We’re 8 engineers, designers, and ML researchers based in Porto and Lisbon. We take on 12 clients a year. That’s it.
FOUNDED
2024
TEAM
Eight people
CLIENTS A YEAR
Twelve, capped
BASED IN
Porto & Lisbon
ABOUT
Why we started Forja
Most AI agencies sell the work. We do the work.
Three years in, we’ve shipped 40+ systems for clients ranging from Series A startups to Fortune 500 operations teams. Every one of them is still running.
2023
Founded
Small, and on purpose.
8
Team
People. All senior, no juniors, no offshore.
2
Studios
Based in Porto & Lisbon.
40+
In production
Systems live, all still running.
LEADERSHIP
The two people answerable for the work.
Marco Vieira
FOUNDER • Forja
Twelve years building systems that had to stay up. Writes the hardest part of every project himself, on purpose.
RULE
“ Whoever sells the work also builds it. There is no layer in between, because that layer is where honesty goes to die. ”
TEAM
The people doing the work
You work directly with the senior engineers and designers who build your system.
No account managers. No offshore handoffs.
PRINCIPLES
What we believe
5 things we learned the hard way - now, they’re non-negotiable.
01
Ship or don’t start
If a project can’t reach production in eight weeks, the scope is wrong. We’d rather cut features than extend timelines.
02
The buyer is never the user
The executive who signs the contract isn’t the person using the system at 8 AM on a Tuesday. We design for the user. Every time.
03
No vendor lock-in
Your code runs on your infrastructure. Your models are portable. If we disappear tomorrow, your system would keep running.
04
AI is a feature, not a product.
Don’t build AI platforms. We build software that happens to use AI where it matters and something else where it doesn’t.
05
Training is the deliverable.
A system isn’t done until your team can run it without us. That’s the last milestone, not an afterthought.