Specialist Preparation Program in Entrepreneurship and Venture Creation

Specialist Preparation Program in Entrepreneurship and Venture Creation is a free program on ARPS, the Arab Platform for Professional Studies. Move from a defined customer problem to a testable offer and a launch decision grounded in evidence, capacity and cash.

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Estimated time
16.5 hours
subjects
5
lessons
20
Study language
Arabic and English

Optional certificate fee 50% launch discount

$90 instead of $180

331 AED or 338 SAR

Start the first subject free Fees by route

Program facts

Study fee
Free
subjects
5
lessons
20
Estimated time
16.5 hours
Content last reviewed
Access period
30 days
Study language
Arabic and English

About the program

The program moves from a customer's situation and alternatives through interviews and small behavior tests, then designs an offer, delivery path, financial estimates and a launch decision. Cases are fictional and separate observation from assumption. This program grants no operating license, legal opinion or guarantee of venture success.

Practical relevance

Produce a problem card, alternatives matrix, interview record, offer specification, contribution and cash calculation, and reasoned decision memo.

Why this program

An attractive idea can fail because customers already have a working substitute or delivery is not feasible. Learn to test the binding constraint before expanding commitments.

What you will learn

  • Frame a customer problem and testable assumptions before building a product.
  • Collect and interpret customer behavior with correct denominators and contrary cases.
  • Design a specified offer, transaction, delivery process and bounded experiment.
  • Calculate unit economics, capacity, acquisition cost and cash timing.
  • Make a conditional launch, revision or stop decision within local authority boundaries.
Learning outcomes (5)
  1. Turn a venture idea into a bounded customer problem and testable assumptions
  2. Collect and interpret discovery evidence without leading respondents or equating interest with purchase
  3. Design a coherent value proposition, delivery model and testable offer
  4. Estimate acquisition, unit economics, cash needs and downside scenarios
  5. Prepare a bounded launch and revise the venture decision from observed results

Who it is for

  • Practitioners supporting venture formation or testing a new offer.
  • Operational professionals needing inspectable decision tools.
  • Early-stage founders who want to test their assumptions with behavioural evidence before spending savings or committing to fixed costs.
  • Staff in incubators and entrepreneur-support programmes who review early venture plans and give feedback on them.

Prerequisites

  • Read simple tables and perform basic percentages, multiplication and division.
  • Willingness to hold short conversations with potential customers and record what they said and did without leading them.
  • Ability to use a spreadsheet to calculate costs, margin and a month-by-month cash position.
  • A venture idea or new offer to practise on, or readiness to work through a hypothetical teaching case instead.

Curriculum

  1. Subject 1 Open for free

    Opportunity framing and assumptions

    A venture opportunity begins with a customer occasion, not a product label. Cafeteria closing and a long gate walk are different night-shift problems, while home food may work for some people. Segment by shift and ability to leave the station; separate user, payer and site authority. Compare alternatives on timing, access, price and effort, retaining unknown cells. Before building an app, write assumptions that can fail and select evidence that matches each: a recent-incident interview for the problem, authorized review for pickup access, and a priced offer only after feasible operation for payment behavior. A small threshold guides a local learning decision, not market-prevalence estimation. If pickup is barred or recent incidents do not appear, revise the test or segment rather than converting interest into proven demand.

    4 lessons · 2.5 hours

    1. Framing a verifiable customer problem 42 min
    2. Choosing the first customer segment 40 min
    3. Mapping alternatives and competition 42 min
    4. Prioritizing and testing assumptions 40 min
  2. Subject 2

    Customer discovery and evidence

    Recruitment shapes what discovery can support. Manager referrals and founder friends may offer useful accounts but do not represent all workers. Set recent-shift eligibility before contact, keep participation voluntary and include people whose home-food option works. In the interview, ask about the last act, its timing and substitute rather than leading with an imagined app. In analysis, separate participant account from researcher interpretation and retain contrary cases. A count's denominator is those who answered the same question, not everyone invited. Interest-page opens are not purchases; payment and collection are distinct steps with different denominators. Payment abandonment may reflect a technical fault rather than price rejection. Report observation, bounded inference and remaining unknown before designing another test.

    4 lessons · 3 hours

    1. Recruiting discovery participants without convenient bias 42 min
    2. Interviewing for behavior 44 min
    3. Coding contradictory discovery notes 44 min
    4. Interpreting a small behavior test 42 min
  3. Subject 3

    Offer and delivery model

    A testable offer specifies segment, hour, pickup point, price and capacity; it does not publish a promise dependent on missing permission. Choose a revenue mechanism that fits the occasion: one-off preorders may suit irregular overtime, while a weekly pack requires repeat-use evidence and clear cancellation terms. Trace each order from acceptance to preparation, transport, collection and exception remedy; production alone is not customer fulfillment. Capacity 20 cannot justify confirming 22 paid orders and calling the excess demand a success. An experiment card fixes assumption, offer, channel, window, measured act and decision rule before results. A price-free interest button does not test acceptance at 16, and changing message timing with price prevents a price-only inference. A small pilot can reveal service capability without proving scale or enduring profit.

