NYC · 23 Jul 2026 · A leading Manhattan law firm

Chat is table stakes. The next layer is agents.

A one-day, hands-on masterclass for senior operators who want to understand what AI agents are, why they leave chat behind, and how to run a team of them. You leave having deployed your own.

Apply for a seat → See the agenda
Date
Jul 23, 2026
Location
Midtown NYC
Seats
30 · by application
Tuition
$1,199
The Curriculum

Three questions. One day to answer all three.

Most professionals still use AI like a smarter search engine. The top operators have moved past chat to agents: autonomous systems that read inboxes, draft memos, screen deals, and run on schedule. The whole day is built to take you across that gap, in three steps.

01 · WHAT

What is an agent?

Not a chatbot. An agent perceives, decides, acts, and runs on its own, using tools, skills, and memory. We strip out the engineering jargon and show you exactly where the line sits.

02 · WHY

Why agents beat chat

Chat answers. Agents do the work. One returns text you still have to act on; the other completes the task while you sleep. You build a single agent that proves the difference on your own data.

03 · NEXT

The future is teams of agents

The next edge is not one agent but many, orchestrated. One operator directing a fleet of specialists that run a workflow end to end. You build that team before you leave the room.

The next era of executive advantage will not come from working harder, but from directing teams of agents.
Origin Story

We built the class we wished had existed when we started.

Arun Mittal
Arun Mittal
Co-founder, The Operator Forum

Over my career I've invested more than $2 billion across fixed income, structured finance, private equity, and venture capital. Today I advise AI businesses and co-manage MBM Capital, a platform that acquires, builds, and grows orphaned venture-backed businesses.

I've been a power user of AI since GPT-3, and so are many of my portfolio companies. But something changed this year. When Claude Cowork and OpenClaw hit the headlines, the smartest operators and technologists I know stopped chatting with AI and started deploying agents, automating real work and building flows that didn't exist before. I remember the buzz of the '90s and the value creation that emerged in the 2000s. I knew I had to get deeper.

I met my co-founder, Yuxin Ruan, on a train. Serendipity had struck, and we started a conversation about AI and agents that didn't stop. Good things happen when you meet people in the room and start connecting the dots. Over the following months we kept hearing the same thing from our peers: investors and operators who could feel the agentic shift but couldn't get their hands around it. Yuxin could. He's CTO of the fastest-growing neocloud in Asia, has advised some of the world's largest financial institutions, and has built with NVIDIA and IBM.

This is our collective playbook from venture, private equity, and the world's largest financial institutions, in one day.

It's for you: the investors, the operators, the senior managers. You'll leave understanding what agents are, how they're deployed, and how they'll transform the work you do and the businesses you build.

The operators who learn this now will spend the next decade ahead of the ones who waited. The gap is already opening. The only question is which side of it you're on.

What You Leave With

Three things. None of them are slide decks.

01 · BUILD

A working team of agents

You build them yourself, in your environment, during the day. They are running before you leave the room: a Morning Briefing Agent and a Diligence Room Analyst.

02 · PLAYBOOK

The Operator Playbook

A printed, role-tailored manual covering ten agent patterns across PE, hedge fund, legal, and family office workflows. Take it home, build the rest yourself.

03 · ROOM

The room

Thirty senior operators, vetted for fit, working in the same room for a full day. The peer set is half the product.

The Two Agents You Build

Real systems. Yours by 4 PM.

The first is one agent that beats chat. The second is a team of agents working together: the two ideas at the center of the day, built with your hands.

Use Case 01

The Morning Briefing Agent

Every operator wakes up to noise. Your first hour is gone before you make a decision that matters.

The Morning Briefing Agent pulls from your inbox, calendar, and the market signal sources you define. It triages, prioritizes, and delivers a single document to your inbox before you wake up.

You build it in Session 3. It is running by Monday morning.

Use Case 02

The Diligence Room Analyst

Every deal lives in a folder. The folder grows for weeks. The folder never tells you what changed.

The Diligence Room Analyst ingests a folder of deal documents and produces a role-tailored memo. PE gets ROI sensitivity. Legal gets contractual flags. Family office gets capital call schedule.

And it stays on call. Forward an updated CIM, an email from counsel, a revised model, and the agent integrates the change and updates the memo automatically. The diligence file becomes alive.

You build it in Session 4. It is the highest-leverage agent we have shipped to date.

The Day

8:30 AM to 4:00 PM. One room. No spectators.

The sessions ladder through the three pillars: first what an agent is, then a single agent that beats chat, then a team of agents working together.

8:30 – 9:00

Breakfast + Setup Desk

Continental breakfast. Tech leads walk the room. Every attendee is connected to Claude Cowork or the cloud sandbox before 9:00. No exceptions.

9:00 – 9:15

Welcome & Frame

Hosts set the day. Today you move from chat user to agent operator. By 4 PM you have working agents and a playbook.

