Startup Spotlight: Product Forge

Each Friday the RookieOven Startup Spotlight highlights a member of the Scottish tech startup community. The aim is to, as the name suggests, put the spotlight on Scotland’s best startups from across the country. It’s an opportunity to share information about an exciting tech startup from Scotland you may not have heard of. Giving a brief overview of the company, what they do, where they are and who they are. This week the spotlight falls on Product Forge.

Starting on your own:

As we have learned from personal experience or just reading our weekly blog posts, startups are moulded from recognition of the supply and demand, usually from our own personal experiences. Entrepreneurs thrive off of this and Product Forge wants to support these innovators.

A few weeks ago, I had a the thrilling opportunity to interview This is Milk live from our studio. This was entirely because of Allan and his team at Product Forge. It was an exciting experience, watching the team come in and by the simple act of moving some stuff around, placing mics on myself and Angela, we were ready to go live. Just like that, it was like magic! I knew after that interview, I should talk to Allan more about the company's mission.

Product Forge's mission:

When I asked Allan, the Managing Director at Product Forge, to describe the company you could hear the passion in his words: "Our mission is to support early stage entrepreneurs, as well as junior developers, designers and product managers, to give them experience working in cross disciplinary teams and knowledge of other sectors. The hope is that some of the teams go on to develop their ideas further."

The Beginning to Present:

Product Forge was founded in 2014 when Allan realized he had been organising similar events since 2012 but with the market constantly growing, he knew he could take this opportunity to fill the demand. "I co-organised the first Scottish Startup Weekend with Michael and aside from the enjoyment of it, [I] wanted to further develop the format and longer term partnerships." Now Product Forge organise Hackathons, livestream local tech events, and startup events.

I love this description from their website: "We run hackathons with a twist; our hack events develop teams and products that tackle society's hardest challenges. Participants use design thinking and digital technology to rapidly prototype their ideas, with support from mentors who have real world commercial experience."

Every startup has their challenges and sometimes do not realize welcoming the struggles and finding communities, such as Product Forge and RookieOven, can really help them survive and prosper within today's demanding tech culture.

Who builds up the team?:

Product Forge, like most startups, consists of a small team of hardworking people. Allan, as we said earlier, is the Managing Director and there are two others: Michelle Caulfield, the Events Coordinator, and Jakub Tansey, the Videographer. Together, they travel to continue their mission, providing support via videos to startups across Scotland.

What is your business model?

Product Forge is self-funded and bootstrapped. They use event sponsorship to partner with "organisations who want to practice open innovation or support early stage entrepreneurship in their sector."

Get to know them more:

You can find Product Forge’s offices in TechCube, Edinburgh's first privately funded technology incubator which was founded by Olly Treadway with support from TechMeetup volunteers. Allan and his team are very excited to hear from startups so don't hesitate to check out their websites, videos, and even give them a call!

• Product Forge Website
• Youtube
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Email: team@productforge.io
• Call: +44 131 510 4755