Two working sessions, with Tim
No observers, no spectators
Two sessions, one week
Doors close at 12 seats
Not templates. A first-version OS built from your own business context, challenged by eleven other founders doing the same work in parallel.
Tim Barker built his AI company operating system at Attain IP and presented it at BoS Europe 2026. The reaction from a room full of founders who’d heard every AI pitch going: “someone actually doing it.” That talk created this workshop. In two sessions, you’ll see exactly how it gets built, then build a first version for yours.
Want to discuss fit before registering? Email mark@businessofsoftware.org
Surface the rules, constraints, and decision boundaries already living in your head. Document them roughly. The group critiques and sharpens.
Run the AI bootstrap on your company. Review what it gets right and wrong. Write the correction list, the context your agent needs that no public source contains.
Bring your correction list back to the group. Work out what your tools actually need from you, and whether the next step is building independently or joining the full four-week cohort.
Every company has an operating system. It’s in how decisions get made, how work flows, what the business will and won’t do, who has authority over what. Most of it has never been written down. It lives in your head, in your team’s habits, in institutional memory that walks out the door when people leave.
That was always a limitation. Now it’s the thing standing between you and any meaningful leverage from the tools everyone is talking about. Because those tools can only run well inside a system they can read. Every session starts from scratch. Nothing compounds. You’re still the one holding it together, because nothing else knows enough to.
You can see what this could be. That’s exactly what’s frustrating.
This workshop is the starting point. In two sessions across one week, you’ll see how a company OS gets built in practice, then build a first version for yours. Not a framework to think about later. A concrete start.
The BoS No Quibble Guarantee applies: if you attend and feel you didn’t get value, we will refund your workshop fee.
Not templates. A first-version OS built from your own business context, challenged by eleven other founders doing the same work in parallel.
Revised CLAUDE.md
The standing brief your tools read at the start of every session, written to reflect your actual values and constraints.
A Clear Path Forward
Whether that’s building independently or joining the full four-week cohort, you’ll leave knowing exactly what the right next step is.
The cohort is capped at 12. Peer quality is part of what you’re paying for a room where almost every conversation is worth having.
If you’re not already using Claude in some capacity, this workshop isn’t the right starting point.
Tim Barker has founded five startups and seen the startup journey from every angle. He sold his first company to Salesforce, spent five years in the formative age of cloud computing, taken companies public, and scaled them to several hundred people. Tim is a keen advocate for transparency, eating humble pie, and owning your mistakes. He is also a lifetime learner, which is part of why he felt compelled to ask: “What happens if you’re AI-native from day zero?”
Mark has run Business of Software for 19 years, two annual conferences, more than 400 practitioner talks, and a community of founders building software companies that last. He has spent that time working out what actually separates the businesses that make it from those that don’t. This workshop is built on the same principle as every BoS event: helping entrepreneurs build better businesses alongside other smart people.
$500 per participant
The BoS No Quibble Guarantee: if you attend and feel you didn’t get value, we will refund your fee. No questions asked. Questions about fit? Email Mark.What tools do I need before Session 1? Claude Desktop and a Claude Pro or Team plan (required for Cowork mode). The workshop skill suite is provided on enrolment, so no additional setup is needed before your first session. If you hit any issues, email mark@businessofsoftware.org before the session.
How is this different from the four-week cohort? The four-week cohort is for founders already using Claude and Cowork mode who want to build a complete governing system: strategy documents, a fully specified agent, and a first mission. It requires roughly 24–30 hours of work and produces a complete Agent OS. This workshop is the step before that. In two sessions you’ll have a bootstrapped start and a clear direction. If you leave ready to build that properly, the full cohort is the natural next step.
What’s the between-session work? Between sessions (roughly 1.5–2.5 hours) you run the AI bootstrap on your own company, review what it gets right and wrong, and write a correction list, the context your agent needs that no public source contains. Session 2 is built around what you bring from that work.