Tap one. We'll tune the questionnaire so you only answer what's relevant to your stage.
Pick the one closest to today, not where you want to be. You can change it later if it doesn't fit — your answers won't be lost.
[ → ] WHAT TO EXPECT
You don't need perfect answers. Honest "I don't know yet" beats a polished guess every time.
Tip: dictate with Wispr Flow if you'd rather talk than type. Dictated answers run 3–4× more detailed.
─ FORGE / INTAKE
P. 01 / 07
01
01 / WELCOME
WHERE YOUR BUSINESS IS.WHERE IT COULD GO.
A clear plan for your business, backed by market data.
Honest answers in, sharp analysis out. The form auto-saves between pages, so you can step away and come back.
How you'd like to be addressed on your report. First name is fine.
Used once, to send you your report. No newsletter. No follow-up sequence.
If you have one. Forge scrapes the homepage and About page for context that fills gaps in this questionnaire — offer structure, target market, current pricing, founder bio. Leave blank if you don't have a site yet.
02
02 / BUSINESS BASICS
WHAT IT IS.WHO PAYS.
Plain language. The fewer adjectives, the better.
No jargon. What value exchanges hands? Who gives what to whom?
Revenue model. One-time, recurring, transactional, usage-based, commission, other. Be specific.
The actual person who pays. Not "target market" — the specific human with the specific situation.
If you list several, force one. Multiple problems means we pick the wrong lenses.
03
03 / THE NUMBERS
ROUGH IS FINE.UNTRACKED IS DATA.
We need rough magnitudes, not audited financials. "I don't track this" is a valid answer and itself a diagnosis.
Or monthly recurring × 12. Approximate.
Revenue minus direct cost of delivery, as a percentage. Best guess.
Or monthly active users, or active clients. Whatever maps to "people currently paying."
Real price points. Per-unit, per-job, per-month — however you sell. For STARTUP: planned price, even rough. For others: anchors the Pricing Power Audit to where you actually sit.
Roughly what percentage of revenue comes from each line item today? Sum to ~100. Sharpens the AS-IS → PROPOSED revenue rewiring diagram instead of having the chain invent the proportions.
Where do new customers actually come from? For STARTUP: where you expect them to come from. Anchors the CAC Benchmark and channel recommendations.
Top 3 categories of work that consume your weekly hours, with rough %. Helps the Automation Surface and First-Hire Roadmap recommend what to delegate first.
Booking, CRM, marketing, accounting, scheduling — what software runs the business now? Lets us recommend automations without suggesting what you already have.
Not hours running the existing business. Extra hours available for executing on a redesign.
A number or range. This calibrates what kind of moves we can recommend.
Not a market segment. Specific people, companies, or names you can already picture. If you cannot name them, that itself is a finding.
Repeatable = you could buy 100 more this way if you wanted (paid ads, partner referrals, SEO). One-off = lucky meeting, viral post, family connection. Honest count.
Be honest about why or why not. If yes, why have you not? If no, what is the binding constraint — price sensitivity, weak positioning, undifferentiated offer, race to the bottom in the category?
How close to sale-ready are the books? Owner perks separated from operating expense? Add-backs documented? Three years of clean P&L? Or significant work to do?
04
04 / PROBLEM & HISTORY
WHAT YOU'VE TRIED.WHAT YOU'D KEEP.
A number, a state, a specific condition. Not "grow the business."
Capital, time, team size, regulatory, personal commitments. What limits options structurally?
Approaches that failed or plateaued. Why did they stop working? Stops us from re-recommending dead paths.
Even if small. The actual edge. If "nothing" — that's the diagnosis.
Each box reveals a short set of follow-up questions on the next page. Pick whichever apply; skip if none.
Not "sales will slow." What specifically cannot happen without you in the room or on the keyboard? Naming this is the constraint diagnosis.
Name the type — industry, size, situation, attitude. Then the opposite: which customers drain disproportionate effort? The gap between these is positioning data.
If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would a replacement actually have to work with? Be brutal — what only lives in your head?
Rough percentages. Doing = hands on a tool (delivery, sales calls, fixes). Managing = checking in on others. Deciding = strategic decisions, planning, hiring. Honest snapshot of last week.
If yes, what's the documentation they'd use? If no, what specifically breaks — knowledge, judgment, relationship, quality bar, customer trust?
