🤖 #22: Vivian's Deeptech Insider: Lean Canvas? ✅ Traction? ✅ Now Comes the Real Work.

Hello and welcome to #22 edition of the fortnightly Vivian’s Deeptech Insider.

In our last newsletter, we explored Will They Pay for It? Here’s How to Find Out—diving into how early feedback loops and validation can give you confidence that your product resonates with early Champions within your market. With those data points in hand, you're now positioned for growth. This time, we’re shifting from Champions to Communication, the next stop in our 4Cs framework. Now it’s all about dialling in your language to achieve language–market fit—not just with early adopters, but with the broader market. Nail this, and you’ll be well on your way to scaling revenue and attracting the right strategic investors:

1. Complexity → Clarity
   Founders need to translate complex technical problems into business challenges that resonate with non-technical stakeholders. I’ll help you clearly communicate the significance of your solution, making sure everyone understands the problem you’re solving and why it matters.

2. Clarity → Champions
   It’s about more than identifying a problem—it’s about pinpointing your early adopters, refining market positioning, and clearly articulating the problem and customer definition to showcase potential to investors.

3. Champions → Communication
   Deeptech products can be hard to explain. I’ll help translate technical milestones into core features, benefits, and customer impact, ensuring they’re clear and compelling to investors and customers alike.

4. Communication → Clients
   I’ll provide guidance on tracking progress, communicating growth metrics, and updating stakeholders on the product's evolution to demonstrate how scientific advancements translate into tangible value.

In newsletter #17, we dived into the Lean Canvas—a powerful tool for capturing the essence of your deeptech startup. If you missed it or want to revisit the content, check it out here. It helped us define the problem, solution, and key metrics—critical steps for figuring out what you're building and who you’re building it for.

But here’s the thing: your Lean Canvas is just the start. Now that you’ve clarified the big picture, the next step is operationalising it. Enter: the Internal Roadmap Doc. This is where you map out how you're going to bring that vision to life, make sure your team stays aligned, and share your progress with investors, suppliers, and customers.

So What’s the Big Difference Between a Lean Canvas and an Internal Roadmap?

Great question. While the Lean Canvas helped you get crystal clear on your company and product vision, the Internal Roadmap turns that vision into a cohesive plan of action. Think of the Lean Canvas as the strategic “what” and “why,” while the Internal Roadmap is the how—it’s the action plan for making things happen.

Let’s break it down:

1. Purpose:

• Lean Canvas: The Lean Canvas is all about defining your business model and testing assumptions. It’s a strategic overview that helps you understand your core problem, solution, customer, and key metrics.

• Internal Roadmap Doc: The roadmap takes that strategic thinking and turns it into tactical steps. It’s the execution plan that aligns your team, sets timelines, and defines clear success metrics for moving from MVP to full product.

2. Audience:

• Lean Canvas: Mostly for the founding team to validate assumptions and pitch to early investors.

• Internal Roadmap Doc: This is for your entire team (engineering, marketing, sales, etc.) who needs to be aligned on the roadmap. It’s also what you’ll use to adapt into external set of documents to communicate clearly with investors, suppliers, and partners.

3. Content Focus:

• Lean Canvas: Focuses on the big picture. It covers the problem, the solution, key metrics, and customer segments at a high level. Think of it like a business model snapshot.

• Internal Roadmap Doc: The roadmap is about actionable milestones and execution plans. It takes the big-picture insights from the Lean Canvas and translates them into concrete steps that align all teams around shared goals. It’s where you define what needs to happen when and who’s responsible for what.

4. Level of Detail:

• Lean Canvas: High-level, strategic—it captures the most important details without diving into execution specifics. It’s more about defining the strategy and ensuring that everyone is aligned on the vision.

• Internal Roadmap Doc: Detailed, tactical, and action-driven. It’s where you define specific deliverables, set deadlines, and assign responsibilities to keep everyone on track as you move toward your product milestones.

5. External Use:

• Lean Canvas: Great for internal and early investor validation, but not necessarily something you’ll share outside the team or in detailed comms.

• Internal Roadmap Doc: This is your communication tool to bring everyone along the journey. You’ll adapt it later for:

  • Investors (to show how you’ll get from idea to revenue),

  • Marketing and PR teams (to craft the right messaging to attract your clients),

  • Suppliers (to align them with your timeline),

  • New hires (to get them up to speed quickly).

How Does the Internal Roadmap Build on the Lean Canvas?

Your Lean Canvas was a great start—it helped you define your business model. But now, you need a roadmap to get you there. Here’s how the roadmap builds on your Lean Canvas:

1. Problem/Solution → Roadmap: Concrete Execution

• In the Lean Canvas, you defined the problem you’re solving and the solution you’re providing. Now the internal roadmap translates that into specific deliverables.

  Example: In the Lean Canvas, you said, “Battery recyclers lose 30% of valuable materials.” The roadmap turns this into “Build AI-powered sorting module” and defines timelines (e.g., Q2 2025 for MVP).

2. Customer Segments → Roadmap: Actionable Milestones

• Your Lean Canvas identified who your customer segments are. Now, the roadmap shows you how to validate those segments.

  Example: In your Lean Canvas, battery recyclers are one of your key segments. Your roadmap includes actions like:

  • Q1 2025: Identify top 3 potential pilot customers for validation

  • Q2 2025: Launch first pilot with Company X to test product features

3. Key Metrics → Roadmap: Clear Success Criteria

• The Key Metrics in the Lean Canvas help you define what success looks like, but the roadmap breaks it down into specific measurable targets.

  Example: You defined your key metric as “customer satisfaction” in the Lean Canvas. Now, in the internal roadmap, you define it as “Achieve 80% satisfaction in the first pilot phase”.

Real Example: From Lean Canvas to Roadmap

Let's take a real example. In your Lean Canvas, you defined:

• Problem: Battery recyclers are losing 30% of recoverable material.

• Solution: AI-powered sorting system for real-time optimisation.

Your Internal Roadmap could then look like this:

This is a simplified, straightforward roadmap in table form - visualising it as a timeline is also another format that works well. Either way, it’s a concrete plan that outlines how you’ll bring your vision to life, step by step.

How the Internal Roadmap Translates for External Use

Once you’ve got your internal roadmap, it becomes the basis for your set of external documents, which I’ll cover in more details in the last section of the 4Cs:

TL;DR:

• Your Lean Canvas is a strategic overview. The Internal Roadmap turns that strategy into actionable steps.

• The roadmap aligns your entire team and provides clarity on who is doing what, when, and what success looks like.

• It’s the foundation for external communication, helping you share your progress with investors, suppliers, and marketing teams.

Next up: How to measure success with OKRs and KPIs—so you can track progress internally, adjust as needed, and prove to your investors you’re on track.

Here’s to building things people actually want,
Vivian

P.S. Want a simple internal roadmap template to help you get started? Reply and I’ll send it your way. 👇

Jobs with Deeptech investors:

• Chief of Staff - First Round Capital (VC), New York, USA

• Investment Associate, Healthcare - Upfront Ventures (VC), Los Angeles, USA

• Marketing & Platform Analyst - Nauta (VC), London, UK

• Analyst - LDV Capital (VC), New York, USA

• Associate Investor - Zeal Capital Partners (VC), Washington DC, USA

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