| Name | henry paul |
|---|---|
| Explain your Big Idea in one sentence. | CropChain transforms unused urban spaces into smart vertical farms governed by local communities through blockchain and DAO technology |
| 1. Pain of the Customer | |
| 1. Who’s your target customer? | Urban residents, community organisations, local councils, and Web3 users concerned with food security, sustainability, and passive income. |
| 2. What’s the job your customer is trying to perform? | Access fresh, locally-grown food, reduce reliance on industrial food systems, and invest in ethical, transparent, and rewarding systems of food production. |
| 3. What’s the pain your customer is experiencing while doing the job? | 1) Limited access to affordable, fresh produce in urban areas |
| 4. How big is the pain the customer is feeling? | 5 Shark Bite |
| 5. How often are customers feeling the pain? | 4 Daily |
| 6. What’s the pain score? | 20 |
| 7. How much market knowledge do you have to understand the pain? | Pro |
| 2. Potential of the Market | |
| 1. How many customers are experiencing the pain? | 4 Millions |
| 2. Sustainability? Can you provide the solution to customers profitably? | 5 Absolutely |
| 3. What’s the current overall size and growth of the market? | 4 Big & Fast |
| 4. Will your solution greatly affect the size and growth of the market? | 5 Yes |
| 5. What are the key growth drivers for the market? | CropChain targets a fast-growing, multi billion pound market driven by rising food insecurity, urban population growth, sustainability regulation, and blockchain adoption offering a highly scalable and profitable solution with real potential for unicorn level impact. |
| 6. What’s the financial potential of a business that solves the pain? | 16 High Growth |
| 3. Prescription for the Pain | |
| 1. What’s the name of your proposed solution to the pain? | CropChain |
| 2. Describe your proposed solution to the pain and its key benefits. | CropChain is a blockchain governed vertical farming platform that transforms disused urban spaces into smart farms, providing affordable, local produce while giving community members ownership, governance rights, and staking-based passive income. |
| 3. How distinct is your solution from what already exits? | 5 Night & Day |
| 4. What types of innovation are you using to differentiate yourself? |
|
| Other | |
| 5. What are the primary differentiators of your solution? | 1) DAO-based governance giving users direct control |
| 6. How much domain expertise do you have to solve the pain? | Varsity |
| 4. Positioning in the Market | |
| 1. What does the competitive landscape (jungle) look like? | Apes |
| 2. Name the current market gorilla. | |
| 2.1 No Market Gorilla |
|
| 3. Are you competing head on with a gorilla for the same customer? | No |
| 4. Who goes out of business if you win? | Traditional urban farms relying solely on donations or CSR funding, intermediaries in food supply chains, and centralized agri-distributors with high carbon footprints. |
| 5. Based on the proposed solution, what’s your market-entry strategy? | Disruptive Strategy |
| Face Punch | Compete head-to-head with market leaders for existing customers with a solution that is similar to existing offerings (i.e., no innovation). |
| Greenfield | Create a brand new market category where competition is non-existent; create new customers and draw customers in from other markets. |
| Bolt-on | Extend an existing market by adding a product or service onto the market’s current offerings; partner with market leader (i.e., incremental innovation) |
| Geographic | Import proven business models and innovations from one country to another (i.e., geographic innovation). |
| Breakthrough | Develop products that are 10x better than market leaders; competing for same customers with high “switching costs” (i.e., 10x innovation). |
| Disruptive | Target unmet needs of underserved customers at the low end of an existing market; competitors flee up market rather than fight for the low end. |
| 5. Path to the Exit | |
| 1. How large is the universe of potential buyers for the company? | 5 A Hundred |
| 2. Who are the top likely potential buyers of the company? | Companies like Infarm, AeroFarms, Chainlink Labs, KlimaDAO, and government-backed smart city initiatives. |
| 3. Do you plan to engage in partnerships with them? If so, how? | Yes, By integrating DAO governance tooling from platforms like Snapshot or Gnosis, sharing vertical farming data via APIs with ESG dashboards, or offering white-label SaaS solutions to their urban agriculture programs. |
| 4. Do you currently have access to relevant distribution channels? | Sort of |
| 5. What’s the overall likelihood of the company becoming acquired? | 4 Very Likely |
