Archive — V1, Venice Beach, April 2026 V2 is coming →

A.I. Accelerator

Two days with the people building deepest. Accelerate what you already know.

Date April 29–30, 2026
Location The Lighthouse, Venice Beach
Cohort ~40 builders, invite only
Hands on keyboards — No consultants — Real practitioners
AGENT-READY CODEBASES /// SPEC TO SHIP IN HOURS /// COMPOUND ENGINEERING /// YOUR REPO, LIVE /// PRACTITIONERS ONLY /// AGENT-READY CODEBASES /// SPEC TO SHIP IN HOURS /// COMPOUND ENGINEERING /// YOUR REPO, LIVE /// PRACTITIONERS ONLY ///

You're already deep in it. This is about going deeper.

You've shipped with AI. You have a CLAUDE.md. You've felt the leverage.

But you're mostly figuring this out alone. The people around you aren't in it the way you are. The questions you have now aren't answered in blog posts.

Everyone in this room is at your depth. The questions get better when nobody needs the preamble.

The room itself compounds. The conversations between sessions — at lunch, at dinner, in the hallway — are the work, not the break from it. People thinking this far ahead, building this deep, don't find each other often. This is that room.

Hands on keyboards. Real practitioners. No consultants.

What you'll leave with
01
An Agent-Ready Codebase
A CLAUDE.md that makes your agents genuinely autonomous. A workflow your team can run without you in the loop. A shipping system where every commit compounds the next one. Built live on your actual repo.
02
Peers at the Edge
People thinking this far ahead, building this deep, don't find each other often. You'll leave knowing who's solved what, who's moving fastest, and who to call the next time you're stuck.
03
A Plan for Your Team
Specific answers to the questions you came with. A clear read on where you actually are, where the frontier is, and the path between them. Something to take back Monday morning.
Hosts
KR
Kevin Rose
Advisor, True Ventures / Founder, Digg
Founded Digg before AI existed. Now builds with it every day. Host and moderator.
MM
Madeline Minshew
Head of Platform, True Ventures
Runs True's platform. Built this event because the best founders she works with kept asking the same questions and nobody was putting the right people in the same room.
Practitioners
AL
Andrew Lee
Founder/CEO, Tasklet
Co-founded Firebase. Built Shortwave. Now building Tasklet — just closed a big round. He's rebuilt his entire engineering org around agents and has the scar tissue to prove it.
DS
Dan Shapiro
CEO, Glowforge / Wharton Generative AI Lab
Created the "5 Levels" framework that half the room is already using to talk about where they are. Senior Research Fellow at Wharton's Generative AI Lab. Also runs Glowforge — so he's building, not just studying.
JM
Justin McCarthy
Co-founder/CTO, StrongDM
Built the Software Factory at StrongDM: three engineers, no human writes code, no human reviews code. Everyone talks about this setup. He'll show you how it actually works.
KK
Kieran Klaassen
Engineer, Every
Creator of Compound Engineering. Solo-ships Cora — an AI inbox copilot — where every line of code is written by AI, not assisted by AI. Former film composer turned startup CTO.
NB
Nathan Baschez
Founder, Thoughtful
Co-founded Every, first employee at Substack, co-created Product Hunt. Now building Thoughtful — an AI-native product studio. Ships fast, shares what works.
April 29–30, 2026
Day 1 — Wednesday, April 29
Shared language. Who's in the room. Why we're here.

Day 1 is about why we're in the room together and what each of us is building. Kevin and Madeline open with what we're seeing and what we hope this summit becomes. Dan Shapiro gives the room a shared language with the 5 Levels — a way to talk about where you actually are without the usual hand-waving. Then everyone goes around: two minutes each, who you are, what you're building, what's got you excited. Day 2 is built on the relationships that start here.

6:30pm
Dinner at Paloma, Venice Beach
Day 2 — Thursday, April 30
Hands on keyboards. Build real things. Leave with a plan.

Day 2 is structured as a build stack — each session hands off directly to the next. You'll push your codebase from "agents work sometimes" to "agents operate autonomously," turn your scattered Claude tricks into a system that compounds, and wire it into a workflow your team can run without you in the loop. The conversation with Andrew closes the day because after six hours of building, the best thing to do is zoom out and talk about what it all means.

Arrive prepared
01
Your Laptop, Set Up
Laptop, charger, dev environment running. Install and test all three: Claude Code, Codex, and the Gemini CLI — we're running a skill that depends on all three. Day 2 is live in your actual codebase — don't wait until you're here to troubleshoot your setup.
02
Your Repo + CLAUDE.md
Main production repo cloned and ready. Bring the CLAUDE.md you currently use — or arrive without one, that's fine too. Justin's session upgrades it directly, and you'll keep pushing it forward through Nathan's and Kieran's sessions.
03
A Real Task
Something real from your list — the thing you haven't had time for, or something pressing you're trying to push through this week. You'll work it live across the hands-on sessions.
04
Your Hardest Question
The thing you can't figure out alone. The question no blog post has answered. The architectural choice you keep second-guessing. Bring it. The room will have someone who's solved it.
05
Your 2-Minute Read
For Wednesday's Lightning Round: who you are, what you're building, how fast you're moving, the most interesting thing you've seen in AI lately.