EXAMPLES OF LEAN CANVAS

1. Facebook

Founded: 2004

Created by: Mark Zuckerberg

Country: USA, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Total Funding: $104 billion (Valuation at IPO)

The story of creating this famous social media network started in the dormitory of Harvard University. Mark
Zuckerberg, a sophomore student at that time, was working on the product that would allow students to share visual
content with their friends online. As Facebook’s founder explained in one of his interviews, he just wanted to solve
the students’ problem – have a common place for online communication. Despite many useless efforts, Mark
Zuckerberg nailed it! If we could apply the lean canvas model to Facebook, it would look like this at the outset of
startup’s journey:
2. Google

Founded: 1998

Created by: Sergey Brin & Larry Page

Country: USA, Menlo Park, California

Total Funding: $23.1 billion (Valuation at IPO)

Not only Harvard students could generate innovative ideas, but Stanford University enthusiasts jumped on this
bandwagon as well. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were two graduates from the computer science faculty, who created
a PageRank algorithm for a newly developed search engine – BackRub, which was the first name of Google. With
the help of this technology, users could find relevant content at a high speed. And it was the main competitive
advantage of Page and Larry’s product over other popular search engines like Yahoo and Excite. How could Google
use the lean canvas model during the initial startup development phase? Let’s have a look at the chart below:
3. Apple

Founded: 1976

Created by: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak

Country: USA, Cupertino, California

Total Funding: $6,2 billion

Portable and user-friendly computers didn’t exist in the 1970s. This idea came to the minds of Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak in 1976. At that time, they made an important decision to leave college and establish the company they
were so passionate about. Changing the way people use computers was the idea that inspired them to reach new
heights. Worked in Steve Jobs’ garage, they created Apple I, and then – Apple II, which intended to revolutionize the
industry with color graphics. Almost several years thereafter, Apple Inc. became one of the most profitable
companies on the US market. So, let’s review of how could Apple use the lean canvas example at the very beginning
of its success journey: