About

The Short Version

Business of Software is where serious software founders learn how to build companies that last. Not the biggest conference. The best room for the job.

What We Believe

Most events promise you a crowd. We give you a room. Since 2007 we have brought together founders and leaders of software companies who would rather learn something real than collect business cards. One track, so everyone sees the same talks and the hallway conversations have somewhere to start. No paid speaker slots, so what you hear on stage is there because it is worth hearing. A few hundred people, not thousands, because a room where almost every conversation is worth having is a different experience from a hall you have to work your way through.

The trust between the people in the room is the product. Everything we do is a way of building and deepening that trust.

BoS is a peer network for serious business software founders. The Conference is the physical, in-person expression of that network, its most visible moment, not the whole of it. Founder Circle is the network’s deepest, most sustained tier. The BoS OS is how members carry the network’s thinking with them day to day, whether they’ve ever attended in person or not.

Who It’s For

Founders and leaders running software companies where the hard problems have shifted. Product-market fit is behind you. Now it is leadership, strategy, the shape of the organisation, and the question of how the place runs when you are not in the room. If that is where you are, this is your room. You will recognise the other people in it, and they will recognise you.

A note for the unsure: a recurring worry from first-timers is “I thought this was just for founders, will I fit in?” The room is more varied in company size, stage, and role than people expect, and still carefully curated. If your work is building a software business, you belong.

What You Get

You leave better at the specific job you came to solve. That is the test. Not inspired, not entertained, better. You leave with a peer group who will help you keep solving it, people who relate to your context as a founder in a way almost nobody else in your life does. More than half of new attendees come because someone they trust told them to, and 68% come back.

“The most lonely person in the room is the CEO, because at some point he wants to go talk to people about what he’s thinking about for the future, but he can’t talk to his own people about it, because they get distracted. That’s what business of software is all about.”
— Bobby Moesta, Founder, Rewired Group

How to Start

Watch a talk. There are more than 400, free, and they are the honest sample of what BoS is. If one changes how you think, the rest of what we do will make sense: the workshops where a small group works one real problem to a result, the two flagship conferences each year, and the Founder Circle, an invitation-only peer group for founders who want this kind of room all year, not twice a year.

Underneath all of it sits the BoS OS: how members carry the network’s thinking with them day to day, whether they’ve ever attended in person or not. The Conference is where the room is most visible, twice a year. The room runs beyond it.