Most people who search for a business model canvas example already know the theory. They have seen the nine boxes. What they want is to see one filled in properly, with real choices in every block, so they can tell whether their own canvas is specific enough. Many examples online use Netflix, Airbnb or Amazon, which is a little like learning to cook from a restaurant menu: impressive, but too far from your own kitchen.
This guide gives you a complete, worked example for a smaller business you can actually relate to: a fictional boutique hotel in an Amsterdam canal house. Before that, it covers what the canvas is, the nine building blocks in the order the creators intended, and how to fill in the template. It ends with the mistakes that weaken most canvases, how the business model canvas compares with the lean canvas and the value proposition canvas, and how a finished canvas feeds your digital strategy.
What is a business model canvas?
The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is a one-page strategic tool that describes how an organisation creates, delivers and captures value. It splits a business model into nine building blocks, so you can see on a single sheet who you serve, what you offer, how you deliver it, what it costs and what it earns.
Alexander Osterwalder laid the groundwork in his 2004 PhD thesis on business model ontology at the University of Lausanne, supervised by Yves Pigneur. The two developed it into the book Business Model Generation, published by Wiley in 2010. According to Strategyzer, the book was co-created by 470 practitioners from 45 countries. The canvas itself was designed by Strategyzer AG, the company behind the method.
The layout carries meaning. The right side is the market: customers, channels and relationships. The left side is what it takes to serve that market: resources, activities and partners. Value propositions sit in the middle, connecting the two. Costs and revenue run along the bottom. As Strategyzer puts it, cost structure and revenue streams only hold if the seven blocks above them are right. It also recommends one canvas per business model, not one for the whole company.
The official template and its licence
Strategyzer offers the official canvas as a free, high-resolution PDF sized to print large. It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0). That means you can share and adapt it, even commercially, as long as you credit the source and release any adapted version under the same licence. Strategyzer’s usage guidelines add that the text and link Strategyzer.com should be clearly visible under every canvas, including variations. The value proposition canvas, by contrast, is under copyright.
The free template on this page is one of those variations: a Viralistic version with a guiding question in each block, credited to Strategyzer and shared under the same licence.
The 9 building blocks, in the official order
The canvas has nine building blocks, and the official numbering starts with the customer and ends with costs. Fill them in that order. Each block depends on the ones before it.
| # | Building block | Guiding question |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Customer Segments | For whom are we creating value? |
| 2 | Value Propositions | Which customer problem do we solve, and why choose us? |
| 3 | Channels | How do customers want to find, buy and receive our offer? |
| 4 | Customer Relationships | What relationship does each segment expect from us? |
| 5 | Revenue Streams | For what value are customers truly willing to pay, and how? |
| 6 | Key Resources | Which assets does our value proposition depend on? |
| 7 | Key Activities | What must we do exceptionally well to deliver it? |
| 8 | Key Partners | Who provides what we should not do ourselves? |
| 9 | Cost Structure | Which costs matter most, and what drives them? |
1. Customer Segments
Customer segments are the groups of people or organisations you aim to reach and serve. A group deserves its own segment when it needs a different offer, channel or relationship, or when it pays for something different. “Everyone” is not a segment.
2. Value Propositions
A value proposition is the bundle of products and services that creates value for one specific segment. It is the reason a customer picks you over the alternative. Write it per segment, in terms of the problem that disappears or the result the customer gets.
3. Channels
Channels describe how you reach your segments and deliver your value proposition. Business Model Generation describes five channel phases: awareness, evaluation, purchase, delivery and after-sales. Channels can be your own, like your website, or a partner’s, like a retailer or a booking platform.
4. Customer Relationships
Customer relationships describe the kind of contact you build with each segment. The range runs from dedicated personal assistance through self-service and automated services to communities and co-creation. High-touch relationships cost more but can support premium prices.
5. Revenue Streams
Revenue streams show how you earn money from each segment: asset sales, usage fees, subscriptions, lending or leasing, licensing, brokerage fees or advertising. Note the pricing mechanism too. A fixed price list behaves very differently from bespoke quotes or dynamic pricing.