| The Big Idea Hypothesis | The output of this worksheet is to create a hypothesis that you can go out and test. Writing down a Big Idea Hypothesis forces you to focus and clarify what you believe before you talk to potential customers or build prototypes (see Nail It Then Scale It, p. 69-73). The best tool we have found for formulating your Big Idea Hypothesis is found in Geoffrey Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm. Moore calls it the “elevator message,” but we use it for the Big Idea Hypothesis. The steps of the Big Idea Hypothesis are:
EXAMPLE 1 – Using this format, let’s take a look at a potential Big Idea Hypothesis for Surf Air, a subscription-based airline startup headquartered in Santa Monica, CA. “(1) For the frequent, wealthy business traveler (2) who dislikes the airport experience, specifically checking in, going through security, waiting at the terminal, and picking up luggage, yet doesn’t have enough wealth to buy a private jet, (3) Surf Air is an airline that (4) allows the traveler to skip all the hassle of the airport experience and have access to a private jet experience without the cost. (5) Unlike traditional airlines, Surf Air (6) is a subscription-based airline, which employs small, luxury planes that can be used by customers like private jets.” EXAMPLE 2 – As an another example, the following is the Big Idea Hypothesis Paul Ahlstrom created for his software company, Knowlix. “(1) For the Internal IT Help Desk managers of large corporations who (2) have dissatisfied customers and are out of compliance with their Customers’ Service Level Agreements because each front-line support representative is unable to capture and share knowledge so they can answer customers’ technical questions and problems in a timely manner, (3) Knowlix is an IT Knowledge Management Solution that (4) allows the front-line IT Customer Support Reps to capture issues within their existing workflow and provide accurate answers in real-time to their corporate customers. (5) Unlike Inference, Knowlix (6) integrates large amounts of unstructured data into the existing workflow of Remedy, Peregrine, and other leading IT Help Desk systems, thus allowing the frontline support rep to answer the question on the first call.” |
| Your Big Idea Hypothesis | Now that you have a foundational understanding of the Big Idea Hypothesis, let’s create one for your big idea (see Nail It Then Scale It, p. 71). By using the answers you provided on the other side of this Canvas, you can piece together a Big Idea Hypothesis that will help focus your efforts and share a clear message as you talk about your big idea with others. So let’s go retrieve each step of the Big Idea Hypothesis. |
| 1. For (target customer): | Urban residents, community organisations, local councils, and Web3 users who are concerned with food security, sustainability, and passive income. |
| 2. Who (statement of monetizable pain): | These groups lack access to affordable, fresh produce, rely on centralised and vulnerable supply chains, and are excluded from meaningful participation or profit in local food systems. |
| 3. The (product name) is a (product category): | CropChain is a blockchain-governed urban farming and DAO infrastructure platform. |
| 4. That (statement of key benefit): | CropChain transforms disused urban spaces into smart vertical farms, giving communities access to fresh produce, while offering ownership, governance rights, and staking-based passive income through its CropCoin token. |
| 5. Unlike (primary competitive alternative): | Unlike traditional vertical farms like GrowUp or digital-only Web3 platforms, CropChain uniquely combines real-world food production with blockchain governance, enabling community ownership and tokenised incentive structures for social and financial return. |
| 6. Our Solution (solution and primary differentiation): | CropChain offers: |
| With all the steps identified and written down, you can now stitch them together to create one, unified Big Idea Hypothesis. Give it a try below. | Urban residents, community organisations, local councils, and Web3 users who are concerned with food security, sustainability, and passive income. These groups lack access to affordable, fresh produce, rely on centralised and vulnerable supply chains, and are excluded from meaningful participation or profit in local food systems. CropChain is a blockchain-governed urban farming and DAO infrastructure platform. CropChain transforms disused urban spaces into smart vertical farms, giving communities access to fresh produce, while offering ownership, governance rights, and staking-based passive income through its CropCoin token. Unlike traditional vertical farms like GrowUp or digital-only Web3 platforms, CropChain uniquely combines real-world food production with blockchain governance, enabling community ownership and tokenised incentive structures for social and financial return. |
| Generated PDF Link |