The Lean Canvas asks whether your idea is a business. The Founder Canvas asks whether you can get it off the ground: team, equity, money, build, proof, and the ninety days in front of you. One page, twelve pieces.
How to use it: fill it in below, alone or with your co-founder. Every box has a ? with guidance and a worked example if you get stuck. Be honest, especially in the boxes you want to skip. Everything stays on your device until you choose to download or share it. Revisit it monthly; the gaps move.
The Founder Canvas gets sharpened the same way we tell founders to build: with real users, before it's precious. We're working through it live with a small group of pre-seed and seed founders. You fill it in, we spend 45 minutes on a call pulling it apart together.
You get a senior second opinion on your whole plan, not just your deck. We get to see where the canvas works and where it doesn't. Blunt feedback welcome; it's the point. The story behind it, N°59.
Sessions are free and there's no pitch waiting at the end. If your canvas shows a gap we can help with, we'll say so, once. See our privacy policy.
Every other canvas maps the idea. This one maps the founder: twelve boxes across three lanes covering what you are actually building towards, what you are prepared to spend to get there, and what you personally need the outcome to be. It was shaped with a founding group and is published under a Creative Commons licence, so it is yours to use, adapt and print.
Who it is for. Founders at the start, co-founders who have never compared answers to the same twelve questions, and anyone whose plan makes sense on paper while the life around it quietly does not.
What it will not do. It does not validate the business, size the market or replace a Lean Canvas. It fills the gap those leave, which is the person doing the building.
