8. If I Were You: The Next 90 Days
Before day 1: the go/no-go question
Is this your second Forge app? If you haven't shipped a Forge app, or if another portfolio idea is still before its month-6 checkpoint, don't start this. Start StatusLens or DocPress instead. This plan assumes the answer is yes.
The single most important thing
Get 5 software teams to pay $150–300 for a done-for-you move of their public help center into Confluence by day 45, before you build the full app.
- Segment: software companies with 10–250 Confluence users that run a separate public help center (Zendesk Guide, Intercom articles, Help Scout Docs, Document360, or a Notion help center).
- Job: "Write our help docs once, in Confluence. Publish them to customers. Tell us every week what they couldn't find."
- How: a concierge move at first. You copy their articles into a Confluence space, publish it with a thin prototype on their domain, set up redirects, and send the first gap report by hand from their old help center's search data. Automate only what you've done by hand at least 5 times.
Week-by-week
The plan fits ~15 hrs/week. Full-time, compress weeks 1–6 into weeks 1–4 and use the spare time for Marketplace content.
| Weeks | Goal | Exit criteria |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Check the three unknowns. (a) Is "Public Pages for Confluence" Atlassian's own, and is it free? (b) Can a Forge app serve fast public pages, with or without an external remote? (c) Trial Scroll Sites and Refined Sites, and read every review of 3 stars or fewer. | Written answers to (a) and (b). 10 incumbent gaps in customers' words. If (a) is native, free and has search: stop. |
| 2–3 | Discovery. 20 calls with support leads or docs owners at target companies. Ask: where do docs live, where are they published, what does the help center cost, how often do the two drift, what did customers fail to find last month? | ≥8 of 20 write docs twice and can name the cost. Day-21 checkpoint. |
| 4–6 | Concierge pilots. Offer the move at $150–300 with 3 months included. Publish each pilot with a thin prototype (static render plus search). Send the first gap report by hand. | 5 paying pilots by day 45 (kill test). If fewer than 3, stop. |
| 7–10 | Build the Forge v1. Publish a space to a custom domain, a help-center theme, full-text search, article feedback, the weekly doc-owner tasks (Jira issue or Confluence task), and hard blocks on restricted pages. | All pilots moved onto the app. Every pilot gets automatic weekly tasks. |
| 11–12 | List and measure. Submit the Marketplace listing, security self-assessment, DPA and data-flow page. Publish two migration guides (Zendesk Guide → Confluence, Intercom articles → Confluence). Ask each pilot for a review. | 10 paying teams. ≥80% of pilots publish a page change every week. ≥50% closed at least one generated task. Listing submitted or live. |
Kill criteria (write these down now)
- Day 21: fewer than 8 of 20 teams write docs twice. Stop. Don't fall back to Notion.
- Day 45: fewer than 5 paying pilots. Stop, unless ≥3 said "yes, next quarter", in which case retry once by day 75.
- Day 90: fewer than 10 paying, or fewer than half of pilots using the doc-owner tasks. Cut to the plain site plus tasks, and re-test the buyer once.
The one thing to stop doing
Stop thinking of Notion as the content store.
Every feature you'd sell on top of Notion is on Notion's roadmap or already shipped. Forms are free on every Notion plan. Sites are free, with custom domains for $8–10 a month. HelpKit and at least five clones share what's left. The idea's two proof points, HelpKit and NotionForms, both started in 2021, when the API was new and nothing else existed. Copying them in 2026 means copying their product without their timing.
A close second: stop treating forms as half of the idea. It's a solved, free commodity.
What stays on the long-term roadmap (only after proof)
- Import tools for Zendesk Guide, Intercom articles and Help Scout Docs (after 10 manual moves).
- AI answers with citations in the Advanced edition.
- Gated partner and customer docs with SSO or token access.
- An Atlassian Solution Partner referral programme.
- An MCP endpoint and llms.txt so AI assistants read the customer's docs correctly.