Ask people where startups come from and you’ll hear the same few cities. We think that’s a habit, not a law. Good ideas show up wherever people are paying attention to a real problem, and Southeast Texas is full of people who know their industries, their customers and their towns better than anyone. What has been missing is a place to turn those ideas into companies.
That’s what The Forge is: a coworking space, a venture studio and an investment fund under one roof at 268 Pearl Street.
Built by people who have done it
The Forge was started by Ed Sturrock, who has spent his career building companies. He co-founded ShareBuilder 401k, founded AmeriCommerce (later acquired by Capital One), ran digital commerce at Capital One and co-founded Cart.com as its CTO. You’ll find most of those companies in our portfolio.
The lesson from all of them is simple. Companies get built by small teams in rooms together, with people around who have hit the same walls before. You don’t need a coastal zip code for that. You need the room and the people.
Beaumont has noticed. Ed was named one of Southeast Texas’s 40 Under 40 in 2013, and in 2025 the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce gave him its 40 Under 40 Legacy Award. Read the story of the Legacy Award.
A building worth the bet
We bought 268 Pearl Street in 2019, when it was an empty shell. What followed was a complete transformation. The renovation kept the old brick and the high windows and added what a modern company needs: fast WiFi, glass-walled offices, meeting rooms with big screens and a long open floor for people to gather. It first served as AmeriCommerce’s office. Today it’s The Forge. Read the full story of the rebuild, from hand sketch to certificate of occupancy.
Putting it downtown was the point. Downtown Beaumont sits in the middle of the Golden Triangle, close to I-10 and US-69, so a founder in Port Arthur, Orange or Lumberton can be here in about half an hour.
Work. Build. Scale.
Most people meet The Forge as a place to work. You can book a desk for the day, a room for a meeting or a monthly membership, and you’ll be working next to people who are building things too. That’s the base layer, and it’s open to everyone: see coworking.
For founders, the building is also a path:
- Work. Move in and test the idea with real customers before spending real money.
- Build. Get to a product people want and a story investors understand in one breath.
- Scale. Raise, hire and grow, with investor introductions and The Forge’s own fund in the room.
We invest our own capital in startups, growing companies and real estate, in rounds of $2M or less, and we stay involved after the check clears. The details are on the Founders page.
Why it matters here
Every company that grows here keeps its jobs, its taxes and its talent here. Every founder who makes it shows the next one that they can too. That compounding is how startup towns get made, and it doesn’t start with a policy or a grant. It starts with a building full of people who decided to try.
Even the walls are in on it. The super-founder mural by the stairs says what we’d tell any founder who walks in.
If you’re building something, or thinking about it, come by. Book a free tour and we’ll show you around.
Suit up. Let’s build.
