How Dolphin Labs scaled project operations across multiple funded projects
Key Takeaways
5+ days saved monthly
Timesheets, reconciliation with the accountant, and internal budgeting used to consume a full week. Forge automated the busywork.
Full budget transparency
Every transaction maps directly to a budget line item. The team sees exactly where they stand on each project without digging through spreadsheets.
Multi-project clarity
With DOE, Navy, and NATO funding running in parallel, understanding budget status across all projects was critical. Forge made it simple.
Rolle Hogan
CEO, Dolphin Labs
“Forge is a must-have if you are scaling in deep tech. I used to hate end of the month. All the spreadsheets and chasing were terrible. Now I can focus on winning new contracts.”
Rolle Hogan
CEO, Dolphin Labs
The Company
Empowering ocean energy for defense and scientific discovery
Dolphin Labs builds the xNode, an autonomous wave-powered buoy that delivers persistent power and communications for ocean sensors, subsea comms, and vehicle charging. The team spun out from CalWave to focus on defense and ocean-observing applications.
Dolphin Labs holds DOE SBIR funding, a Navy contract, and was selected for Phase 2 of the NATO DIANA Accelerator. One of a small number of companies globally to reach that stage, their xNode platform has been validated at TRL 6-7 through Navy testing, and the company is actively pursuing additional contracts as they move from prototype to production.
The Challenge
Two leaders buried in admin instead of building the business
With five active funded projects, Dolphin Labs faced a problem familiar to any fast-moving technical team: the people who should be winning contracts and advancing R&D were spending significant time on financial operations instead.
Budget vs. actuals across multiple projects. Rolle spent hours each week manually updating budget spreadsheets, reconciling transactions, and preparing status reports. Time that should have gone to business development was lost to admin work.
Tracking down timesheets. Michael Kelly, CTO, had to chase engineers for their hours, compile the data, and ensure it matched project allocations. A time-consuming process without a centralized system.
No single source of truth. With DOE, Navy, and NATO funding running simultaneously, understanding the budget status on each project required pulling data from multiple places and reconciling it by hand.
How Forge Helped
One system for budgets, time, and project visibility
Transactions mapped to budget lines. Every bank and card transaction flows into Forge and maps directly to a budget line item and task. The team can see exactly where they stand on any project without opening a spreadsheet.
Timesheets that people actually complete. A Slack bot pre-fills hours by project and task, sends friendly daily nudges, and makes logging time take seconds instead of minutes. Engineers started calling it "actually kind of fun" compared to the old process.
Multi-project dashboard. All five funded projects visible in one place. Rolle can check burn rates, forecast completion, and prepare board updates in minutes instead of hours.
Why It Matters
More time building, less time tracking
Dolphin Labs is scaling from prototype to production while managing multiple government contracts across two continents. Forge gave them the operational backbone to do both without hiring a finance team. Rolle estimates 5+ days saved every month on operations, time that now goes toward winning the next contract.
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