6. Key Resources
Key resources are the assets that make the model work. They can be physical, intellectual, human or financial. For a software company that is code and engineers. For a hotel it is the building, the team and the reviews.
7. Key Activities
Key activities are the things you must do well for the model to work. Osterwalder groups them into production, problem solving and running a platform or network. List only the activities that make the difference, not every task in the business.
8. Key Partners
Key partners are the suppliers and allies that strengthen your model. You work with them to operate more efficiently, reduce risk or gain resources and know-how you do not have in-house.
9. Cost Structure
The cost structure lists the most important costs of operating the model. Some models are cost-driven, like a low-cost airline. Others are value-driven, like luxury brands that invest in quality and experience. Separate fixed from variable costs and look for economies of scale.
How to fill in a business model canvas template
Work from right to left. Start with the customer and the value you offer, then how it reaches them, then what you need behind the scenes, and finish with the numbers. Do it with the people who know your customers and your figures, because the conversation matters as much as the finished sheet.
Download the free template (PDF) above. Print it at A3 or larger and use sticky notes, one idea per note, so you can move and remove things as the discussion develops. A Word or Google Slides version works for remote sessions, but a canvas on a wall makes connections easier to spot.
- Set the scope. Pick one business model and write the date and a version number at the top. Strategyzer recommends dating and versioning the canvas, then redrawing it as evidence comes in.
- Start with customer segments. Describe each segment so precisely that you would recognise it in a sales call. If you have several, give each its own sticky-note colour, so you can later see which channels and activities belong to which segment.
- Write a value proposition per segment. Describe the problem you solve or the outcome you enable, in your customer’s words rather than your own.
- Fill in channels and relationships. Walk through the five channel phases. How does someone hear about you, judge your offer, buy, receive it, and what happens afterwards?
- Define revenue streams. What does each segment pay for, how do they pay, and how is the price set?
- Complete the left side. Which key resources, key activities and key partners do you need to make the right side real? Keep only what is essential.
- Derive the cost structure and test the whole. Put the main costs next to revenue. Mark every note that is an assumption and pick the two or three you will test first.
Strategyzer’s advice is to treat the result as a claim, not a plan. You redraw it as you learn.
Business model canvas example: a boutique hotel in Amsterdam
Below is a fully filled-in business model canvas example for Huis Brouwersgracht. This business is fictional: we invented it to make the canvas concrete. Any resemblance to a real hotel is coincidental.
Huis Brouwersgracht is a fourteen-room boutique hotel in a seventeenth-century canal house in Amsterdam. A small team of hosts runs it, and it competes on personal attention rather than on price. The third column shows the assumption behind each block, because every canvas is a set of bets.
| Building block | Filled in for Huis Brouwersgracht (fictional) | Assumption to test |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Customer Segments | International couples on a city break, mainly from the UK, the US and Germany. Business travellers in Amsterdam for a few nights who want something more personal than a chain hotel. Returning guests celebrating an anniversary. | Do business travellers book direct, or only through their company’s travel tool? |
| 2. Value Propositions | A stay in a historic canal house with views over the water. A host who knows the neighbourhood and plans your days with you. A short, personal city guide instead of a generic list. Breakfast from a bakery around the corner. | Will guests pay more for the host than for the view? |
| 3. Channels | Own website with direct booking. Online travel agencies such as Booking.com and Expedia. Google Search and a Google Business Profile. Instagram. Word of mouth from previous guests. | Can the website move a larger share of bookings to direct? |
| 4. Customer Relationships | A personal email before arrival with tips and bookable experiences. A welcome from the host. A handwritten note in the room. A thank-you message after the stay with an invitation to return. | Does pre-arrival contact lead to more experience bookings? |
| 5. Revenue Streams | Room nights, direct and through travel agencies (net of commission). Breakfast. Private canal tours and dinners booked through partners, with a margin. Gift vouchers. | What share of guests books at least one experience? |
| 6. Key Resources | The leased canal house and its rooms. The host team. The brand and its guest reviews. The booking engine and guest data. Professional photography of the rooms. | Are reviews a stronger asset than the location? |
| 7. Key Activities | Hosting and guest service. Housekeeping and upkeep of a listed building. Managing prices and availability across channels. Writing content about the neighbourhood. | How many hours a week go into answering guest messages by hand? |
| 8. Key Partners | Online travel agencies. A private canal boat operator. A neighbourhood bakery. A laundry service. A contractor experienced with listed buildings. | Would the boat operator promote the hotel to its own customers? |
| 9. Cost Structure | Value-driven. Fixed: lease, salaries, insurance and software. Variable: travel agency commissions, laundry and breakfast. Plus maintenance of the building, photography and marketing. | What does one direct booking save compared with a booking through an agency? |
What this example reveals
Lay the blocks side by side and three things stand out that a written plan would bury.