    4 lessons · 3 hours

    1. A deliverable value proposition 42 min
    2. Choosing the revenue mechanism 40 min
    3. Designing a minimum viable service and handoffs 46 min
    4. Designing an offer experiment with a decision rule 42 min
  4. Subject 4

    Unit economics and cash

    Separate startup equipment from periodic overhead and per-meal cost, with units and estimate sources. Fictional price 16 and variable cost 7.5 yield contribution 8.5 before fixed cost and waste. Fixed cost 660 requires 78 paid, fulfilled meals for simplified operating break-even; five sessions capped at 15 allow only 75. Acquisition cost 60 divided by contribution 8.5 means eight similar meals would arithmetically exceed it, not that customers will actually repeat eight times. Keep views and unrelated referrals out of the channel's new-customer denominator. Then date each receipt and payment in a cash forecast. A one-week collection delay can nearly exhaust cash even while per-meal contribution remains positive. Do not erase a cash gap by moving a future receipt forward or omitting a newly discovered carrier bill.

    4 lessons · 3 hours

    1. Classifying startup and operating costs 44 min
    2. Contribution margin and break-even 48 min
    3. Customer acquisition cost and its limits 44 min
    4. Cash forecasting and shortfall timing 52 min
  5. Subject 5

    Readiness, launch and learning

    Launch requires scoped gates for activity, site and responsible party. Interview permission does not authorize sales, and a Site A document does not cover Site B. Refer food, IP, contracts and tax questions to the appropriate local authority or qualified specialist. Rehearse missing ingredients, carrier delay, lost orders and possible safety failure before the first batch; isolate affected food and tell buyers what is actually known. After launch, compute each conversion against its eligible preceding group, and do not call people who lacked another shift nonreturners. Bring interviews, payments, receipts and repeats together with unit margin, capacity and cash in a decision memo. Break-even 78 against capacity 75 rules out current operating break-even. A conditional pickup redesign and small test may be preferable to immediate expansion or abandoning the idea, but absent permission or safe operation stops sales rather than merely changing their description.

    4 lessons · 3 hours

    1. Local readiness gates and specialist boundaries 40 min
    2. Launch readiness and failure response 46 min
    3. Reading launch conversion and repeat use 46 min
    4. A go, revise, or stop decision 54 min

Subjects unlock in sequence as you progress.

Strengths

  • A problem card before product construction.
  • Discovery evidence separated from purchase.
  • A bounded offer and service with explicit handoffs.
  • Reviewable cost, capacity and cash calculations.
  • A decision memo that handles conflicting evidence and local gates.

Evidence basis

Publisher sources support the methods only within their stated scope; meal figures and people are fictional, while real local requirements need local review.

Methodology

The program teaches inspectable venture tasks through worked cases and practice with explicit source and authority limits.

Assessment

Assessments follow the program blueprint and may use module assessments, a final assessment, or a combination, under the approved attempt policy.

Assessment attempts: 2 per assessment, 7 days apart

The pass mark is announced before the program is published.

Certificate

The credential confirms completion and successful assessment; it does not represent professional licensure unless explicitly and lawfully stated.

Every certificate has a public verification code. Verify a certificate

The real design with fictional details; opens in a new window.

Verification example: a real issued certificate

Program questions

Must I already own a venture?

No. Cases are fictional; reading simple tables and basic arithmetic are useful prerequisites.

Does the program authorize me to choose a legal structure or license?

No. It teaches how to prepare facts and questions for the qualified local authority or adviser.

Do interviews alone prove people will buy?

No. Interviews expose situations and alternatives; payment, delivery and repeat use require separate feasible tests.

Can I practice without selling real food?

Yes. Use the supplied fictional cases and worked data; do not run a live test before local and operating conditions are met.

What do assessments measure?

They assess decisions and calculations from stated case facts. Guided practice has feedback; automated answers alone do not establish live venture competence.

Is Specialist Preparation Program in Entrepreneurship and Venture Creation free, and do I get a certificate?

Yes. Specialist Preparation Program in Entrepreneurship and Venture Creation is free on ARPS: every lesson, exercise and assessment is free, the first subject is open to read without an account, and the program is available in Arabic and English. Issuing a certificate is optional; it is a training completion certificate showing you passed the program's assessments, not a university degree, a professional licence or an endorsement by an external body.

What other names is Specialist Preparation Program in Entrepreneurship and Venture Creation known by?

The subject of this program is also known as: entrepreneurship, startup creation, venture creation, new venture development. Learners usually find it by searching for: free entrepreneurship course, learn entrepreneurship online, how to start a business, validate a startup idea, entrepreneurship course with completion certificate.