9:15 – 10:30

Session 1: What the Top 1% AI User Actually Does Hands-on

What changed since January 2026. Cowork, Skills, voice (Whisper), persistent context. Live build: termsheet versus process letter comparison. Each attendee runs Cowork on their own data to validate setup.

10:30 – 10:45

Break

10:45 – 11:45

Session 2: Agents 101: What Is an Agent? Pillar 01

What an agent is, versus an assistant or a chat window. The harness without engineering jargon. Tools, skills, MCP, subagents. Why agents fail. Why they work.

11:45 – 12:45

Session 3: One Agent That Beats Chat: The Morning Briefing Pillar 02 Hands-on

Each attendee deploys their own Morning Briefing Agent in the sandbox. Connected to inbox, calendar, and market signal. It does the work, not just the answer, scheduled to run Monday morning while you sleep.

12:45 – 1:45

Lunch + Law Firm Partner: The AI Legal Landscape

Hosted by partners at the venue firm. Confidentiality pitfalls. Model risk for regulated industries. What GCs are flagging. Eat while listening.

1:45 – 3:00

Session 4: A Team of Agents: The Diligence Room Analyst Pillar 03 Hands-on

Multi-agent build. One orchestrator directing a financial sub-agent, a legal sub-agent, and a market sub-agent, a team working a deal end to end. Each attendee runs it on a sample deal. We turn the on-call feature on.

3:00 – 3:15

Break

3:15 – 3:45

Session 5: The Playbook & What to Build Monday

Walk through the printed Operator Playbook. Ten agent patterns by role. How to extend what you built. Common pitfalls. The traps to avoid.

3:45 – 4:00

Closing & Next Steps

Where the field is heading. What we will host next.

4:00 – 6:00

Cocktails & Office Hours Optional

Off-site at a nearby venue. Hosts circulating. The afternoon is for the work; the evening is for the room.

Your Instructors

Built by operators. Taught by operators.

Arun Mittal

Arun Mittal

Business / Investor Lens

Arun Mittal is building and investing in AI-first and AI-second companies, where AI can transform existing operations and create significant operating margins and beautiful customer experiences. He has operated at the intersection of technology and capital over 30 years in New York, Tokyo, and California, having deployed over $2B across fixed income, private equity, and venture capital. BS Stanford and MS Georgia Institute of Technology.

Yuxin Ruan

Yuxin Ruan

Technical / Financial Services Lens

Yuxin is an advisor and CTO to the fastest-growing neocloud provider in Asia and advises some of the largest financial institutions on the latest trends in AI. He previously spent 15 years in R&D at IBM, working on enterprise AI systems and distributed compute. Yuxin builds and ships production agent systems for a living. He brings the technical depth that turns AI hype into working tools. BS University of Chicago.

Who This Is For

Operators who already use AI, and want to be twelve months ahead.

You should join if

  • You are a PE operating partner, principal, hedge fund PM, law firm partner, family office principal, or founder of a mid-market business
  • You already use ChatGPT or Claude regularly
  • You are comfortable being uncomfortable on a keyboard for a day
  • You want a working system you control, not a vendor pitch
  • You believe the people in the room are worth meeting

You should not join if

  • You want to watch a keynote and go home
  • You are looking for technical agent engineering training
  • You want an AI investment thesis (this is operational, not investment-oriented)
  • You will not bring a laptop
FAQ

Questions before you apply.

Do I need to know how to code? +

No. This is a no-code workshop. We use Claude Cowork, Anthropic's agentic desktop app, alongside a cloud sandbox for those who want zero-install. The technical work is in plain English and a few clicks.

What do I need to bring? +

A laptop. Two weeks before the event we send setup instructions and Yuxin runs two optional 30-minute Zoom office hours for installation support. The morning of the event, our tech desk handles the rest.

Where exactly is it held? +

A leading Manhattan law firm in Midtown. The exact venue is announced to registered attendees once confirmed.

What is included in tuition? +

The full day of instruction, a working team of agents deployed in your environment, the printed Operator Playbook, continental breakfast, hot lunch, and the optional 4–6 PM cocktail hour. Cloud sandbox access during the day is included.

What is your refund policy? +

Refunds available up to 30 days prior to the event. Seat is transferable to a qualified colleague with our approval up to 7 days prior.

Are the sessions recorded? +

No. The room is the product. You are in or you are not.

Why is this not a typical AI conference? +

Because you build, not watch. There are no keynotes, no vendor booths, no panels. Every attendee leaves directing a working team of agents in their own environment, with documentation to extend it.

What happens after the masterclass? +

You leave with a running team of agents and the playbook to build more. We are evaluating a graduates-only community for ongoing peer exchange, but have not committed to one yet.

Apply

Thirty seats. One day. By application.

One day to understand agents, see why they beat chat, and walk out directing a team of them. The forum is held to thirty operators by design. We curate for fit on seniority, sector mix, and intent. Applications take three minutes.

Apply for a seat →
Date
July 23, 2026
Tuition
$1,199
Decisions
Within 5 business days