The FORGE Founder Playbook
What the Playbook is
The FORGE Founder Playbook is a short guide to one habit. Every week, each founder in the cohort publishes one honest post on LinkedIn, and the whole cohort posts at the same time. FORGE and the mentors share and comment on every post, so each update reaches people far beyond your own network.
The reason is simple. Investors, customers and future hires back momentum they can see. After 12 weeks you have a dated public record of what you shipped, learned and fixed, and people start to contact you first because they have followed your progress. It costs about 30 minutes a week.
How the week works
On Monday at 12:00, jot five quick bullet points for yourself: a number, what worked, what broke, what you learned and what is next. At 16:00 the cohort meets for a 20 minute standup. You paste your notes into the drafting prompt, edit the draft until it sounds like you, and schedule it.
On Tuesday at 08:30 everyone goes live and shares the link in the cohort group chat. During the day, spend five minutes in the comments: reply to yours, then leave a real comment on two other founders’ posts. If you miss a week, nobody chases you. Join the next Tuesday, and after two misses FORGE pairs you with a cohort buddy.
Tiers, formats and the three big days
Not every startup can share everything, so there are three tiers: Open, Process and Anonymous. Pick yours before the first post and move up any week. There are six post formats to choose from, including the Week N Update, The Thing That Broke, Mentor Punch and The Kill Post. The style rules are plain: raw over polished, numbers over adjectives, and bad weeks count too.
Three posts are shared themes for the whole cohort: Announcement Day at the start, Halfway Honest in week 6 and Demo Day in week 12. On those, add FORGE as a collaborator so the post also appears on the FORGE page. The full playbook has the drafting prompt, the formats and a one hour checklist to get started this week.
