Ra'Va Snow ·
Today, October 15, Forged N Foundry turns one.
And when I look back at this past year, my lord—we have done a crazy amount of work.
Forged N Foundry is a small software company in Northern Kentucky. We produce our own products and use the skills developed through that work to build brands, websites, applications, portals and everyday business systems for others.
Building. Minting ideas into real assets. Gaining access.
Year one was our access year.
The rooms that helped us grow
The list of rooms we’ve been in is long. So is the list of people who helped us get there. Before anything else, I want to say thank you.
To the Kentucky SBDC and SCORE Cincinnati/Dayton: thank you for the mentorship, guidance and introductions that helped me find my footing in the business and IT world.
To the City of Covington and Blue North: thank you for connecting us with resources, people and opportunities in the business and technology community.
To the SparkHaus and Covington Business Council communities: thank you for welcoming us. Our SparkHaus fellowship and direct participation in the CBC Foundation Fellowship Program were part of a coordinated CBC–SparkHaus program that gave this young company space, access and meaningful introductions.
To The Circuit and its Emerging Leaders community: thank you for making room for us in the region’s technology conversations.
To SafeWave Technology: thank you for those early technical conversations, for opening your room and for exploring where our skills could fit.
To Tech of Eden, the Black AI Think Tank and the National AI Literacy Center: thank you for opening conversations in the AI community. To Ingage Partners, Kentucky APEX, the Greater Cincinnati African American Chamber and Cincinnati Public Radio: thank you for your time, guidance and willingness to connect.
From Brighton Center to the WKJV stage
The Brighton Center and WKJV story deserves its own space.
We met with the teams at NKY Kentucky Career Center and Brighton Center. Thank you to those organizations and the Career Development Office for your time, connections and willingness to help.
We listened, researched their public resource system and developed a formal Digital Navigation & Resource Infrastructure Proposal. It addressed how job seekers, employers, partners and staff could find the right resources through clearer pathways, smarter search, AI-assisted navigation, events and staff workflows.
We prepared three approaches and sent the proposal for review. The funding did not come together, but the relationship helped open another major door: Walsh Kokosing.
That connection brought us into conversations around the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor and onto the program for WKJV’s Bridging Gaps to Growth series.
On October 6, I stood at Longworth Hall presenting Technology & Systems—“The Systems Behind the Work”—alongside the program’s field, safety, quality and IT leaders.
I got to explain how software can connect getting the work, planning it, doing it, keeping the records and getting paid. How to use AI with human judgment. How to build around an owner’s actual operation.
To MIPC and the WKJV team: thank you for the invitation, coordination and introductions. To the fellow presenters and business owners in that room, thank you.
Within days, that presentation led to new introductions and conversations about real business needs. That is what access means to me: doing the work, earning opportunities to contribute and meeting people who can help the next chapter happen.
The work we put into year one
To Polished Professionals Cleaning Solutions, LRS Marketing and Polished Legacy: thank you for letting us build around your businesses, ideas and customers’ needs.
That work included brands and logos, service websites, campaign portfolios, estimate tools, guided customer requests and corporate inquiry paths. Behind those public experiences, we also developed or planned intake, booking, onboarding, approvals, client portals, team workflows, invoices and work orders.
The projects are at different stages. Each has taught us about the responsibility that comes with building for an actual business.
Explore the public work: forgednfoundry.com/past-performance
Alongside client work, we kept producing our own software.
Forge & Foundry grew into a connected brand and launch workspace: business research, brand direction, logo production, approvals, applied previews, launch materials, content planning, exports and saved assets.
MellowMise meant building a mobile app, Chrome extension, backend and website. That work brought together recipe tools, household profiles, pantry and shopping workflows, saved recipes, community features, accounts and payments. MellowMise is listed across the Apple App Store, Google Play and Chrome Web Store.
ClipForge brought us into desktop productivity, helping turn copied text into useful output through configurable tools and AI.
ShearIQ brought consultation, service matching and appointment workflows into development. Wine Confidence, UnitTwin and Hiccup gave us room to explore recommendations, measurement tools and experimental infrastructure.
Some of that work is live. Some remains in development or has been paused while we decide where it can be most useful.
We developed Blacksmith, our internal research and automation infrastructure, with human approvals: company context, planning, memory, review, controlled execution, cost tracking and recovery.
We worked on the less visible pieces, too: account access, payments, data separation, notification retries, saved records, documentation and release checks. Building software also means caring for it when something goes wrong.
We published the Universal Playbook and seven practical kits: LaunchWeek, LocalAsk, Follow-Up Engine, ClaimGuard, ShipGate, LiveProof and GovReady.
We prepared capability statements, researched opportunities, worked on bids and proposals, built our procurement groundwork and received SBA HUBZone approval on June 23.
Separately, we formed Forged Legacy Foundation and began helping with business-startup guidance and ownership education, including formation guidance, startup planning and a practical roadmap for Marie’s Classic Clean. Thank you to everyone who trusted us with those early steps.
How the ecosystem supports itself
If some people still don’t fully understand the company, that’s okay. Let me break down how the work fits together.
A business may need help getting found and explaining its offer. It may need a better way to receive customer requests, prepare estimates or connect the work that follows. We assess the problem, build and verify a useful system, then maintain and improve it.
The commercial model is deliberate. Client work teaches us where businesses need help, while product development gives us tools and experience to respond. Repeated lessons can become reusable services and practical resources.
Service income can support product development. Products can create repeatable income, and internal systems can help us care for the work across those lanes. That is how the model is designed to support maintenance, improvement and the next useful build.
The lanes we’re pursuing include small-business systems, consumer software, agency collaboration, and government and institutional opportunities.
We’re building an ecosystem to help make businesses better.
One skill, one talent, one workflow at a time.
Why support for a small software company matters
We are moving quicker than I expected.
Before our first anniversary, we had MellowMise listed across three stores, public client work people could explore, early paying customers, published tools, a formal workforce-infrastructure proposal, fellowship participation and a delivered WKJV presentation that led to further introductions.
Those are tangible steps. There is still work ahead, and we have a foundation to build from.
When you buy a product, hire us for a useful project, give honest feedback, refer a business or make a thoughtful introduction, you help us keep building. You also help us maintain and improve tools that other people can put to work.
That support matters to a small software company. It gives the work room to continue.
Year two: distribution and partnerships
Year two is about getting useful work in front of the people who need it, and building relationships that help us deliver.
We need business owners ready to work with us on a clear problem. Agencies that want a software partner beside their creative and marketing work. Product partners who can help us reach the right audiences.
We need chambers and community organizations making relevant introductions. Larger firms and institutional teams willing to explore a defined pilot or subcontract. Reliable collaborators who can help us deliver and support the work as it grows.
Those are the relationships and connections that can take us through the roof: shared purpose, clear responsibilities and work we can accomplish together.
To everyone who saw our work, our development and our dedication—thank you. To everyone who made time, opened a door, asked a hard question or trusted us with something—thank you.
We are still working.
Here’s to year two. To the relationships we’ll strengthen, the partners we’ll build with and the clients we hope to assist in their business journeys.
First and foremost, thank you from me, Ra’Va Snow, and from Forged N Foundry.
Greater Than Yesterday — for 100 years.