Four working sessions, with Tim
No observers, no spectators
Wednesdays, four weeks
Doors close at 12 seats
Not templates. Documents built from your own business context, challenged each week 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.
Over four weeks, with Tim and eleven others at exactly the same ceiling, you’ll build 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.
Draft the three to five strategy documents you cannot afford to delegate without a brief. Brand, finance, hiring. Sharpened in pairs.
Spec your first agent fully: decision boundary, escalation triggers, evaluation framework. One agent, ready to run by end of session.
A scoped project your agent can execute under your constraints, starting the Monday after the workshop ends.
Your company already has an operating system. It’s in how decisions get made, how work flows, what your brand 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 problem. Now it’s an urgent one. Because the tools you’re using to automate and delegate, they’re running on top of an OS they’ve never seen. Every session starts from scratch. Nothing compounds. You’re still the one who has to hold it all together, because nothing else knows enough to.
You’re not getting less done. You’re amplifying a mess instead of a system.
This workshop is for founders who are already in motion, already using the tools, already tinkering, and have hit the ceiling that only a documented OS can break through. Over four weeks, you’ll build one.
The BoS No Quibble Guarantee applies: if you attend and feel you didn’t get value, we will refund your workshop fee.
Not templates. Documents built from your own business context, challenged by eleven other founders doing the same work in parallel.
One Fully Specified Agent
Decision boundary, escalation triggers, and evaluation framework. One agent, fully ready to run by the end of week three.
Phase 1 Mission
A scoped project your agent can execute under your constraints, starting the Monday after the workshop ends.
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.
$2,000 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’s included in the workshop fee?
Four two-hour sessions, one per week from 20 May. Prework materials and the workshop skill suite are included. No additional setup before your first session.
What tools do I need before I start?
Claude Desktop, a Claude Pro or Team plan (required for Cowork mode), and to already be using Claude in some capacity in your business. The workshop skill suite is provided on enrolment, so no additional setup is needed before your first session.
How is this different from an AI tools course?
This is not a tools course. It won’t teach you prompting basics or help you choose between platforms. It is about building the operating system underneath your tools, the documented rules, values, decision boundaries, and memory that allow anything you delegate to actually run without you holding it together. There are no paid speaker slots, no frameworks being sold, no sponsor content. The cohort is capped at 12 because peer quality and challenge are part of what you’re paying for, not a marketing tactic.