The host is both the value proposition and the bottleneck. Personal attention is why guests choose this hotel, and it is also the scarcest resource. Every hour the team spends on routine messages is an hour taken away from the thing guests pay for.
Commission is the quiet lever. Travel agencies fill rooms, but every booking through them costs a commission. Shifting even part of the volume to direct bookings changes the economics more than a price increase would. That turns the website from a brochure into the most important channel on the canvas.
The neighbourhood content does double duty. Writing about the area is a key activity for guest service, and it is also exactly what helps people find the hotel in search. One activity serves two blocks.
Common mistakes to avoid
A canvas rarely fails because a block is empty. It fails because blocks are vague or do not connect. These are the mistakes that come up most often.
- One canvas for the whole company. Strategyzer recommends one canvas per business model. Merge two models and your segments, channels and costs blur into an average nobody recognises.
- Starting with the product. If you begin with activities and resources, you describe what you already do. Start with the customer and you see what needs to happen.
- A value proposition made of buzzwords. “Quality”, “service” and “bespoke” say nothing until you name the problem that disappears or the result the customer gets.
- Confusing channels with relationships. Channels are the route your value travels. Relationships are the nature and intensity of the contact. Your website is a channel. A dedicated account manager is a relationship.
- Writing assumptions down as facts. Every canvas is full of assumptions. That is fine as long as you mark them and test them with customer conversations, data or a small experiment.
- Filling in costs and revenue in isolation. The bottom two blocks should follow from the seven above. A labour-heavy key activity with no matching cost line means the canvas does not add up.
- Letting it gather dust. A canvas is a snapshot. Date it, revisit it every quarter, and sooner when your market shifts.
BMC vs lean canvas vs value proposition canvas
The business model canvas describes your whole business model. The lean canvas is built for new ideas under high uncertainty. The value proposition canvas zooms in on two blocks of the business model canvas: customer segments and value propositions.
| Business Model Canvas | Lean Canvas | Value Proposition Canvas | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Created by | Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur (Strategyzer) | Ash Maurya, in 2010, as an adaptation of the business model canvas | Strategyzer, described in the book Value Proposition Design (2014) |
| Focus | The complete business model | The problem, the solution and the riskiest assumptions of a new idea | The fit between what a customer needs and what you offer |
| Structure | Nine building blocks | Replaces Key Partners, Key Activities, Key Resources and Customer Relationships with Problem, Solution, Key Metrics and Unfair Advantage | Customer profile (jobs, pains, gains) and value map (products and services, pain relievers, gain creators) |
| Use it when | You want to analyse an existing business or design a new model | You want to validate a startup or new product before you build | You want to sharpen your offer or your positioning |
Mind the difference in rights. The business model canvas is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, while the value proposition canvas is under the copyright of Strategyzer AG.
For an established business, the business model canvas is usually the right starting point, because you already have customers, channels and costs to describe. If the value proposition is the weak spot, work that block out in more depth with the value proposition canvas. The lean canvas suits an idea nobody has paid for yet.
