How I Used Barnoculars + Slingshots to Explain Customer Segments + Value Propositions {Business Model Canvas}

In the last few weeks, I’ve presented several workshops at Chile Start-Up School, an extracurricular project started by a Start-Up Chile team from Norway. The students come from several different universities, and a wide variety of majors, including engineering, English, film, and many more.

The course is based on the Business Model Generation framework, which has become a bible for entrepreneurs everywhere. I’ve really enjoyed teaching the workshops.

For the initial class, my parents gave guest lectures too! Mom talked about strategies to learn from your customers. Dad talked about failure in Silicon Valley. And I talked about Chile and China (an abbreviated version of this talk.)

For the second class, we got into the real meat of the Business Model Generation framework. Here is a two-minute YouTube video that explains this canvas in a concise and visual way:

In this workshop, we discussed two main areas: Customer Segments and Value Propositions.  The definitions and some of the examples came straight from the book, but I brought in my own examples to put a fun spin on it.

I printed out pictures of fun gifts, such as…

Barnoculars. Image via coolbuzz.org

Image via werd.com. Thank you Caitlin Davis for recommending this fabulous website filled with fun gifts for guys. My students thank you too!!

I also summarized my friend Jonathan Heeter’s post about his band’s Freemium business model on Slide #28.

Overall, it was a fun workshop, and I think all of the students got a really clear idea of customer segments and value propositions.

Here are the slides. SlideShare made the formatting a bit funky, but it should be understandable

If you are a teacher or workshop leader, you are more than welcome to use this lesson idea. Let me know how it works out for you!