Exit
01One Team · Many Companies
Venture Studio

Forge.

An all-star team that has already built a portfolio of AI-native companies — and is taking them to market in months.

Co-founder · CEO
Gary Martin
Co-founder · CTO
Bradley House
Prepared for
John Banjak
01 / 20 · Forge — Venture Studio
02Why Now

Building a company just got radically cheaper.

AI didn't only speed up code — it changed what a small, elite team can create.

The cost to build collapsed
~2×
faster to revenue vs. the last SaaS generation
What used to take years and millions now takes months and a lean team.
Speed is the new advantage
$1M+
ARR per employee at top AI-native teams
AI-native teams reach scale with far fewer people.
The edge moved upstream
8 mo
fastest software company ever to $100M ARR
When anyone can build, the constraint becomes judgment, taste, and GTM.
Sources: Carta & Stripe (revenue velocity) · Bessemer (ARR/employee) · TechCrunch (Lovable, 2025). Outliers, but directional.
02 / 20 · Why Now
03Our Thesis
We're not building a product.

We're building
the company thatbuilds them.

Part studio, part incubator, part elite operating team. We concept, build, and launch many companies in parallel — keep equity in each — and exit through several.

Many shots, not one
A team that launches ideas cheaply takes many swings — not a single all-or-nothing bet.
One team & engine
The same people and playbook build every company, so each one is faster than the last.
Diversified upside
Several companies, several exit paths — the investor owns a stake in all of them.
03 / 20 · Our Thesis
04What We've Already Built

We didn't just design the engine. We've already run it.

Before raising a dollar, this team has shipped a portfolio across two verticals — plus live platform assets. The expensive part, building, is largely done.

Legal — our beachhead
Case-management platform (shipped)
proven
Our team built and shipped a production case-management platform for a major plaintiffs' firm in 8 months. We don't own that product — but the team that built it can stand up a similar system in under 4 months.
Estate planning
in build
Company 01. Our first launch, built on that proven capability.
Edge: A year operating inside personal-injury workflows + direct law-firm access.
Visual arts — our second vertical
Bestboy.iobeta · ~80%
Business-management platform for visual artists.
Edge: PRO EDU's audience as a built-in launch channel.
Platform assets — already live
SecondWatt.comlive
Live energy brokerage; earns a percentage on deals it originates. Already drawing traffic.
Endgame Societylive
Chess-education SaaS. We hold a minority stake.
Five products built or near-built, without outside capital. This raise turns finished product into revenue.
Traction: ~[X] visits/mo across properties · [Y] beta users · [Z] design-partner firms in legal. (Figures to confirm.)
04 / 20 · What We've Already Built
05The Logic

One idea is a bet.
A machine is a portfolio.

The usual way
Bet everything on one product
15%
of seed startups reach Series A.
High variance. Binary outcome.
Our way
Build a portfolio of companies
N×
disciplined swings.
Several shots — and several exit paths.

We turn a coin-flip into a portfolio — and we've already built the first companies in it.

Series A graduation rate: Carta (Q1 2022 seed cohort).
05 / 20 · The Logic
06How We Work

How we turn ideas into companies.

Concepting and building run in parallel — so the pipeline never idles.

01
Concept & validate
Strategy, product & marketing pressure-test ideas against a sharp filter.
02
Build
A senior, AI-native dev team ships a real product fast on shared infrastructure.
03
Launch & sell
Go-to-market muscle most dev shops lack — we don't just build, we take it to market.
04
Spin out & scale
Stand it up as its own company, raise on it, or exit. Then do it again.

First company to market in ~6 months — with the next concepts already in research behind it. That's the engine.

06 / 20 · How We Work
07Business Model

Two speeds. One engine.

Slow-growing companies and fast-growing launches from the same roots — one funds the other.

Tier 1
Ventures — the companies we own
  • Big software we build and own — Estate, Bestboy, and the next verticals through the filter.
  • ~6-month builds on shared infrastructure.
  • We hold majority or full equity.
  • Payoff: large, patient equity value and exits.
Tier 2
Partner Launches — built on someone else's audience
  • Fast, focused sites for creators with huge followings but no real product.
  • ~1–2 month builds; we run the whole process.
  • We take revenue-share — often plus a small equity stake.
  • Their audience is the distribution from day one. CAC near zero.
  • Payoff: recurring cash, in weeks — not years.
At a glance
Ventures
Partner Launches
Build time
~6 months
~1–2 months
We own
Majority / all
Rev-share (± equity)
Distribution
We build it
Theirs, day one
Payoff
Large equity, 3–5 yrs
Recurring cash, weeks
Launches fund the runway. Ventures compound the upside. Same team, two harvest cycles.
07 / 20 · Business Model
08Partner Launches

Huge audiences. No real product. We build it.