From canvas to digital strategy
A filled-in business model canvas is the best input you can give a digital strategy. Each building block translates into a concrete decision about your website, search visibility, marketing or processes.
| Building block | Question for your digital strategy | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Segments | What does this segment search for, and in which words? | Audiences, keywords and content topics |
| Value Propositions | Does a visitor understand within seconds what you solve? | Messaging, brand story and homepage |
| Channels | Where does this segment arrive today, and where does it drop off? | Channel mix: SEO, social, email and paid media |
| Customer Relationships | Which contact must stay personal, and what can run automatically? | Customer journey, CRM and automation |
| Revenue Streams | Which online action comes right before a payment? | Conversion goals and a measurement plan |
| Key Resources | Which digital assets do you own, and which do you rent? | Website, content, data and brand as owned assets |
| Key Activities | Which repeated tasks cost time without adding value? | Processes to standardise or automate |
| Key Partners | Which platforms do you depend on, and what if their terms change? | Tool and platform choices |
| Cost Structure | What can you afford to spend to win a customer, given your margin? | Budget and the order of your roadmap |
Take the hotel. Its canvas says the website has one job: win direct bookings from couples and business travellers who would otherwise book through an agency. That sets the order of work. First a clear position and a brand identity that makes the host experience tangible. Then a site built to convert, which is what we cover in luxury websites proven to convert. Then search visibility for the neighbourhood content the team already writes. Paid campaigns come last. Guest messaging is a key activity that eats hours, so tools such as n8n can handle confirmations, pre-arrival emails and review requests, and give the hosts their time back.
That translation from business model to a prioritised roadmap is the core of strategy at Viralistic. For the full method, read what is digital strategy.
How we help
A canvas shows where your business model stands. The harder question comes next: what do you do first? That is where our strategy approach starts. We look at your business as a whole, from positioning and brand to website, search and processes, and turn it into a roadmap in phases. Each phase ends with a tangible result, so you decide step by step how to continue. No long-term retainer is required.
For positioning and messaging we use the StoryBrand framework, so your value proposition becomes a story customers remember. Where processes cost time, we advise on automation that serves your business goal. You get one strategic lead instead of a stack of separate specialists.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the difference between a business model and a business model canvas?
A business model is the logic of how an organisation creates, delivers and captures value. A business model canvas is a tool for describing that logic on one page, using nine building blocks. The model is what you do. The canvas is how you draw it, discuss it with your team and test whether the parts fit together.
Is the business model canvas still relevant?
Yes, as long as you use it for what it does well. The canvas is still the clearest one-page way to describe a business model and to get a team looking at the same picture. Its limits are known: it is a static snapshot and says little about competitors or the wider market. So date your canvas, update it as evidence comes in, and map market forces and trends separately.
What are key activities in the BMC?
Key activities are the most important things a company must do to make its business model work. They fall into three broad types: production, problem solving and running a platform or network. A hotel’s key activities include hosting, housekeeping and managing prices across booking channels. A consultancy’s key activity is solving client problems.
Can you give examples of cost structures in the business model canvas?
A cost structure lists the main costs of running the model. A low-cost airline is cost-driven: it minimises every expense. A boutique hotel is value-driven: it accepts higher costs for staff and experience. Typical entries include fixed costs such as rent, salaries and software, and variable costs such as materials, commissions and shipping.
Is the business model canvas free to use?
Yes. Strategyzer released the Business Model Canvas under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence. You may use, share and adapt it, including inside your own company or as a consultant. The conditions are that you credit Strategyzer, with Strategyzer.com visible under the canvas, and that you share adapted versions under the same licence.
Where can I find the official 9 building blocks PDF?
The official Business Model Canvas is available as a free PDF on the website of Strategyzer, the company behind the canvas. It shows the nine building blocks in the official layout, from Key Partners on the left to Customer Segments on the right, with Cost Structure and Revenue Streams along the bottom. Our free template above follows the same structure.
Written by
Founder of Viralistic and official n8n Ambassador
Marrallisa leads strategy, design, search and automation for premium brands from Amsterdam. She has trained teams at Volkswagen and speaks at n8n and Anthropic events. Want to talk through your situation? Book a call with her directly.