Target: $3k MRR by month 24 at ~15 hrs/week, or $5k full-time ($10k stretch). Profitable, ≥85% gross margin, ≤2% monthly revenue churn after month 6.
Rule: nothing in a later phase starts until the current phase's gate is hit. Gates and pivot rules are in WHAT-TO-DO-AND-AVOID.md. The detail for days 1–90 is in 08-90-day-plan.md.
Entry condition: you've shipped a Forge app before, and any other portfolio idea you run has passed its month-6 checkpoint.
Phase 1: Prove the switch (Months 0–3) → Gates G1 (day 21), G2 (day 45), G3 (day 90)
| Track | Work |
|---|
| Checks | Is Atlassian's public-pages feature native and free? Can Forge serve fast public pages? Incumbent review mining. |
| Customers | 20 discovery calls. 5 paid concierge moves by day 45. 10 paying by day 90. |
| Product | Forge v1: publish a space to a custom domain, help-center theme, search, article feedback, weekly doc-owner tasks, restricted-page blocks. |
| Distribution | Marketplace listing submitted. Two migration guides. Pilot reviews. |
| Pricing | Pilots: $150–300 one-off move with 3 months included, then founding pricing held for 12 months. |
| Exit | 10 paying, ≥80% of pilots publishing weekly, ≥50% closing generated tasks |
Phase 2: Make it findable (Months 4–6) → Gate G4
| Track | Work |
|---|
| Product | Redirect manager, draft preview, approval-aware publishing, monthly docs-health email. |
| Distribution | Free help-center checker (search, speed, broken links, llms.txt). Three more migration guides (Help Scout Docs, Document360, Notion help centers). Answer Atlassian Community threads on public publishing. |
| Ops | Status page for published sites. Support macros. Onboarding emails triggered by install. |
| Metrics | Trial-to-paid, time to first live site, weekly tasks closed per customer. |
| Exit | $1k MRR (~15 hrs/week) or $1.5k (full-time). ≥5 reviews. ≥20% trial-to-paid. |
| Track | Work |
|---|
| Product | Advanced edition: several sites, AI answers with citations (capped), gated sections. Import tool for Zendesk Guide and Intercom articles, built from the manual moves. Embeddable widget. |
| Distribution | Atlassian Solution Partner referral offer. A yearly "State of help centers on Confluence" post from anonymised search-gap data. |
| Trust | Apply for Cloud Fortified after $3k MRR. EU data residency option if EU buyers ask. |
| Exit | $2k MRR (~15 hrs/week) or $3.5k (full-time). ≤2% monthly revenue churn. 15 reviews. |
Phase 4: Scale what works (Months 13–24) → Gate G6
| Track | Work |
|---|
| Product | SSO or token access for customer-only docs. MCP endpoint for AI assistants. Stale-page alerts. |
| Distribution | Double down on the single best channel from months 1–12 (Marketplace, migration content, or partners). |
| Team | A part-time support contractor only if support passes 5 hrs/week. No engineers. |
| Checkpoint | Month 18: $2.5k (~15 hrs/week) or $5k (full-time). Missing it means concentrating on one channel. |
| Decision at month 24 | At target: run it profitably, or sell it to an Atlassian partner (Acquire.com median 3.9x profit). Below $1.5k: stop. |
| Exit | $3k (~15 hrs/week) or $5k+ (full-time) MRR, profitable |
Revenue path (illustrative, not a forecast)
| Month | ~15 hrs/week: customers | ~15 hrs/week: MRR | Full-time: customers | Full-time: MRR |
|---|
| 3 | 10 | ~$0.4k | 12 | ~$0.5k |
| 6 | 22 | ~$1k | 30 | ~$1.5k |
| 12 | 42 | ~$2k | 70 | ~$3.5k |
| 18 | 50 | ~$2.5k | 100 | ~$5k |
| 24 | 60 | ~$3k | 110–190 | ~$5.5k–10k |
Month-3 MRR counts the pilots' prepaid months at list price; they move to Marketplace billing in month 4. The path assumes blended revenue of ~$45–54 per customer (rising as the Advanced edition lands), revenue churn at or below 2% a month after month 6, and ≥50% of trials from the Marketplace by month 9. If churn runs above 3%, this path doesn't work. Fix the buyer before spending on growth.
Budget guardrails (bootstrapped)
- Hosting, search and AI costs below 12% of revenue. AI answers capped per site.
- Zero paid acquisition before month 6. After it, only channels with payback under 3 months.
- Security and compliance spend (Cloud Fortified, pen test) only after $3k MRR.
- Support time ≤2 hrs/week per 50 customers. Above that, fix the product or the docs before hiring.