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In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) era, entrepreneurs face highly uncertain startup environments. Thus, traditional methods for launching startup businesses must address the challenges associated with uncertain environments. Based on the definition of startup as “the practical activity of starting a business in an uncertain environment”, the greatest challenge in startup is reducing uncertainty. Thus, this paper defines the lean and agile startup (LAS) method by using the business model canvas (BMC) as an iterative tool and combining the customer development (CD) method and agile method (AM). LAS is an upgraded version of lean startup (LS) that provides entrepreneurs with a “0-to-1” startup exploration method. It allows entrepreneurs to promote startup exploration activities through the “hypothesis-exploration-test-cognition” iterative model, thereby evolving their ideas into sustainable business models. Moreover, this paper articulates a developmental approach for building iterative startup software based on LAS. It therefore offers entrepreneurs a convenient and visual iterative tool for startup to improve the effectiveness of startup exploration. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11365-022-00797-3.

The impacts of business models on the successes of companies are convincing. Business Model Canvas (BMC) provides the basic framework that describes business logic. Yet it lacks an academic understanding of the internal structures of business models. This paper uses the grounded theory method, qualitative analysis as well as entrepreneurial orientation theory to conduct an individual case study on SHEIN’s business model. The research shows that SHEIN accurately addresses the customer pain points and customer benefits of fashionable women, and gains the trust of end-users by integrating its supply chain based in China. Entrepreneurial orientation drives SHEIN to set up its value network. From the perspective of value discovery, SHEIN accurately targets segmented customer groups. The enterprise reaches end users through social networks and establishes customer relationship with high viscosity. From the perspective of value creation, SHEIN reconstructs the value network, delivering great shopping experiences with low costs. From the perspective of value acquisition, SHEIN has scalability in cost structure and expandability in revenue source. The research found that SHEIN has occupied the low-end market of fast fashion through low-end entry, and is moving to the mainstream market of fast fashion through customer group upgrading, design upgrading and supply chain upgrading, bringing competitive challenge to the fast fashion market incumbents. The innovation of this research lies in: First, the Business Model Iterative Canvas (BMIC) could interpret the business models and their logic in-depth. Second, the research reveals how the competitive advantage is created through value network reconstruction.

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