# Forward Momentum > When buyers can't tell you apart, they buy on price. We fix the reason why. Forward Momentum is a management and brand consultancy founded in 2019, based in New York with a global team. Originally focused on startups and scale-ups, the firm has been industry-agnostic since expanding into healthcare during COVID. Forward Momentum helps companies claim the market category that's already theirs to own, using a methodology called North Star Momentum — combining category design (in the lineage of the book *Play Bigger*), narrative strategy, and hands-on implementation. The work is the same whether it's commissioned by a founder, a division leader with a product to launch, or the fund behind a portfolio company. ## Core pages - [Home](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/): Overview and entry point to the Positioning Stress Test. - [Who We Are](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/who-we-are): Meet founder Andreas Gebhard. - [What is Category Design?](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/what-is-category-design): Definition, examples, and methodology. - [What is a North Star Document?](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/what-is-a-north-star-document): The engagement's central deliverable, what goes in one, and why the large consultancies all ask for one without supplying it. - [For Investors and Boards](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/for-investors): Positioning work at portfolio scale, for PE, growth equity, angels and board members. - [Pricing](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/pricing): Full list of services, prices, and durations. - [Positioning Stress Test](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/stress-test): The firm's entry-level diagnostic offering. - [FAQs](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/faqs): Common questions about the firm and its approach. - [Case Studies](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/case-studies): Named client engagements with reported results. - [Insights](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/insights): Articles on category design and positioning. ## Services Two families. "North Star" is the strategy; "Momentum" is the follow-through that puts it to work. Every North Star engagement produces a North Star document. Prices are flat and all-in: no hourly billing, no expenses on top. Ways in: - **Positioning Stress Test** — $8,000, 10 business days. A teardown of how a company actually shows up to buyers, built around one question: can they tell you apart? The fee counts toward any North Star engagement booked within 90 days. For companies that have done category design work before, the same engagement runs as a **Category Check** — same price, same timeline, adjusted playbook, reviewing what already exists and where to go next. - **Funding Sprint** — $5,000, 2-3 weeks. For pre-funding founders: a category frame, a short-form North Star document, and an investor narrative brief. The fee counts toward any North Star engagement once the round closes. North Star (strategy): - **Compass** — $75,000, 3–4 weeks, plus up to 6 months of Momentum. The full strategy, delivered remotely, for earlier-stage companies or those with budget constraints. Includes six months of Coaching. - **Beacon** — $150,000, 4–6 weeks, plus up to 9 months of Momentum. The widest scope, for launching a new product or reinventing an established brand. Includes a full week on site with the client's leadership team, travel inside the fee, and nine months of Groove. - **Impact** — custom quote. Beacon plus a studio: full-service category design delivered with 9elements, from strategy and narrative through visual identity and launch. Momentum (follow-through): - **Coaching** — $8,000, 3 months. Bi-weekly calls for C-levels, founders, and marketing/product leaders, focused on category thinking. Included with Compass; also available on its own. - **Groove** — $20,000, 3 months. Weekly implementation guidance: what the client's teams produce is read against their North Star document and sent back when it drifts. Included with Beacon; also available on its own. - **Residency** — custom quote, by invitation only. An embedded co-management role on the client's leadership team. Available only as a follow-on to Beacon or Impact, and never bundled. ## For investors and boards Forward Momentum works with private equity, growth equity, angels and board members on positioning problems inside portfolio companies. It makes no difference to the work whether a founder or a fund commissions it. The pattern is recognizable from a board seat: the product is fine but sales cycles are lengthening, discounting has crept in, and two people from the company describe it differently. Every fund runs structured value creation — KKR has Capstone, others a digital framework or a playbook — and all of it starts after somebody has decided what the company actually is. Helping with that kind of decision is what Forward Momentum sells, at a price and scope that fit a portfolio company rather than a multi-year transformation program. The $8,000 Positioning Stress Test is small enough to run across several portfolio companies at once to find where the problem is real. Investors also do this at the fund level themselves: Macquarie named "core plus" and defined it as the "adjacency layer" of infrastructure. Naming a category is what makes a fund the obvious home for a certain kind of asset, and it works the same way one level down. ## Selected results Named clients, with figures as reported by the clients themselves. - [Hypecast](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/case-studies/hypecast) — Corporate Audio did not exist as a market category. Forward Momentum defined the category, built the strategy, and embedded with the team for 2+ years. Within a year: revenue more than tripled, sales projections beaten by 3x, and sales cycles cut 50-75% (per CEO Max Conrad); the momentum also helped close a six-figure funding round. Hypecast went on to acquire a competitor. - [APA Group](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/case-studies/apa-group) — A SaaS product the market wasn't buying. Forward Momentum interviewed across the organization, then built a point of view naming the problem PIX solves and who it solves it for, plus an assessment of what delivering on it would take. Luzia Strohmayer-Nacif, Head of Visual Desk, APA: "Forward Momentum's team sharpened our focus and moved us to draw up a Business Plan 2.0. PIX is the visual part of a communications suite, embedded in the APA Group's News-Tech strategy." - [Dunkin'](https://www.forwardmomentum.llc/case-studies/dunkin) — One Asheville, NC franchise had the lowest staff turnover in the national system and nobody knew why. Forward Momentum embedded with the team and found 76% of managers scored as high-EQ, across 16 in-person interviews, 6 remote interviews, and 21 personality assessments — delivered as replicable KPIs and management techniques for national rollout. ## Notes This file favors named specifics (services, prices, methodology, client results) over generic marketing language, since that's what's most citable. Every figure under "Selected results" comes from the client engagement itself and is attributed on the linked case-study page — none are illustrative. Full detail on each service, plus guidance on which tier fits which situation, lives at /pricing.