Hire Operations. Run by your AI COO.
A whole operations department, not a tool: weekly review, hiring pipeline, performance reviews, customer support, program ops, and onboarding — the operating discipline a COO would impose, run as one. The tools are the cheapest part. Forge operates them, so you replace the headcount too.
Your COO: structured, blunt. The standup happens whether you're ready or not.
Who runs the Operations department.
Your COO doesn't work alone. Hiring the Operations department brings the full bench — one cockpit, one data layer, no separate SaaS subscriptions to chase. Forge runs every specialist, so you replace the headcount that would operate the tools.
- Onramp · Recruiter — job postings, candidate pipeline, public /careers page
- Centerline · Operations Coach — weekly cadence, scorecard, quarterly bearings
- Crew · HR Director — people, comp, reporting hierarchy
- Gauge · Performance Coach — 1:1s, review cycles, feedback
- Relay · Customer Support Rep — AI chat widget, KB-grounded answers, escalation to Slack
- Cohort · Program Manager — cohorts, demo days, accelerator phase gates
- Ignition · Onboarding Specialist — first-key-turn experience, customer-facing templates
The tools are the cheapest part.
Here's the tooling floor an Operations department clears — starter-tier list prices for small teams, about ~$467/mo. That's the cheapest thing it replaces. The real value is the labor: Forge runs every one of these tools, so you retire the headcount that would operate them — and it's one cockpit on a shared data layer instead of silos that don't talk. The Operations department is $199/mo.
| Function | Typical SaaS | OPS bundles |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiting / ATS | Lever Standard ≈ $200/mo | Onramp |
| Operating cadence | Notion + Asana ≈ $30/mo | Centerline |
| HRIS | Lattice / Rippling ≈ $88/mo | Crew |
| Performance mgmt | 15Five ≈ $75/mo | Gauge |
| Customer support | Intercom Starter ≈ $74/mo | Relay |
What happens in the first week.
No "set up your dashboard." No 14-step onboarding. Within hours of hiring, OPS starts shipping.
- Centerline initializes the weekly cadence: standup, scorecard, quarterly bearings.
- Crew imports your team. If headcount is empty, OPS sets up the org chart from your domain crawl.
- Onramp drafts job specs for any open roles you flag.
- Relay drops in a support widget, ingests your docs as a KB.
- First weekly review composes within 7 days, flagging any metric exceptions ±20% week-over-week.
What OPS actually shipped.
Real artifacts from the public log, pull requests, draft articles, stack memos. Each card links to the artifact itself. If a card is empty here, the playbook has not produced an artifact-shaped output in the current 14-day window.
What OPS shipped recently.
Pulled live from Merkava-HQ/merkava-exec-log at page-load. The same OPS you'd hire ran these for Merkava itself in the last 7 days.
What buyers actually ask before hiring Operations.
What does the Operations department actually do day-to-day?
It's a full operating function run by your AI COO: Centerline runs your weekly review, quarterly priorities, and end-of-quarter retros; Crew is the canonical employee record; Onramp manages your hiring funnel; Gauge runs 1:1s, OKRs, and performance reviews; Cohort runs structured programs (accelerators, mastermind groups); Ignition handles customer onboarding; Relay handles customer support. The COO orchestrates these specialists and keeps the operating discipline a 30-person company would impose.
How is this different from a fractional COO?
A fractional COO costs $30-50K/mo and gives you strategic oversight. The Operations department costs $199/mo and runs the daily ops a fractional COO would delegate to a 7-person ops team — weekly cadence, hiring pipeline, performance reviews, customer support escalation, program ops. The tools it clears (Lattice, Greenhouse, Zendesk, EOS Traction software, etc.) are the cheapest part; Forge running them is the value.
What's the trial like?
7-day free trial. Credit card required at hire. Auto-bills $199 on day 8 unless you cancel. Cancel anytime; access continues to end of period.
What can I expect in the first 7 days?
Day 1: Centerline schedules your first weekly review (Tuesday default); Crew imports your team from CSV / Gusto. Day 2-3: First quarterly bearings set; first 1:1 cadence configured in Gauge. Day 4-5: Onramp pulls existing hiring pipeline if you have one; first customer support widget (Relay) embedded if you opt in. Day 6-7: First weekly review run; first OKR check-in. By end of week 1, your operating cadence is on a calendar and your team's reviewable in Merkava.
Can the Operations department run for multiple ventures?
Yes. Each venture gets its own Operations scope: own cadence, own team, own hiring pipeline, own programs. Cross-venture rollup shows headcount, comp run-rate, retention, OKR completion across the entire studio.
How does Operations work with the other departments?
Operations coordinates hiring needs from Marketing and Sales. It routes performance reviews from every department (the AI execs themselves get Crew records and quarterly reviews). Finance reads Operations data for cost-of-team modeling. Engineering reviews ops-stack changes (e.g., switching ATS systems). The departments share one data layer.
What does the Operations department cost?
$199/mo — your COO + 7 specialists (Centerline, Crew, Onramp, Cohort, Gauge, Ignition, Relay), all on one cockpit. BYOK drops 15%. Annual billing 20% off. Or hire the Full C-Suite — all five departments — at $699/mo, with Finance included free. The tools this replaces are the cheapest part: Forge runs them, so you also retire the headcount that would operate them.
Hire the Operations department.
Onboarding is a domain, a code repo (optional), and a Slack workspace (optional). Within 5 minutes the first action ships in your activity feed. Cancel anytime, no contract.