Creators with massive followings often sell through a contact form. We build them a real product, run it, and share the revenue — in weeks.

demo built · ready to pitch
Wild Hats — custom cowboy hats
Large Instagram following ordering through a basic contact form. We've already built a working demo: a custom hat-builder where customers design and order their own hat.
in active talks
Blackjack community — with John Cerasani
Creator with 1M+ followers. A members' platform to learn strategy, take courses, and play.
target vertical
Yoga education — for yoga creators
A learning platform for teachers and students: master poses, build custom flows, and train online.
They bring the audience. We bring the product and run it.
~1–2 months from handshake to live.
We share the revenue — sometimes with a small equity stake.
Gary's engine
This is the CEO's engine — Gary sells and manages Launches while the build team stays focused on Ventures. Cash flow now, without slowing the big builds.
We don't pitch these — we show up with the product already built.
08 / 20 · Partner Launches
09The Team

The team is the investment.

Most studios have builders or visionaries. We're assembling both — across every function it takes to ship a company.

Product & Strategy
Gary Martin
Founder of PRO EDU: scaled SaaS to 1M+ products sold across 190+ countries. Has independently built and shipped SecondWatt, Bestboy, and Endgame. Owns product and go-to-market.
Engineering
Bradley House
Built and shipped a production case-management platform this year with a four-person team — the foundation Company 01 is built on. Senior, AI-native engineering. Ships fast, ships solid.
Vision & Capital
John Banjak
Real-estate, estate, and business attorney. Brings capital, deal access, and legal-market relationships.
Hiring
Marketing & Growth
Key early hire
Demand, brand, and distribution from day one — the muscle most dev shops skip.
Builders and operators who have already shipped — this raise adds the go-to-market muscle around them.
09 / 20 · The Team
10How We Build

The principles that turn talent into product.

01
Ship it
Working beats perfect. Get it in front of real users, then improve.
02
No BS
Say what's real. Honesty with users, partners, and each other.
03
Users first
Every decision starts with whether it makes someone's day better.
04
Embrace the weird
The best ideas sound crazy at first. We chase the non-obvious.
05
Move in parallel
Concept the next while we build the last. Never idle the pipeline.
06
Own the outcome
We keep equity and accountability. Skin in every game.
10 / 20 · How We Build
11What We Build

Idea-agnostic. Filter-obsessed.

Ideas are interchangeable. The filter isn't.

Large, under-tooled market
Big spend, old tools, real room to win.
Painful, repeatable workflow
A job people do over and over and hate.
An AI-native data wedge
Something proprietary that compounds and defends.
Fast path to revenue
A credible route to market inside ~6 months.
Defensible & spinnable
Can stand on its own and raise its own round.
Where this tends to point
Under-digitized professional & trade services
Regulated back-office work, automated
Vertical "service-as-software"
Illustrative of the filter — not a fixed roadmap. We commit to a space when the signal is real, then move fast.
11 / 20 · What We Build
12Company 01 — Estate
Tier 1 · Venture

Our first launch: estate-planning software.

The first concept through the filter — and the one where our advantages stack highest.

Why it clears the filter
Large, under-tooled market
Estate and trusts law is large and deeply fragmented — most firms still run wills, trusts, and probate on manual, document-heavy workflows. Overdue for AI.
Painful, repeatable workflow
Document-heavy, repetitive, and ripe for automation.
AI-native data wedge
Structured client intake plus automated drafting of wills, trusts, and estate documents — the repetitive bulk of the work done in minutes, with the firm always in control.
Fast path to revenue
Same team that shipped a production case-management platform in 8 months can stand up Estate in under 4 — months, not years.
Defensible & spinnable
Its own company from day one.
Unfair advantages
Proven capability
Our team has already built and shipped a production case-management platform — we know the patterns cold.
Domain knowledge
A year building inside the workflows of a major plaintiffs' law firm.
Customer access
Direct relationships into plaintiffs'-firm and legal networks open the first conversations — not cold outreach.
Plan to revenue
First design-partner firms in the opening quarter. First paid firms by ~month 6, with revenue ramping through year one.
A real first company — not a someday idea.
12 / 20 · Company 01 — Estate
13Distribution

We don't just build. We already have the channels.

Most studios can build. Few can reach customers cheaply. Each of our verticals comes with its own way in.

PRO EDU audience → visual arts
A decade building PRO EDU: 1M+ products sold across 190+ countries, and a large, engaged creator audience. A warm channel for Bestboy and future arts products.
Legal network → estate & PI
Direct relationships into plaintiffs'-firm networks from our team's legal work. First conversations, not cold outreach.
SecondWatt traffic → energy deals
A live property already drawing organic traffic and originating brokered transactions.
Creator reach → Partner Launches
Partners with audiences from the hundreds of thousands up to 1M+ (e.g., Cerasani's blackjack community). Built-in distribution from day one.
Built product plus owned distribution is the combination that turns finished software into revenue fast.
13 / 20 · Distribution
14The Tailwind

Built right, these companies raise serious money.

