub