Quick Answer (TL;DR)
The Value Proposition Canvas, created by Alex Osterwalder and the Strategyzer team, is a structured tool for making sure your product solves problems customers actually have. It consists of two halves: the Customer Profile (what customers are trying to do, what frustrates them, what they wish for) and the Value Map (what your product offers, how it reduces pain, how it creates benefit). When the two halves align, you have fit. When they don't, you have a product nobody wants.
What Is the Value Proposition Canvas?
The Value Proposition Canvas is a practical design tool that zooms into the relationship between a customer segment and a product offering. It was introduced in Value Proposition Design (2014) as a companion to the Business Model Canvas, drilling deeper into the two most critical blocks: Customer Segments and Value Propositions.
For product managers, this framework answers a deceptively simple question: does your product actually match what your customers need? Teams that skip this question end up building features that look logical on a roadmap but fail to move retention, activation, or revenue.
The canvas works because it forces you to separate what you know about the customer from what you assume about your product. Most teams conflate the two. They describe customer needs in terms of features they've already decided to build, rather than starting from the customer's reality.
The Two Halves of the Canvas
The canvas is split into two distinct sections. You always start with the right side (the customer), then move to the left (your product).
| Customer Profile (Right Side) | Value Map (Left Side) | |
|---|---|---|
| Top | Customer Jobs | Products & Services |
| Middle | Pains | Pain Relievers |
| Bottom | Gains | Gain Creators |
Customer Profile
The Customer Profile captures your understanding of a specific customer segment. Not your entire market, but one well-defined group.
Customer Jobs. These are the things your customers are trying to get done. Jobs can be functional (complete a task), social (look good to peers), or emotional (feel secure). Write them from the customer's perspective, not yours. "Manage a product roadmap" is a job. "Use our roadmap tool" is not.
Examples of customer jobs for a B2B SaaS PM:
- Report product progress to executives weekly
- Prioritize 50+ feature requests from multiple stakeholders
- Onboard new users without a dedicated support team
- Understand which features drive retention
Pains. These are the negative outcomes, risks, and obstacles customers experience when trying to get their jobs done. Pains should be specific and observable, not vague. "Wastes 3 hours per week manually compiling reports" is a pain. "Reporting is hard" is too vague to act on.
Gains. These are the positive outcomes and benefits customers want. Some gains are expected (it should work), some are desired (it should be fast), and some are unexpected (it also does X). Gains are not the absence of pains. "Saves time" is not a gain if the corresponding pain is "wastes time." A real gain would be "has time to do strategic work instead of report compilation."
Value Map
The Value Map describes how your product creates value for the customer segment you profiled.
Products & Services. List the specific products, features, or services your offering includes. Be concrete: "automated weekly email digest of product metrics" is better than "reporting feature."
Pain Relievers. Describe how each product or feature reduces or eliminates specific pains from the Customer Profile. Draw direct lines between the two. If a feature doesn't relieve any identified pain, question why it exists.
Gain Creators. Describe how each product or feature produces specific gains. Again, draw direct connections. The best gain creators produce unexpected gains that differentiate your product from alternatives.
How to Use the Value Proposition Canvas: Step by Step
Step 1: Choose One Customer Segment
Pick a single, well-defined customer segment. "Product managers" is too broad. "Series A SaaS product managers managing teams of 2-5" is specific enough to be useful. You'll create separate canvases for each segment.
Step 2: Map Customer Jobs
Brainstorm all the jobs this segment is trying to accomplish. Then rank them by importance. Not all jobs are equal. A PM might have 20 jobs, but only 3-4 really keep them up at night.
Use the JTBD Builder to structure your job statements. The format "When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]" forces clarity about context and desired results.
Step 3: Identify Pains and Gains
For each of the top-ranked jobs, list the pains customers experience and the gains they want. Source this from real data: customer interviews, support tickets, NPS verbatims, session recordings. If you're filling this in from your own assumptions, you're doing it wrong.
The Product Discovery Handbook covers interview techniques that surface genuine pains rather than leading customers toward your existing solution.
Step 4: Fill in the Value Map
Now switch to the left side. List your product's features and services. For each one, articulate which specific pains it relieves and which specific gains it creates. Be honest. If a feature doesn't connect to anything on the Customer Profile, it's either solving a problem you haven't identified yet or it shouldn't exist.
Step 5: Check for Fit
Fit happens when your Value Map addresses the customer's most important jobs, most severe pains, and most desired gains. You don't need to cover everything. You need to nail the things that matter most.
There are three levels of fit:
- Problem-Solution Fit. You've identified real jobs, pains, and gains through research and designed a value proposition that addresses them. This is the hypothesis stage. Test it with the PMF Calculator to gauge whether you're tracking toward product-market fit.
- Product-Market Fit. Customers are using and paying for your product because it actually delivers on the value proposition. Retention is strong. NPS is positive. Growth is organic.
- Business Model Fit. The value proposition works within a profitable, scalable business model. Revenue exceeds costs. Channels are efficient.
Step 6: Test and Iterate
The canvas is a hypothesis, not a conclusion. Validate each assumption with real customers. Run experiments. Measure outcomes. Update the canvas as you learn. Superhuman famously used a systematic approach to achieve product-market fit by repeatedly measuring and iterating on their value proposition.
A Practical SaaS Example
Imagine you're building a customer onboarding tool for SaaS companies.
Customer Profile (Customer Success Managers at Series B SaaS):
| Customer Jobs | Pains | Gains |
|---|---|---|
| Onboard new customers within 14 days | Manual onboarding takes 4+ hours per customer | Reduce time-to-value below 7 days |
| Reduce churn in the first 90 days | No visibility into which onboarding steps are completed | Track exactly where each customer is in their journey |
| Scale onboarding without hiring more CSMs | Different CSMs follow different processes | Consistent onboarding quality regardless of CSM |
| Demonstrate onboarding ROI to leadership | Can't connect onboarding effort to retention data | Prove that onboarding investment reduces churn |
Value Map:
| Products & Services | Pain Relievers | Gain Creators |
|---|---|---|
| Automated onboarding checklists | Standardizes process across all CSMs | Customers self-serve 60% of onboarding steps |
| Progress dashboard per customer | Shows exactly which steps are complete/incomplete | CSMs intervene only when customers are stuck |
| Onboarding-to-retention analytics | Connects each onboarding action to 90-day retention | Board-ready reports showing onboarding ROI |
| Template library of onboarding flows | New CSMs follow proven playbooks immediately | Onboard 3x more customers per CSM |
The fit here is strong. Every feature on the Value Map connects to at least one job, pain, or gain on the Customer Profile. There are no orphan features.
Running a Value Proposition Canvas Workshop
The canvas works best as a collaborative exercise, not a solo PM activity. Here's a format that works well for a 90-minute session:
- Set up (5 min). Print or project a blank canvas. Distribute sticky notes.
- Customer Jobs (15 min). Each participant writes 3-5 jobs on sticky notes. Post and cluster them. Dot-vote on the top 5.
- Pains (15 min). For the top 5 jobs, brainstorm pains. Rank by severity (critical, moderate, minor).
- Gains (15 min). For the top 5 jobs, brainstorm gains. Rank by relevance (expected, desired, unexpected).
- Value Map (20 min). Map your current or planned product features against the prioritized pains and gains. Draw explicit connections.
- Gap Analysis (15 min). Identify the critical pains with no pain reliever and the desired gains with no gain creator. These are your biggest opportunities.
- Next Steps (5 min). Assign owners to validate the top assumptions through customer research.
Read the Product Strategy Handbook for more on connecting canvas insights to your broader strategic planning process.
When to Use the Value Proposition Canvas
- New product ideation. Before writing a single line of code, map the customer profile and test whether your proposed solution actually addresses real needs.
- Feature prioritization. When debating which features to build next, check which ones address the most important unmet pains or gains.
- Market expansion. When entering a new segment, create a fresh Customer Profile and check whether your existing Value Map transfers or needs significant changes.
- Product-market fit diagnosis. If your product isn't growing, build the canvas from real customer data and look for disconnects between what customers need and what you offer.
- Acquisition integration. When absorbing an acquired product, map both value propositions to identify overlaps and gaps.
Common Mistakes
Starting with the Value Map. The most frequent mistake. Teams describe their product first and then reverse-engineer a Customer Profile that matches it. This is confirmation bias disguised as strategy. Always start with the customer.
Using one canvas for multiple segments. Different customer segments have different jobs, pains, and gains. A canvas for enterprise buyers and a canvas for individual users will look very different. Create separate canvases for each segment.
Listing features as customer jobs. "Use our dashboard" is not a customer job. "Understand which features drive retention" is. Jobs exist independently of your product. If your product disappeared tomorrow, the customer would still have the job.
Treating the canvas as a one-time exercise. Customer needs evolve. Competitors change the playing field. Revisit your canvas quarterly, especially after major customer research rounds or competitive shifts.
Ignoring emotional and social jobs. PMs tend to focus on functional jobs because they're easier to build for. But social jobs ("look competent to my VP") and emotional jobs ("feel confident in my decisions") often drive purchasing and retention behavior more than functional ones.
Limitations
The Value Proposition Canvas is a design tool, not a validation tool. It helps you articulate and structure hypotheses about customer-product fit, but it doesn't prove those hypotheses are correct. You still need to test with real customers through interviews, prototypes, and experiments.
The canvas also doesn't address execution. A strong value proposition poorly executed still fails. And it doesn't cover competitive dynamics directly. Two companies can have equally strong canvas fit, but one wins on distribution, brand, or pricing.
Finally, the canvas works best for products with a clear customer relationship. Platform businesses with multi-sided markets (where you serve both supply and demand) need separate canvases for each side, which adds complexity.
Connecting to the Broader Strategy
The Value Proposition Canvas sits at the core of product strategy but doesn't replace it. Use it alongside the Business Model Canvas to ensure your value proposition works within a viable business model. Feed its insights into your product strategy to set direction, and use frameworks like RICE to prioritize the specific features that deliver on your value proposition.
The canvas is most powerful when it becomes a living document. Update it after every research sprint, every major customer interview round, and every quarterly planning cycle. The teams that treat it as a one-time workshop exercise miss its real value: a shared, evolving understanding of why your product matters to your customers.