Startup Business Foundations for Success

Nominated for Small Business Book Award 2016

Do you have a brilliant idea for a product or a startup business? The Strong Startup is a book for aspiring entrepreneurs who have a great idea and no clue how to go about bringing their dream to reality.

TSS is focused on the foundation of any successful new startup business: proving you have a saleable product first.

TSS is built from Mr. Freriks’ ACE Methodology, which embodies three basic steps: Assessment, Confirmation, and Execution. It is a process of Assessing yourself, your customer, your product and your startup business concept to generate assumptions about creating a strong product/customer fit. Confirm the assumptions by defining and validating them with research and sales. When you’ve built a provable foundation, you Execute a business plan. The goal is to arrive at a powerful Product/Customer Fit and create a market. The assumptions are Confirmed through research and sales, then the validated assumptions are turned into a thriving startup business by Executing the business plan. This book is about adding clarity to the entrepreneur and the startup business process. It is about helping entrepreneurs find the starting line with confidence.

You can’t build a business unless you first prove that your product will be purchased by a lot of people.

TSS gives entrepreneurs a clear, efficient, and logical roadmap. Based on forty years of successful business launches (and a few miserable failures), TSS gives you the benefit of 40 years of hard-learned lessons.

We cover things like: How do you create a motivated customer and a strong product/customer fit? How do you identify real problems and the real need for a solution? How do you find prospects and communicate that your product relieves their PAIN or creates a GAIN? How do you adapt your product features to fit what the customer will buy?

The ACEumptions Matrix is a way for entrepreneurs to systematically organize all the components of a working business plan. It helps develop the customer, the product, and profitability. The ACE Worksheet is a way to analyze, organize, and prioritize your assumptions.

The focus of The Strong Startup is squarely on the product in the “startup” process. Most “startup advice” books focus on the marketing and inspiration needed to launch a product, but only a few focus on the product, which drives the whole thing. Without a good product (or service), your startup will not successfully launch. The book, in particular, embraces its own self-developed methodology, “ACE methodology” (Assess, Confirm, Execute), which focuses on analysis validation, and constant feedback to refine marketing and product design. It features one of the simplest and most straightforward formulas for pricing that a reader will ever see.

From Small Business Trends.

TSS has some very handy tools for helping you get a handle on the essential steps of business-building. The ACEumptions Matrix is the overall organizational tool. Check it out.  See also The ACE Worksheet, a way to analyze, organize, and prioritize your assumptions.

---

Learn how to Pitch to Investors

Many entrepreneurs know nothing about how to pitch to investors. It is important to keep in mind that this is a sales process that can only be done successfully when you, your team, your product/customer, infrastructure and economic proof of concept is ready. TSS will show you how to prepare and present your pitch, providing a logical format to follow that is aligned with what investors want to hear.

Learn how to Get Product-Perfecting Feedback from Customers

The biggest lesson entrepreneurs have a hard time learning is how to spend their time developing customers instead of developing the final product. How do you approach prospects to find out what they really want and will pay for?

Coaching for Individuals. Mr. Freriks is available for personal consulting and coaching or group seminars.