Make every product smart.
ForgeOS gives hardware founders brainstorming with 13 specialists and access to over 13,000 UK investors and 13,700 manufacturers. Think out loud, find the right capital, and connect with the suppliers who can build what you're designing.
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
Brainstorming with specialists and access to investor and supplier intelligence — so you stop reinventing wheels.
Designed for what hardware is becoming.
Most hardware categories are about to be re-imagined for intelligence — air-quality monitors, kettles, drills, dialysis devices. ForgeOS helps hardware founders brainstorm the smart version, find the investors who fund it, and connect with the manufacturers who can build it.
- Brainstorm with 13 specialists across every discipline
- Over 13,000 UK investors profiled and matched to your stage
- 13,700+ manufacturers indexed by capability and specialism
Ideas in. Decisions out.
Pick one of eight curated questions — pricing, hiring, fundraising, build-vs-partner — or type your own topic. Four specialists pick it up, ask the hard questions, and leave you with a decision and a next step. Not a chat log.
- Eight curated prompts paired with the right specialists
- Type any topic and the relevant specialists respond
- The output is a decision and a next step, not more reading
13 Specialists. Your Judgement.
13 specialists support every decision — strategy, engineering, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, fundraising, and more. 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
Over 13,700 manufacturers across the UK and Europe indexed with capability data. Search by what you need built — PCB assembly, injection moulding, 3D printing, CNC — and get ranked shortlists back. Find the right partners to make it real.
- 13,700+ UK and European manufacturers and suppliers indexed
- Find suppliers experienced in sensor, electronics, and edge-compute integration
- Search by capability, location, and specialism to find the right match
Start free. Scale when ready.
Brainstorming and access to investor information. Start free, upgrade when you need more.
Free
Free
1 brainstorm/mo, 5 saved searches lifetime
Starter
£20/mo
100 investor leads with full why-fit + drafted email, 10 brainstorms
Add-on
£10 / 100
Extra investor leads, one click from inside Investors
Pro
£149/mo
Unlimited leads, Deep Council, dual-side data
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 specialists and an investor database of over 13,000 UK firms — so the rest of the hardware founder's job sits in one place too.
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". Brainstorm with the specialists, find the investors who match your stage, and search for the manufacturers who can build what you are designing.
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