Problem: A huge barrier to entrepreneurship is the time and experience it takes to create custom-manufactured products. These products are critical to creating new products and new systems of production that are so critical to startups. For many aspiring entrepreneurs with full-time jobs, the time and effort required to create custom metal, plastic, or other parts is often the point at which their innovation dies.
Solution: Forge Automation is building a modern, fast platform for manufacturing custom parts. Their business proposition lies in streamlining the manufacturing process and taking out the middleman. The first noticeable piece of that is how the quote system works. Once a customer uploads a CAD, the site automatically processes the design and delivers an instant quote. The digitalization continues by taking the uploaded designs and having their dynamic manufacturing line automatically conform itself to make the custom part. Traditionally, custom parts needed human-readable 2-D pdfs to indicate tolerances and manufacturing intent. However, Forge’s system creates machine-readable data to determine system preferences like spindle speed without any human input being needed. The machinery is set to a specific stack of tools as well, which puts limitations on the manufacturing expansiveness, but ensures precision and speed in the process. All of this comes to a goal of shipping new parts within 4 days.
Founders: Timothy Seto and Walter Raftus are the founders. They both graduated from Waterloo in 2022, and Forge is their first real company or non-internship job. The company was part of YC Winter 2025 and raised $635,000 between their incubation and seed rounds.
Implications: Whatever might be the actual outcome, AI poses a huge downside risk to employment. The job market has been atrophying, adding an average of 49,000 jobs a month in 2025. Recent reports as of February 4th have shown that job cuts could be coming as well. Amazon cut 16,000 jobs, and Pinterest cut 700 recently. Also, recently, OpenClaw was released, which many think is the start of the assistant technology that will take many white-collar jobs. If this turns out to be true, then people will have to become entrepreneurs. The combination of solo efficiency boosts and a lack of corporate bloat will lead people to create new companies. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a software developer, and so, some of these companies will be creating new and improved products or manufacturing processes that require custom parts. New infrastructure to support all of the technology and services companies will also be needed. Forge is positioned perfectly to capture and propel the physical innovation that is sure to propel the technological innovation happening right now. I think companies like Forge will be critical in supporting entrepreneurial spirits and the American dream, leading to new opportunities for everyone and a massive financial gain for Forge.
Conclusion: Overall, I think that Forge is well-positioned to capture a new spirit, forced or not, of entrepreneurialism. I will be very interested to watch the new brick-and-mortar companies that come up in response to companies like Forge, and believe that fewer physical and time limitations will empower many people here soon.