Everything a hardware startup needs, in one platform.
Design your product. Find your investors. Connect with your manufacturers. Supported by 13 specialist AI agents and a marketplace of experienced fractional executives — ForgeOS is the operating system for building hardware businesses.
From Tristan
I have spent 26 years building hardware startups. Fractional Forge is the wish list of everything I could have had along the way.
Read the full storyHow It Works
Hardware founders end up reinventing the same wheels — finding engineers, finding manufacturers, finding investors, sorting out IP. Fractional Forge brings it all together.
Experienced Professionals, On Your Terms
Access a marketplace of experienced professionals — people with decades of domain expertise in manufacturing, engineering, finance, supply chain, and operations. They set their own day rates, work project-based, and are available for defined engagements with your company.
- Experienced manufacturing, engineering, finance, and operations specialists
- Flexible engagements — short projects or multi-month retainers
- Rates set by the professionals themselves, transparent to you
13 Specialist AI Agents. Your Judgement.
13 specialist AI agents support every decision — strategy, engineering, finance, legal, manufacturing, supply chain, sales, marketing, product, HR, fundraising, and operations. They provide structured analysis, draw on real data, and challenge assumptions. The decisions remain yours.
- Strategy, engineering, finance, legal, and 9 more disciplines
- Grounded in real supplier, investor, and industry data
- Your context, your decisions — supported at every step
A Connected Manufacturing Network
13,700+ manufacturers across the UK and Europe indexed with capability data. From early prototype design through to production, understand what materials and equipment you need, and find the right partners to make it real.
- 13,700+ UK and European manufacturers and suppliers indexed
- Prototype-ready: identify the materials, equipment, and suppliers for your design
- Search by capability, location, and specialism to find the right match
Keep a distributed team aligned.
Hardware startups end up with people in different places — a fractional engineer in Manchester, a manufacturer in Poland, a finance person working evenings, investors in Cambridge. Fractional Forge has strategy, objectives, and tasks built in, so the whole team knows what they are doing and why.
- Strategic objectives broken down into weekly tasks
- Assign work to teammates or directly to the 13 specialist AI agents
- Track progress across a distributed team from one dashboard
Your expertise, your terms.
I know so many people with decades of real domain expertise in manufacturing, engineering, finance, and operations who would be great for startup companies to have access to. This is where they meet. Free to list, set your own day rate, and founders find you directly.
Set your own rate
You decide what you charge. The platform does not interfere with your pricing.
Founders find you directly
Your profile is searchable by specialism and experience. Engagements happen without an agency in the middle.
Flexible commitment
Part-time, weekend, evening work — or a full-time occupation between roles. List for free and choose your hours.
Start free. Scale when ready.
Start free with 50 AI assists and all 13 specialist AI agents. Upgrade when you need more.
Explorer
Free
50 AI assists, all 13 specialist AI agents
Seed
£19/mo
250 assists, verified emails
Startup Team
£49/mo
750 assists, supplier matching
Professional
£149/mo
2,500 assists, priority support
See ForgeOS
Everything you need to build,
in one place.
From idea to product design
Describe your product and the platform walks through the materials, hardware, software, and equipment you will need. Every component links directly to suppliers who can make it.
Why I built Fractional Forge.
Fractional Forge is essentially my wish list of all the things I could have had as a hardware startup founder over the last 26 years.
One of the main issues I have had is that I have spent so much time and energy building — and spending money on! — the infrastructure rather than focusing on the product. This is completely different to what it is like being a software startup, where you can focus on the product and let companies like AWS deal with the infrastructure issue. A software founder builds one thing. A hardware founder builds two.
The factory itself is the biggest of those time sinks. Finding a location takes months. Then come the lease negotiations — and as a startup you can easily be asked to pay one, two, or three years of rent up front, which raises the obvious question of where that money is meant to come from. After that comes procuring the equipment, installing it, and hiring the people to run it. You can easily be twelve or eighteen months in before you have built anything at all.
Hardware has never had an AWS equivalent. Every founder ends up reinventing the same wheels — finding engineers, finding investors, sorting out IP, building a finance team — all pre-revenue, all without the budget for any of it.
Fractional Forge is my attempt at that equivalent. Rather than building your own factory from scratch, the platform connects you directly to over 13,700 UK and European manufacturers who already have the building, the machinery, and the expertise. As you work through your product, you can see who can make what you are designing, and reach out to them for real advice on how it actually gets made.
Alongside the manufacturing network, Fractional Forge brings together 13 specialist AI agents, an investor database of over 7,800 firms, strategy and cash-burn tools, and a marketplace of experienced fractional executives — so the rest of the hardware founder's job sits in one place too.
One of the less obvious things about running a hardware startup is just how distributed the team ends up being — a designer here, a fractional engineer there, a manufacturer in another country, a finance advisor in a third. Keeping everyone moving in the same direction becomes its own full-time job. Fractional Forge has strategy, objectives, and tasks built in, so the whole team knows what they are doing and why — whether they are full-time, fractional, or one of the specialist AI agents.
It is also a genuine home for fractional executives. I know so many people who are real domain experts in manufacturing, engineering, finance, and operations who would be great for startup companies to have access to. Startups cannot afford a full range of critical full-time employees. Some experienced people just want to give their expertise on an ad hoc basis. Fractional Forge works for both.
And if you have been thinking about building your own company — Fractional Forge is designed to take you from "I have an idea" to "I know exactly what the next step is".
Have a look and let me know how you get on.
— Tristan Fischer, Founder
Further reading
Longer essays on the eighteen-month trap, the AWS-for-hardware question, and why shared infrastructure always wins.
The Eighteen-Month Trap
Why hardware startups take 12–18 months before first revenue
Read on History Future Now