Twelve principals · One operator · No code

Five days to stop being a passenger.

6—10 January2027
Europe · at altitude Exact location to be confirmed

For the people who approve the budget and cannot read the invoice. You will not write a line of code. You will leave seeing your own company differently.

Request an application
From $9,00008:00–20:00Twelve seats
Scroll

Before anything else

You will not write
a single line of code.

No technical background

None is required and none is assumed. Not having one is the entry requirement, not the obstacle.

No jargon you did not ask for

Everything is explained at the level of someone who runs a company, because that is who is in the room.

No engineers in the cohort

Twelve principals, all with the same gap. Nobody performs expertise at anybody.

01 — The Problem

You are not behind because you are slow. You are behind because nobody has explained it to you at your level.

You have read balance sheets designed to be unreadable and found the problem anyway. Then a technology arrived that everyone discusses in a vocabulary you were never given, and for the first time in a long career you find yourself nodding.

So you approve budgets you could not defend line by line, and you have quietly stopped asking questions — because the cost of the question feels higher than the cost of not knowing. It is not. It is considerably lower.

Fluency is not built by reading. It is built by doing the thing badly for a while, in a room where that is allowed. This is that room.

Diagnostic — tick what is true

0 of 8 ticked

02 — The Shift

You will see
your own company
differently

Most of what you run has never been examined with this lens. Not the tools — the business. Where the value actually sits, what is genuinely possible, and what you have been carrying by hand for years.

Sales

A team, a pipeline, and a number you chase monthly.

Every conversation, objection and lost deal as readable data — and the three points where judgment beats effort.

Operations

Processes that work because specific people hold them together.

The dependencies on individuals, mapped and priced — and which of them should never be automated.

Finance

Reporting that arrives after the month it describes.

The questions you could be answering continuously, and what it costs not to.

Your own time

A calendar full of work only you can do.

The share of it that was never actually yours, quantified in hours per week.

Your team

People you trust, doing work you cannot fully assess.

A clear read on who is genuinely ahead, who is bluffing, and what to ask to tell the difference.

The next three years

A strategy written before any of this was possible.

Where your industry is actually exposed, and the moves available to you before someone else makes them.

This is the whole point. Not literacy in a technology — a working lens on the business you already run.

03 — The Five Days

The
Ascent

Twelve hours a day, five days running. Not a resort schedule — deliberate. Each day removes something you were carrying and replaces it with something that holds weight.

Tap any day to open the full syllabus

Elevation 1 480 m
Day One1 480 m
  • iWhat a language model actually is, explained without mathematics and without condescension.
  • iiWhy it hallucinates, why it flatters you, why it fails — and precisely what that means for trusting its output.
  • iiiThe real model landscape: Claude, GPT, Gemini, open-weight models. What each is genuinely good at, and who is selling what to whom.
  • ivHype forensics: how to read an AI vendor pitch and find the lie in ninety seconds.
  • vLiveYou map your own company's full surface area. Every process, every function, on one wall.

You leave day one knowing what is real.

Day Two2 140 m
  • iPrompting as delegation: briefing a model is the same skill as briefing a chief of staff, and you already have it.
  • iiContext engineering — the single highest-leverage skill in the field, and the one nobody teaches.
  • iiiResearch, analysis, memo-writing, board preparation and diligence at a level your team cannot currently match.
  • ivBuilding a personal operating system that survives the flight home.
  • vLiveYou rebuild one real recurring task from your actual working week, end to end.

You leave day two faster than anyone who works for you.

Day Three2 810 m
  • iWhat an agent actually is, and exactly where the line between automation and agent sits.
  • iiConnecting tools, data and models into something that keeps working when you close the laptop.
  • iiiGuardrails and failure modes — and the things that should never be automated in your business.
  • ivWhat this costs to run, honestly, at your scale.
  • vLiveYou build a working system for your own company, start to finish, and watch it run.

You leave day three having built something that works.

Day Four3 490 m
  • iScoring your entire company: where AI creates value, where it destroys it, and where it is pure theatre.
  • iiThe ten highest-value interventions in your specific business — ranked, costed, sequenced.
  • iiiBuild versus buy versus wait, and the real economics of each.
  • ivData, security, IP and regulation — the risks that never appear on the vendor's slide.
  • vWhat an AI hire actually looks like, and how to avoid hiring a fraud.
  • viLiveYou produce a costed, sequenced, defensible roadmap for your company.

You leave day four with a plan you wrote yourself.

Day Five4 180 m
  • iHow to brief a team, set direction, and hold people accountable on work you do not perform yourself.
  • iiGovernance: what to mandate, what to permit, what to forbid outright.
  • iiiDetecting bluffing — in vendors, in consultants, and in your own staff.
  • ivThe first ninety days: precisely what you do on Monday.
  • vLiveYou present your roadmap to the room and are challenged on it by eleven peers who now know how.

You leave day five in command.

Evenings

Dinner, fire, and unstructured time. Eleven other principals carrying the same problem, in a room with no staff, no press and no audience. Several past conversations of this kind have been worth more than the programme that occasioned them. We protect the evenings deliberately and we do not programme them.

04 — The Place

Above the
treeline

A lodge at altitude in Europe, remote enough that leaving is inconvenient. Not an aesthetic choice — five days of this only works if the default option is to stay in the room.

Fibre to every desk. You are not being asked to disconnect, you are being asked to concentrate. No spa programme, no partner track, no golf. Twelve bedrooms, one long table, and a room that works from eight until eight.

Exact location to be confirmed — disclosed to participants on acceptance.

