About
Learning and making.
I'm Dave Merwin, and I've spent three decades building things - for NIH research projects, Department of Education initiatives, Fortune 100 companies like American Airlines, tech giants like Dropbox and Google, scrappy startups, local nonprofits, and everyone in between. Creative director. Strategist. Developer. Executive sponsor at DEPT. Builder of healthcare games, web applications, and the systems that keep organizations moving. The work taught me something crucial: most transformations don't fail from lack of ambition. They fail from lack of a clear path forward.
That's why Forge exists.
You know what you need. You can see it clearly. But barriers stack up - technical complexity, unclear priorities, teams pulling in different directions. We clear those barriers. Strategy that leads to action, not decks. Workshops that create alignment and momentum, not more meetings. Training that builds capability, not dependency. Development that ships, not just plans. We're creative when creativity matters, pragmatic when execution matters, and honest always - because you don't need another vendor telling you what you want to hear.
Here's what makes us different: we're AI Native. AI powers everything we do. That means we can tackle problems we've never seen before, in industries we haven't worked in, with technical requirements outside our historical expertise - because knowledge isn't a constraint anymore. We can move faster, think bigger, and deliver solutions informed by best practices across disciplines. Being AI Native doesn't replace three decades of experience - it multiplies what we can do with it.
Some of our favorite people
"Working with Dave & his FORGE tools is amazing. He has an uncanny ability to cut through the AI hype and target the exact answers you crave, in record time. Dave isn't just a great guy to work with, he's a secret weapon on how to use AI to improve your business."
"The flexible development process has made it possible for us to work together as a team and develop a solution that meets the needs and increases the value of the end result. Knowing that we can experiment and even make mistakes without them being incredibly costly is a huge comfort as we proceed into uncharted territory to help protect kids from child sexual abuse."
"Dave’s understanding of digital products and product strategy has been crucial as we move towards new solutions in a high touch market. He’s become a integral part of our team, leading workshops with stakeholders, vetting vendors, and developing strategy for the museum. He's made our team stronger and our product is setup for success in ways that are hard to even quantify!"
"The sprint gave us something our usual meetings couldn't—a structure that made it safe to disagree. We'd been circling the same questions for years, but this process forced us to actually make choices. By the end of day two, we weren't just nodding along anymore. We were building something together."
"We were doubtful going in that we could follow a process that would take so many diverse ideas and come up with a unified product, but something shifted over those six days. We began to see the product coming together. After sharing it and getting feedback from our potential users, we knew we had settled on the right direction."
"Talking directly with practitioners changed everything. We thought we knew what they needed, but hearing them react to our concepts in real time—watching what excited them and what fell flat—that's when the project got real. One conversation in particular made us completely rethink the navigation. We wouldn't have caught that from a survey."
The Network Matters
We work with a network of talented partners who bring specialized expertise when needed. You're not hiring a bloated agency and paying for overhead you don’t need. You're getting a flexible team that scales to your needs - lean when that makes sense, robust when complexity demands it. Every partner we work with shares the same philosophy: build things that matter, move fast without breaking trust, and make clients better at what they do.
Think differently about what's possible. You don't need a massive team to build something meaningful. You don't need an endless runway to test big ideas. You don't need to choose between speed and quality. With the right partner, the gap between vision and reality narrows significantly. What's blocking you? Let's clear it.