Anything you do over and over by hand. Often this is the cheapest automation win — name the candidate and how long each instance takes.
Customer relationships, product knowledge, key decisions, vendor relationships, brand voice. Name every place your absence would break operations — this is the buyer's risk inventory.
05
05 / POSITION & CONSTRAINTS
WHERE COMPETITION SITS.WHERE THE LEAK IS.
The questions on this page surface based on what you told us. Answer what applies. Skip what doesn't.
When a customer doesn't choose you, where do they go? Name them. Why do customers pick them instead?
This surfaces the real value proposition — often different from the stated one.
The load-bearing element. Everything else is potentially removable.
SURFACEDYou mentioned churn or retention. Two more.
Specific reasons in their words. Not "they didn't see value."
If "nothing" — that's the lock-in problem.
SURFACEDYou mentioned alignment or team friction. Two more.
Formal incentives AND informal ones (status, autonomy, fewer headaches). They diverge often.
One specific example. Be concrete.
Personal savings, side income, partner support — whatever covers life expenses while this is unprofitable. Be honest. This calibrates aggressiveness.
Role, what they would own, what level. Not "an assistant" — be specific. Why this order? Helps the First-Hire Roadmap recommend specific role design.
Name them or note the absence. If nobody could, what would they need that they don't have? This is the bench-strength audit.
06
06 / OPERATOR EDGE
MOST FRAMEWORKSSKIP THIS.
Most optimization tools treat operators as interchangeable. We don't. These six surface where your specific background creates a position no one else can credibly occupy.
"The best part is no part. The best operator is the one with the unfair edge."
— DISTILL OPERATING PRINCIPLE
Industries, roles, skills built over years. Go back as far as relevant.
Insider knowledge, lived experience, unconventional perspective. What do you see that they miss?
Include hobbies, communities, past lives. Deep knowledge of any system counts.
Cross-domain imports are the most reliable source of genuine innovation.
A specific customer type who'd trust you more than anyone else, based on your story.
If true, it's a moat. If wrong, surface it now before we design around a false premise.
Two parts. Name what's structurally protecting you (brand, network effects, switching cost, scale, IP). Then name what was once a moat that's getting eaten by market shifts.
Patents, trademarks, customer database, proprietary process, brand recognition, exclusive contracts. The thing a buyer would actually pay for that isn't you. If nothing transfers, that's a buyer-thesis problem.
07
07 / YOUR HYPOTHESIS
WHERE DO YOU THINKTHE LEVER IS?
Your guess at where margin or share would come from if the business were redesigned. We may agree or contradict. Either way, we need to know your hypothesis.
One sentence: "If we [did X], margin/share would improve because [reason]."
Name one piece of evidence that, if you had it, would convince you to commit full resources. A specific signal, not a feeling. This is your validation threshold.
The leanest, fastest, cheapest version that would still test the core idea. Not the polished version — the test version. What's the minimum that proves or disproves the hypothesis?
The one task that consumes the most of your week, drives the most quality variance, or breaks most often. Pick one — this becomes the highest-leverage operational fix.
Three genuinely different paths — not three flavors of the same. What does each look like? Which one are you actually betting on, and why?
Profit-extracted vs profit-reinvested. You can't fully do both. Which way are you leaning, and what would have to be true for you to switch?
Revenue ceiling, capacity ceiling, market ceiling, energy ceiling. The structural one — not the next quarter target. Naming the ceiling shapes how to design around it.
Strategic acquirer (rolled-up by a competitor)? PE (financial engineering)? Internal succession (key employee or family)? Cash-out without sale (extract via dividends)? Be specific about the buyer thesis.
Four endings. Sale (full exit). Scale (grow then exit later). Handoff (internal succession). Hold-and-extract (keep ownership, harvest cash). Which are you actually building toward?
✓
DONE / BCD GENERATED
YOUR BUSINESS CONTEXTIS READY.
Below is your Business Context Document. Download it. Save it.
[ → ] NEXT STEP — PICK ONE
If you're attending a workshop: click EMAIL TO FACILITATOR. We'll receive your context and generate your intelligence report before the session.
If you're running Forge yourself: click DOWNLOAD BCD, then save the file to ~/forge-intake/ or upload it directly to Cowork / Claude Code and run /optimize.
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A clear plan for your business, backed by market data.