Cohort One — January 2027

  1. Tue 5 JanArrival from the afternoon. Dinner at eight. Nothing formal.
  2. Wed 6 JanDay One — Demolition
  3. Thu 7 JanDay Two — The Operator
  4. Fri 8 JanDay Three — Build
  5. Sat 9 JanDay Four — The Company
  6. Sun 10 JanDay Five — Command
  7. Mon 11 JanDeparture from the morning.

Six nights. The five working days sit clear of travel at both ends.

Altitude
A mountain lodge, well above the nearest town. Cold air, long light, and nothing to do but the work.
Connectivity
Fibre throughout. Every participant works on live systems all week, not slides.
Access
Within reach of a major international airport, then a transfer. Arrival and departure days sit outside the five.

05 — The Return

What you
carry down

Nothing here is a certificate. Every item is something that exists, that you made, and that continues to be useful on the Monday after.

01

A working system you built for your own business, still running.

02

A costed, sequenced AI roadmap for your company, written in your hand.

03

A personal operating system for your own daily work.

04

The vocabulary and judgment to direct a team and interrogate any vendor.

05

Eleven peers who went through it beside you.

06 — Admission

Twelve seats,
chosen

The room only works if everyone in it is carrying comparable weight. Applications are read, and not all of them are accepted.

Built for

  • CEOs and founders who suspect they are falling behind and are tired of pretending otherwise
  • Family business principals responsible for a generational asset
  • Investors and investment house partners who must judge AI claims in diligence
  • Owner-operators running real companies with real profit and loss
  • People with no technical background whatsoever — that is the entry requirement, not the obstacle

Not built for

  • Engineers and AI practitioners — you will be bored by lunch on day one
  • Anyone looking for a certificate or a credential
  • Anyone looking for a holiday with a keynote attached
  • Delegates sent in place of the principal. The principal attends or the seat goes unused

07 — Who Leads It

Hafez
AlSayed

Every session, all five days. There is no faculty, no rotating cast of guest speakers, and nobody presenting a deck they did not write. One operator, in the room the whole time.

Founder and chief executive of Utopia Global Ventures, a holding group across AI, retail and distribution. Through Analytica, the group's AI business, he builds and ships production systems for SMEs and enterprises — systems in live operation, carrying real consequences when they fail.

He also runs an ecosystem venture studio: thousands of founder applications assessed, founders mentored, and personal investments made in a number of them. That is the same judgment the fourth day of this programme runs on — deciding what is real, what is fundable, and what is theatre.

He writes the systems himself. Everything taught across the five days is something he actually uses, which is why the week is built around what works rather than what demonstrates well.

  • OperatingFounder & CEO, Utopia Global Ventures — a holding group across AI, retail and distribution
  • DeployingAnalytica — AI workflow implementation for SMEs and enterprise, built and shipped personally
  • Venture studioThousands of founder applications assessed; founders mentored and backed
  • Boards & stageSits on the boards of industry events and programmes; speaks and moderates at them
  • DepthA working understanding of software development that predates the current wave — the reason he can tell a real system from a demonstration
  • On recordHost of the Utopia Life podcast, in conversation with operators and founders

08 — Investment

Two ways
to attend

One bad AI vendor decision costs more than both of these. Most companies make that decision within the year.

Seat — one of twelve

$9,000

  • All five days, 08:00–20:00, led throughout by Hafez
  • Accommodation and full board at the lodge
  • Every live build session and all working materials
  • Your own company surface map and costed AI roadmap
  • The systems you build during the week, yours to keep running
  • Evenings with eleven peers
Apply for a seat

Payment on acceptance, not on application.

Private — limited availability

$14,000

  • Everything included in a Seat
  • A private company mapping session, one to one, before the cohort convenes
  • A bespoke AI roadmap built specifically for your business, not a template
  • Direct access to Hafez for ninety days after the retreat
  • One follow-up review of what you actually shipped
Apply for private

For principals who intend to move immediately and want the roadmap built against their real numbers.

09 — Questions

Reasonable
objections

The ones we are asked most, answered as directly as they are asked.

That is the entry requirement, not the obstacle. Nothing requires you to write code, and the room is built for people who have never done any of this. If you were technical you would be bored by lunch on day one.

It is. One misjudged vendor decision costs several times it, and most companies your size make that decision within twelve months without the internal capability to evaluate it. The fee buys that capability. Day four tends to settle this question.

Neither can your competitor, which is rather the point. Five uninterrupted days is the minimum at which fluency forms; shorter formats produce enthusiasm rather than capability. And if the business genuinely cannot run a week without you, day four will examine why.

The information is. The judgment, the sequencing and eleven peers at your level are not. You have had access to all of it for three years and the gap is still there. That is the honest argument.

The tools will change. Day one is built to survive that — what these systems are and how they fail has held steady while the products around them have not. Judgment and the ability to detect a bluff do not expire.

Cohort one runs 6–10 January 2027. Arrival is from the afternoon of Tuesday 5 January and departure from the morning of Monday 11 January, so the five working days sit clear of travel at both ends. The venue is a mountain lodge at altitude, disclosed on acceptance. Twelve principals, and we do not run two cohorts at once.

You will hear back personally, usually within two business days. If it looks like a fit there is a short call before either side commits. Nothing is payable until you are accepted and have confirmed the dates.

10 — Apply

Twelve
seats

Cohort one · 6–10 January 2027 · Applications open

This is an application, not a checkout. Nothing is payable until you are accepted and the dates are confirmed.

Required
Enter a valid email
Required
Required
Required
Required

Application received.

You will hear back personally, usually within two business days. If it looks like a fit, there is a short call before either side commits.