About ForgeWorthy
ForgeWorthy helps product managers and founders find the evidence behind an idea and grade how strong it is.
I ran 11 discovery interviews with product managers and founders about how their teams decide what to build. Nine (82%) told me about building something that missed because nobody tested it first. A Sr. Director of Product put it plainly: “We release it and nobody uses it.” ForgeWorthy is built for the moment before you commit the team.
Why ForgeWorthy exists
I spent over 10 years at Amazon and AWS, where I worked closely with more than 100 startups as they built their products and searched for product market fit. I launched the AWS Cloud Innovation Center at Cal Poly, the world’s first university-based cloud innovation center, built on Amazon’s Working Backwards method. It is the first of what are now 16 Cloud Innovation Centers around the world.
I was also an early employee at three EdTech startups: Outside The Classroom, EVERFI, and TenMarks. All three were acquired. I know firsthand that one bad bet can derail a team.
I saw the pressure to build fast up close when I launched the AWS Education Accelerator, a 10-week global program for EdTech startups using data and AI. Its first cohort was 15 startups, picked from thousands of applicants, each using data in equitable ways to improve educational outcomes. Every one of them could build fast with the latest AI. The ones that have done well stayed focused on their customers’ real problems.
AI made building cheap. Deciding what problem to solve, and whether it actually exists, is now the hard part. Building ten wrong things fast does not make a right. It makes ten things your team has to maintain, explain, or tear out.
What ForgeWorthy does, and what it won’t do
The products I saw succeed were built with real customers at the core. ForgeWorthy is not a shortcut around them. It won’t talk to your customers for you, and it won’t treat AI research as if it were a real conversation. It sends you out to talk to real people, shows you how to ask so you hear the truth, and grades what you bring back.
The method starts with what I’ve seen work and fail, and draws on Amazon’s Working Backwards, Jobs to Be Done, The Mom Test, and Gary Klein’s pre-mortem. The strongest evidence always comes from a customer’s own words.
It makes you do the work you’d skip, and won’t let you fool yourself while you do it.
ForgeWorthy went through ForgeWorthy
I ran my own idea through it first. It found plenty of proof that product people feel this pain, and no proof yet that anyone will pay to fix it. Every idea gets the same standard, including mine.