So far you have tested the viability of your idea — is it big enough to deliver on your minimum success criteria? We’ve been focusing at the 3 year point which is helpful for ballparking, but three years is too long to wait to see if the model is working.
Product Roadmaps have traditionally been used for this purpose.
A product roadmap assume you know what you’ll be building for the next 18-24 months which we don’t.
A traction roadmap is a contract you create with your stakeholders in terms of traction goals vs. solution goals.
A Traction Roadmap does for the financial forecast what the Lean Canvas does for the business plan.
You’ll specifically work on further refining these boxes on your Lean Canvas:
The 10x rule helps you turn a 3 year minimum success criteria goal down to yearly goals. But 12 months is still too long.
The flat portion of the hockey stick almost approximates linear. So you could say: between 3 months and 12 months we have a 9 month ramp, let's take the customer minimum goal for year 1 and divide by 9.
If the product is ready, you can come up with a ramp. You would be selling to hit the goal every month. But what if the product is going to take 3-6 months to get ready? You can't make sales. You have to do something else.