~50%
of all venture went to AI
AI absorbed roughly half of global VC in 2025 — the deepest capital pool in tech.
+38%
Series A valuation premium
AI-native startups price well above non-AI peers, and ramp revenue ~2× faster.
$10M→$5B+
one seed, two years
A 2024-vintage AI company went from a ~$10M seed to a multi-billion valuation.
These are outliers — but they prove the model produces breakouts. We take many disciplined swings and fund the wait with services.
Sources: Crunchbase & OECD (AI share of VC) · Carta (premium / velocity) · reported financing rounds (2024–26).
14 / 20 · The Tailwind
15The Math

We build for a fraction of the cost — and hold equity in all of it.

Capital efficiency is the studio's edge.

What we've proven
  • We've already built a portfolio of products without outside capital.
  • A fraction of what a typical seed-funded team spends to reach the same point.
What the raise does
  • Funds the go-to-market engine, the next build, and runway.
  • Taking one company from built to market runs roughly $50K–$150K — a fraction of a typical seed.
  • Partner Launches generate revenue-share cash within weeks.
  • Ventures compound equity value over 3–5 years.
Launches fund the burn, so equity upside compounds on top — not instead.
Detailed model available on request.Try the interactive investor model
15 / 20 · The Math
16The Ask

We're raising to build the team and the machine.

Raising
$1M
with room to $2M
A fair entry for early backers, founder-standard terms, and transparent dilution as the studio grows.
Use of funds
Team & talent62%
Infra, tooling & AI14%
First builds & launch12%
Ops, legal & reserve12%
Instrument
SAFE into a Delaware C-corp
Investors
Up to three · one clean cap table
What your check buys
A stake in the studio — and every company it builds
The all-star team — strategy, product, marketing + engineering.
Shared infrastructure, tooling and AI stack.
Estate planning (Company 01) to market in ~6 months.
The Partner Launches engine that brings in near-term revenue.
Terms and detail in the data room.
16 / 20 · The Ask
17The First 18 Months

Already built. Now monetizing.

M0
M3
M6
M9
M12
M18
Team & infra
Hire GTM · stand up stack · first partner
Estate (Co. 01)
Build (<4 mo — team shipped a similar system in 8)
Launch → revenue
Bestboy
Finish to 100%
Beta → paid via PRO EDU
SecondWatt
Scale brokered revenue
Partner Launches
New creator launch every 1–2 mo · revenue from M2
Most product is already built. Ventures and Partner Launches run in parallel — the big builds compound while Launches generate cash from month two.
17 / 20 · First 18 Months
18Structure & Returns

Clean structure. Diversified upside.

One company, one cap table — a portfolio of equity stakes and a services business underneath.

Holding Co.
Delaware C-corp · single option pool
Estate (Co. 01)
Tier 1 Venture.
Case-mgmt experience
Team shipped a production case-management platform; capability, not an owned asset.
Bestboy
Founder-built; rolls into HoldCo.
SecondWatt
Revenue today; rolls into HoldCo.
Endgame Society
Minority stake held by HoldCo.
Partner Launches
Revenue today.
Founder-built products roll into the HoldCo. Investors own the parent — and through it, every company underneath.
Everyone owns a piece
A single option pool aligns the whole team. Early builders get more.
Diversified for the investor
Your equity spans every company and the services business — not one bet.
Multiple exit paths
Spin-outs raise their own rounds; winners get acquired. Outcomes in ~3–5 years.
Ownership and assignment terms — and the Endgame stake — finalized with counsel. TBD until papered.
18 / 20 · Structure & Returns
19Risks

What could go wrong — and how we de-risk it.

We'd rather name the risks than pretend they aren't there.

Key-person dependency
Documented playbooks, a senior team, and an option pool built to retain talent.
Focus across companies
One vertical to first revenue at a time; a strict filter; a staggered pipeline, not simultaneous launches.
Services vs. build tension
Services is capped and chosen to feed the build, not distract from it. [Target % of team/time on services.]
Hiring an A-team on a lean budget
Equity-led offers, proven founders to attract talent, and a St. Louis cost base.
The build-to-revenue gap
Exactly what this raise closes: finished product, a real GTM engine, and owned channels.
A diversified portfolio is itself the biggest risk mitigation — no single failure sinks the studio.
19 / 20 · Risks
20The Bottom Line

We're not betting on one idea.
We're building the machine that builds them.

An all-star team, a repeatable engine, and a portfolio of shots on goal — with services revenue funding the build. We're not pitching a someday idea — the product is already built. Back the builders, not the bet.

gary@taingo.ioTry the investor model
Co-founder · CEO
Gary Martin
Co-founder · CTO
Bradley House
Working name
Forge.
20 / 20 · Bottom Line